Showbiz History: Taxi Driver, Grammy Openers, and Globe Switcheroos

5 random things that happened on this day, February 8th, in showbiz history...

Julie Andrews in her infamous 'kill them with kindness' Globes speech in which she thanked the producer of... wait for it... My Fair Lady.

1921 One hundred years ago movie star Lana Turner was born. More on her later.

1965 The 22nd annual Golden Globe awards honoring the films of 1964 were held. Becket (drama) and My Fair Lady (comedy/musical) took the Best Picture prizes. And at the peak of the popularity of gigantic big screen musicals, it was the "comedy/musical" winners for acting that repeated on Oscar night with Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady) and Julie Andrews (Mary Poppins) both winning here first...

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Best International Feature: Slovenia, Sweden, Ukraine

by Cláudio Alves

The Academy will announce its 15 finalists for the Best International Feature Oscar next Tuesday. For the first time in years, the shortlist will not include any saves from the executive committee, meaning that some more challenging pieces might suffer for it. In any case, as that day approaches, our joint adventure through the submissions continues. However, since time is short, I've decided to focus these last few groups of capsule reviews on pictures that enchanted me, the kind of titles I'd be ecstatic to see on the shortlist. Without further ado, let's delve into Slovenia's meditation on memory, Sweden's tale of chaotic motherhood, and Ukraine's sci-fi dystopia… 

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Top 10 Goofiest Golden Globe Nominations of the 21st Century

by Christopher James

If the awards season were members of your family at the Thanksgiving table, the Golden Globes would be your delightfully kooky Great Aunt. She always brings a bottle of great wine, wears loud colored clothes and tells stories of the scandals of distant family members of generations ago. She'll always manage to surprise you in new, yet similar ways.

What would the Golden Globes be without their penchant for movie stars, musicals with extra glitter and star vehicles that may or may not exist? More than anything, the Golden Globes love to surprise. In honor (and in some cases dishonor) of this weeks’ nominations, let's rank the 10 Goofiest Golden Globe nominations of the past two decades.

Please note: This does not mean 10 worst nods. These are just the 10 that were the most head-scratching based on the season they happened in...

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Peggy Link

• Movie City New Gurus of Gold latest predictions - i find it interesting that the ranking is all over the place with Promising Young Woman all the way from #1 to #10 (though it's on all the lists)
• IndieWire There was so much awards stuff happening this week that we never discusseed Todd Haynes planning a Peggy Lee biopic with Michelle Williams. Obviously I feel bad about this because we love all three people and that sounds amazing!
• Empire Got a spare 182 minutes? Directors Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino did a podcast together.

Steven Yeun, WandaVision, a messy Color Purple legal battle, a strange Nicole Kidman story, Edward Scissorhands at the Superbowl, and more after the jump...

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Doc Corner: The Best Documentaries of 2020

By Glenn Dunks

Before this column takes a few weeks break, it’s that time of the year to make lists! I have spent the last few weeks churning through screeners trying to ensure I saw enough of 2020’s documentary output to justify a list of the year’s best, although I do not have the time nor the inclination to watch 238 of the damn things! Nevertheless, below are 30 non-fiction titles (or non-fiction adjacent, but we’ll get to that later) that I believe are among the year’s best movies. I stuck to the 2020 calendar as much as possible because, like Nathaniel, I want to keep some order to it all.

If you were to sit down and watch every film below, you would be taken from rural towns in the heart of the Florida peninsula to rural towns in the heart of the Ukraine via the protests of Hong Kong and a nursing home in Chile. There are serious themes, important subjects, powerful ideas... and hand sanitizer.

There’s also a stripper named Nomi. Something for everything, I reckon...

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