Judy by the Numbers: "There's No Business Like Show Business"

Anne Marie has been chronicling Judy Garland's career chronologically through musical numbers...

Sometimes, surprises happen. And sometimes those surprises are planted. I'm referring in this case to both the reappearance of Episode 9 on this series, and the "unplanned" appearance of Ethel Merman on the already-iconic show guest-starring Barbra Streisand. Though Merman's big reveal was first suggested as a way to placate both the surprise guest and her not-so-gracious host. Judy may have originally balked at the idea of her Tea for Two guest skipping the tea for some titanic trilling, but when the producers roped Barbra into the skit as well, it went from a battle of egos to a mammoth moment in musical history.

The Show: The Judy Garland Show Episode 9
The Songwriters: Various, arranged by Mel Torme
The Cast: Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, The Smothers Brothers, surprise guest Ethel Merman directed by Norman Jewison

The Story: So, here's the thing. I've never been a great lover of Ethel Merman. I understand her importance in the musical canon, and some of the shows written for her rank in my Top 5 Favorite Musicals, but the Hostess with the Mostest tends to leave me cold. But even I am swayed by the sheer power of seeing the three greatest American Belting Broads belting out a song together. It's not even a passing of the torch as the Judy/Liza sketch had been. Instead, this feels very much like three old pros - well, two old pros and one new pro - sizing each other up, celebrating what they see, and cooperating. Though Merman would return later for a proper guest spot, nothing would capture the weird wonder of this trio scene. It's improvised, it's lively, and it's unlike anything else on The Judy Garland Show.

Today in Showbiz History: Oklahoma!, Martha & Missy, JLaw's Ascendance

On this day in history as it relates to showbiz...

1873 WC Handy famous musician is born in Alabama. The first credited use of his music in a movie was in the original Scarface (1932). That same song "St Louis Blues" is his most popular with Hollywood and has been used in dozens of movies since including The Aviator and The Great Gatbsy recently.  But Blue Jasmine got all feisty and went with "Aunt Hagar's Blues" instead.
1889 Playwright George S Kaufman is born. He wins two Pulitzers and his work has been adapted to films many times including classics like You Can't Take It With You, Dinner at Eight, The Man Who Came to Dinner and Stage Door.
1907 Oklahoma becomes the 46th State...

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On Ruth Negga's emotional power in "Loving"

by Murtada

Ruth Negga gives Loving its heart and soul. From the very first frame, director Jeff Nichols relies on her expressive face to tell the story of Mildred and Richard Loving, the mixed race couple at the center of 1967 Supreme Court ruling that changed anti-miscegenation laws. The Lovings paved the way for generations of mixed race families. Nichols starts with Negga, his camera moving into a close up. A silent moment as we take in her big-eyed, made-for-cinema face. Then the line “I’’m pregnant” and we're swept right into this couple’s story. No need for us to see how they met and fell in love. Negga tells us the whole story with her face and delivery of that line.

Throughout the film, which puts the court cases to the periphery, it’s Negga's face that continues to tell the story...

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Noirvember: Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

It's Noirvember. Here's Bill Curran on a Robert Aldrich's neo-noir

The world turned upside down, inside out. Film noir depends on following innate impulses to that most ultimate, unthinkable, irrational end: death. Noir explores that nasty thing called "human nature, revealing (and revelling in) the elemental urges that really make us tick. Noir unmasks the mechanics of this crazy world with some variation on a guy, a girl, and a gun. Upending sexual-patriarchal dynamics, leveling the tenants of justice and who is responsible for carrying it out, filming what we do in the shadows in the half-light: when you flip the script on taste and convention, you can learn a lot about how topsy-turvy this whole mess called Earth can be. 

Kiss Me Deadly stews in and subverts these genre contradictions more brazenly than almost any other film noir before or since, perhaps because it is, in the end, about the dawn of the end of the world. Gonzo and sophisticated in equal measure, from the backward title scrawl to the A-bomb finale, this loose 1955 adaptation of the Mickey Spillane novel could be called the first neo-noir and what the Cahier du cinema crowd dubbed, "the thriller of tomorrow.”

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Kelly Macdonald and other Oscar-Less Wonders

by Kyle Stevens

I was finishing up the new season of Black Mirror --which is alternately smart and smarmy, somehow managing to exaggerate reality to the point of smugness rather than satire-- when, lo and behold, who should pop up in the finale but Kelly MacDonald. And she's magnificent in it. Not being a Boardwalk Empire watcher, I hadn't really thought about her since her spectral turn as Rowena Ravenclaw in the Harry Potter movies. Then I remembered just how good she was in No Country for Old Men, Gosford Park, and even Nanny McPhee. I surprised myself by starting to fantasize Oscar-winning roles for her -- as one does. 

But there are so many worthy actresses without the big award. So to get our minds off the horrors of this past week, let's retreat into some good old-fashioned actressexual playtime. Who are your top five working actresses you'd love to see win an Oscar?

Off the top of my head, and in no particular order, mine are:

1. Annette Bening
2. Maggie Cheung
3. Sally Hawkins
4. Isabelle Huppert
5. Kelly MacDonald

CAVEAT: I've not said Viola Davis, because her status will probably change soon!