Smackdowns. Available Years

The Supporting Actress Smackdown will resume in March 2022. Final Season! 

Happy Smackdown to you Happy Smackdown to you
Happy Smackdown you actressexuals,
Happy Smackdown to youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

After StinkyLulu graciously let us continue/revive the series here eight years ago (eep!) we've done 42 episodes: 1937, 1938, 1941, 1943, 1944, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1957, 1960, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, and concurrently with Oscar races as they happened 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2021

So, where to now? 

THE REMAINING YEARS

1951 Joan Blondell (The Blue Veil) | Dunnock (Death of a Salesman) | Grant (Detective Story) | Hunter (A Streetcar Named Desire) | Ritter (The Mating Season)

1997 - Basinger (LA Confidential) | Cusack (In & Out) | Driver (Good Will Hunting) | Moore (Boogie Nights) | Stuart (Titanic)

2004  -Blanchett (The Aviator) | Linney (Kinsey) | Madsen (Sideways) | Okondo (Hotel Rwanda) | Portman (Closer)

We might offer up a reader poll to choose one of the years that were done a long time ago at StinkyLulu, too. We'll see. 

Showbiz History: The Help, Madame Butterfly, and the first superhero comic?

7 random things that happened on this day, February 17th, in showbiz history...

1904 Puccini's beloved opera Madame Butterfly premieres in Italy in what was essentially rough draft form. After audiences booed, he revamped it for four months and the streamlined version became a global success. The opera was based on the play by David Belasco. The story has made it to the big screen six times beginning with the silent film era. Two of the subsequent films were versions of the opera itself, one a Japanese film in 1954 and the other a French film in 1995. Have you seen any film version of this or the opera itself?

1936 The daily newspaper comic strip The Phantom launches (and is still running if you can believe it) essentially giving rise to the superhero genre...

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Martin Scorsese on Fellini and the devaluing of movies as "content"

If you want your love for cinema reenergized you'll want to head to Harpers to read Martin Scorsese's wonderful essay on Federico Fellini and his 1960s heyday and artistic influence. Though much of the essay is a love letter to cinema and Fellini himself (and I Vitelloni, La Dolce Vita, and 8½ in particular) Scorsese also sticks his neck out again to comment on today's cinematic landscape. He always runs into trouble when he does this because people are so quick to misinterpret or take notions out of context or dismiss artistic concerns as "get off my lawn!" generational warfare. But art is for everyone of all ages and it's important and we should always rise up in its defense. That's not being 'out of touch,' that's simply caring about something deeply!

Take this bit for example, in which he discusses streaming culture and the way it devalues movies as "content" a business term, no longer an artistic one...

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Streaming Revisit: Pauline Collins in "Shirley Valentine"

by Baby Clyde

These days Driving Miss Daisy’s multiple wins for the 1989 film year are seen as a low point in Oscar history. Not only that the film itself is often criticised for its naïve take on race relations, but especially because 32 years later movie goddess Michelle Pfeiffer is still without a Best Actress award. Whilst no one critizes Jessica Tandy’s performance the win is viewed as a career award for someone who’s film career didn’t warrant one. Combine this with Pfeiffer losing for what is probably her most legendary part and no one’s happy. Especially me as I don’t sign up to either of those interpretations!

In my eyes there is only one possible winner in this contentious race...

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Review: Judas and the Black Messiah

by Lynn Lee

The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.  That isn’t Fred Hampton’s epitaph, but it could well be.  Only in his case, it wasn’t even half – more like a quarter.  At the age of 21, Hampton was already one of the brightest lights in the Black Panther Party when he was assassinated in his own home by the Chicago police, with help from the FBI, in 1969.  The most tragic aspect of his premature demise wasn’t that he was just getting started; it was that he had accomplished so much in such a short time and gave every indication he could have done so much more had he lived.  The second most tragic aspect was the identity of his betrayer: an African American FBI informant who had embedded himself in Hampton’s inner circle.

Both of these aspects get their due in Judas and the Black Messiah, the first non-documentary film to focus on Hampton and the man (and Man) who brought him down...

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