Best Shot Peck Centennial: Roman Holiday & To Kill a Mockingbird

Gregory Peck was an instant sensation at the cinema. He was nominated for Best Actor in his very first year of the movies for The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) and the hits just kept on coming: The Yearling (1946), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Twelve O'Clock High (1949). The Academy became less interested in nominating him after that the 1940s but for his Oscar winning and most iconic role (To Kill a Mockingbird) but audiences never stopped loving him. He had key hit films for over 30 years in his big screen career.

Though he was a very politically active liberal he was never interested in running for office himself but he  proved to be an influential politician within the industry itself as a key AMPAS president. 

For this week's Hit Me With Your Best Shot, in honor of Peck's Centennial, we gave participants the choice between what are arguably his two greatest films, Roman Holiday (1953) or To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).

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Top Ten: Current Stars Who Deserve a Great Role & Still Haven't Been Nominated

psssst. you still haven't been nominated for an Oscar.

Charlize is such a bitch! (I kid I kid.) But Emily Blunt has to be frustrated by know, right?

Herewith a quick top ten list for your Tuesday afternoon. Among currently working actors, who do you think would be most completely justified in righteous fury that they're still waiting for that one special role and even a single Oscar nomination? My answer to that question lies below. Please to note that this list could never be comprehensive. This isn't a list of "most snubbed" so much as 'doesn't it seem like time / past time?' and as such is highly subjective with an unwieldly title. 

Here we go.

10 CURRENTLY WORKING STARS MOST OVERDUE FOR
THAT TRULY GREAT ROLE THAT EARNS THEM THEIR 1ST OSCAR NOMINATION
This list is dedicated to all the greats that Oscar ignored time and again like Donald Sutherland and Mia Farrow who have now aged into "You missed your chance. Give them an Honorary" territory. 

 

RUNNER UP TIE: Kristen Wiig & Greta Gerwig

Funny
Did you hear that?
Funny
Yeah, the guy said

"Honey, you're a funny girl."

Comediennes so rarely get Oscar nominations (Melissa McCarthy got lucky!) but when you can work such comic gold from deep pain and surprise regularly with dramatic depth (Kristen Wiig) or when you're a completely singular star who is endlessly watchable (Greta Gerwig) shouldn't you be able to win prizes?

the top ten after the jump

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(tfw you dont comment)

Doc Corner: A Conversation with Gregory Peck on His 100th Birthday

Glenn here. Each Tuesday we bring you reviews and features on documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand. This week we’re looking at a documentary about Gregory Peck for what would have been his centennial birthday.

“It takes ten pictures to make a star”, says the subject of A Conversation with Gregory Peck quoting Carole Lombard. It’s a statement worth reiterating today for any number of reasons, not least of all because there are few actors these days who epitomise the word ‘star’ better than Peck. It happens several times throughout this 1999 documentary where people refer to the Oscar-winning actor as a shining example of humanity and a beacon for what people ought to strive for. He was, and still is, a star.

This career overview and remembrance by Barbara Kopple offers Peck the same sort of dignity and respect that the director has afforded all of her subjects throughout her career including striking coal miners, meatpackers, and the Dixie Chicks. Much like Becoming Mike Nichols, which we looked at last week, A Conversation with Gregory Peck centers around a collection of talks the actor gave to audiences across America in Boston, Buffalo, Virginia and more. Peck would sit on stage and offer stories and anecdotes while dutifully answering audience questions and requests for autographs (he’s even more of a consummate professional to do entire Q&As without a moderator – those are tough). They act as a comforting storytelling device, the grandfather in the armchair telling stories of how he met his second wife, a journalist, after she ditched an interview with Albert Schweitzer to meet him for lunch in Paris, how he gave up thoughts of a career as a priest, and how the climactic gag of Roman Holiday’s mouth of truth scene was improvised.

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TV @ The Movies: "Bob's Burgers" and The Birds (1963)

Please tell me that you watch and love Bob's Burgers. (It's safe to assume that if you do the former you also do the latter.) The most recent episode "House of a 1000 Bounces" was a brilliant children's birthday party heist largely focused on the animated sitcom's superbly written kids: Tina, Louise, and Gene. The characterizations on this show never disappoint. Each Belcher family member and nearly every supporting character are so defined they're hi-res. And yet it's more than just broad strokes with flat colors. It's not one of those (many) sitcoms that rests on five variations of 1 joke for per character. Six seasons in the show is still strong with variety and invention.

In the B plot of this episode a pigeon inadvertently gets trapped inside the titular restaurant and Linda (Bob's wife) and Teddy (his self described best friend) are surprised to realize that Bob is terrified of pigeons. When they ask him to explain he flashes back to a childhood memory that looks and sounds all too familiar.

Let's alternate between Bob's false memories and the real fiction as it were. 

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