Simone Signoret in "Casque d'Or"

by Eric Blume

Today is the centennial of French Oscar-winner Simone Signoret.  Daniel paid lovely tribute to her last night for her brief role in 1950's La Ronde.  Her next big film, director Jacques Becker's 1952 movie Casque d'Or, made her a star six years before Oscar embraced her with Room at the Top. Becker captures all of Signoret's magic in this turn-of-the-century Paris underworld story.  It doesn't hurt that he has his cinematographer, Robert Le Febvre, lighting her in a gloriously celestial way throughout the movie...

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Jessica Walter (1941-2021)

by Nathaniel R

Showbiz lost another great this week as Jessica Walter passed away at 80 years of age. Her sensational and much-memed performance of smug, biting, privileged Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development, will live forever but it was just a small portion of her long career...

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Doc Corner: 'A Glitch in the Matrix'

Doc Corner, by Glenn Dunks, is back after its brief hiatus.

Rodney Ascher makes extremely goofy documentaries. I am sure that he comes at them with all the seriousness that their dark and sinister tones would suggest, but that doesn’t stop them from ending up as, well, extremely goofy movies. There was Room 237 about interpretations of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. There was also The Nightmare, about sleep paralysis. Both goofy.

That doesn’t mean they’re not entertaining. In fact, that’s often their most commendable aspect. Lord knows, it certainly cannot be said that Ascher lacks imagination behind the camera and has an ability to gravitate towards subjects that demand more than a basic documentary toolkit to pull together...

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With the PGA win Nomadland is probably locked up. But what to make of Best Documentary Feature?

by Nathaniel R

If Nomadland was going to show any weakness before Oscar night, now just 31 days away, it would probably have been at the Producers Guild Awards which were held last night. Sorry to its rivals (though not really because we love Nomadland) there appears to be no vulnerable spots in its golden armor. Or maybe the Producers Guild just wasn't feeling frisky about throwing curveballs this year since with the exception of the Best Documentary (which still feels wide open in terms of the Oscar win) ALL of their prizes went to frontrunners in their Oscar categories or TV shows that have already cleaned up at other awards shows or even previously at the PGA...

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