Showbiz History: Grand Hotel's win, Robert Pattinson's Debut, Delroy Lindo's first Spike Lee joint

7 random things that happened on this day, November 18th, in showbiz history...

1932 The fifth annual Academy Awards are held at the Ambassador hotel honoring the films released between August 1931 and July 1932. Grand Hotel wins Best Picture. It's the only Best Picture ever to win the top prize that was only nominated for that one Oscar and won of only three top winners to win only one statue (the others were Broadway Melody at the 2nd annual Oscars and Mutiny on the Bounty at the 8th Oscars). As we've said multiple times, it's too bad there weren't supporting Oscars back then because Joan Crawford sure was more than worthy in the all star ensemble. The only film to win multiple Oscars that night was the pre-code relationship drama Bad Girl which took Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. (The next ceremony would have a long eligibility period because Oscar wanted to move to the full January to December calendar year system)...

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HollyShorts 3. The 2020 Oscar-Qualifying Winners

by Nathaniel R

This is the first year The Film Experience has covered the HollyShorts Film Festival. We intended to do more but you know how it is with time. It flies! For the final piece, I thought I'd review a few of the winners. The Complete Winners List from the festival is presented in alphabetical order with capsule reviews of three Oscar qualifiers and a few more for good measure...

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Review: Henry Golding in "Monsoon"

by Allen Nguyen

Henry Golding was eight years old when he and his family left Malaysia for England. Director Hong Khaou (Lilting) was an infant when his family fled the Khmer Rouge for Vietnam. That shared experience of displacement-fueled ambiguity and the concept of reconciling one’s national identity is the foundation on which the new film Monsoon is built.   

Golding plays Kit, a British-Vietnamese man who returns to the country he and his family fled some thirty years prior. Kit cannot speak Vietnamese, has cloudy childhood memories of life in Vietnam, and is unable to process the unfamiliarity of the land he once called home...

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If I Could Turn Back Time... How Cher Ruled 1987

by Baby Clyde

I’m not sure if I believe in life after love (whatever that means) but I definitely believe in love at first sight. I first saw the love of my life in a dingy dive bar 1981. She stood there, pint in hand surrounded by an intimidating girl gang, dressed to the nines in black leather with gold hoop earring and Jungle Red nail varnish. I watched in awe as she slunk over to the jukebox all back combed hair and gum chewing attitude. Her name was Cherilyn Sarkisian and she changed my life forever. 

I was not even 10 as I watched the video for Meatloaf’s single Dead Ringer For Love. A notorious flop in America it was a Top 5 smash hit in Britain at the tail end of 1981 in no small part because of Meat’s duet partner...

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'Television Event' about the making of classic 'The Day After' (1983)

By Glenn Dunks

I didn't expect to be throwing in an extra review from DOC NYC but I wanted to bring to your attention a film that is relevant to the interests of many Film Experience readers. The film is Television Event, a wonderful documentary about the making of The Day After (1983).

In a 24-hour news cycle full of of doom and terror, even young audiences are not blind to the world’s ills due to social media and a rapidly politically engaged society. That wasn’t the case in 1983 when Nicholas Meyer’s The Day After aired on ABC to an audience of an estimated 100-million people. The made-for-television movie brought the Cold War into American living rooms in a way that had never quite been done before.

There had not been any prime-time newscast announcing the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of course. But for many viewers of The Day After, even though it was fictional, the power of its message and its images made them feel as if they had just borne witness to something of that magnitude...

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