The genius of "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" ending

by Cláudio Alves

Back in the 1960s, unlike now, a film could be recognized in the Best Foreign Language Film category one year and still compete for the other Oscars the next. Such a strange fate befell Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, an intoxicating love letter to the classic Hollywood musical by one of the most inventive auteurs of the Nouvelle Vague. In 1964, the picture was a nominee for Best Foreign Language Film and would go on to conquer four other nods in 1965, the year of our next Supporting Actress Smackdown.

While it's easy to resent the Academy for not fully embracing the flick (it won nothing), the citations it received, for Demy's script and Michel Legrand's music, were fully deserved...

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Monty @ 100: "The Big Lift" Or, what Monty did instead of "Sunset Blvd"

We're watching ALL 17 of Montgomery Clift's films for his Centennial. Here's returning contributor David Upton with episode 4.

Just two years after his debut in The Search, Montgomery Clift returned to post-war Europe. The Big Lift, released in 1950, was just two years removed from the true story it centres on, the Berlin airlift of 1948. One of the first major crises of the Cold War, the airlift was needed thanks to the Soviet blockade of the part of the city under the control of Western allies. Berlin is a city in ruin, populated by a people torn apart and living amongst rubble. Into this, director George Seaton’s film casts a watchful Monty and the exuberant Paul Douglas as a pair of Air Force sergeants, Danny MacCullough and Hank Kowalski.

Future AMPAS president Seaton, best known for 1947’s whimsical Christmas fantasy Miracle on 34th Street, goes hard on the verité factor, casting all supporting military characters with real Air Force personnel...

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Oscar Prediction Updates: Picture, Director, Score, Song, Sound

Just as we'd given up on Minari being released for this year's awards season, a trailer shows up (albeit without a release date attached) and just as we'd decided that No Time to Die was going to be a hit in the craft categories -- especially given the dearth of big studio event films -- it gets delayed until Easter 2021. But we soldier on, happily, with the Oscar charts.

It's looking like a great year for black cinema (multiple films in play), a great year for Netflix (which didn't have the movie theaters closing problem), a good year for Nomadland, but otherwise things are still very uncertain. 

The following charts are all updated... 

• Index
• Picture 
• Director 
• Supporting Actor 

• Costumes & Makeup 
• Sound & Score 
• Screenplays 

• International Feature Overview 
• International Submissions Pt 1: Albania through Greece
• International Submissions Pt 2: Germany through Norway
• International Submissions Pt 3: Pakistan through Vietnam

What'cha think? Know of any original song contenders? (It's always so difficult to track them)...

Streaming Roulette: Monstrous Kaitlyn, Shifty William H, and Ubiquitous Sharon

After the jump you'll find a listing of everything that's new to streaming this month (October 2020). But first we pick two handfuls of titles and we just randomly freeze them with the scroll bar. Whatever comes up is what we share. Do these images make you want to see (or rewatch) the movie? 

[Church choir singing]

Dick Johnson is Dead (2020) on Netflix
Filmmaker Kirsten Johnson dramatizes her father's death in multiple ways to help them both prepare for it. Glenn reviewed this buzzy new documentary for us in his weekly column.

Nononononononono. That's not how we're going to talk to one another. I will not be that guy. You cannot put me in that category: the biological father I spend every other week with and I make polite conversation while he drives me places and buys me shit."

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Monty @ 100: "The Heiress"

by Camila Henriques

Montgomery Clift achieved greatness early in his career. Just one year into the Hollywood industry, he was tapped to co-star in a period drama by William Wyler, who was still riding the waves of the second of his three best directing Oscars, for 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives. It was the combination of a very particular brand of acting and heartthrob looks that made Clift a star, and that mix is undoubtedly present in The Heiress.

Cemented in Hollywood history as the film that garnered Olivia de Havilland a second well-deserved Oscar, The Heiress also arguably introduced Monty as the romantic (or not) lead...

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