Wyler, Kazan, Ashby, Scorsese – Who's Next?

by Cláudio Alves

Barbra Streisand in FUNNY GIRL was the last performance William Wyler directed to an Oscar win.

As stated in the Scorsese at the Oscars write-up, the Killers of the Flower Moon auteur is one of only four directors to have helmed Academy Award-winning performances in all acting categories. The others are William Wyler, Elia Kazan, and Hal Ashby, with the former having the record to end all records. Across 32 years, Wyler directed fourteen victorious turns, including multiple champions in the four races. Such a feat won't likely be equaled, but that doesn't mean the quartet is bound to stay put forever. Some directors are on the cusp of joining the ranks of Wyler, Kazan, Ashby, and Scorsese…

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Monty @ 100: Forgotten gem "Wild River"

by Nathaniel R

Clift arrives in Tennessee, a Federal employee who the locals will not take well to.

When speaking about new movies, we often discuss the vagaries of film distribution and studio support both in terms of audience outreach and awards campaign. These things often effect how movies are received, for better and worse. Less discussed, probably because interest is always more niche when it comes to older films, is how important both continued availability and awards play, are to an enduring reputation, once a movie is "old". Some films are forgotten for a reason, but there are plenty that would be better regarded if they had remained readily available to the public. Such I'd argue is the case with Elia Kazan's Wild River...

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Directing an Actor to a Nomination - The Stats

by Ben Miller 

Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman) is the third actor Spike Lee has a directed to a nomination after Danny Aiello (Do the Right Thing) and Denzel Washington (Malcolm X)

With the upcoming Academy Awards celebrating their 91st year, the Oscars have plenty of history to obsess over.  One of the less-discussed pieces of history is which directors have the most pull with the Academy's acting branch. Today's topic: directors who have guided multiple actors and actresses to nominations and/or wins. 

With this season's nominations, directors Bradley Cooper (3), Yorgos Lanthimos (3), Peter Farrelly (2), and Marielle Heller (2) all join a group of directors who've guided multiple actors to Oscar nominations. In this season's crop of films Vice's Adam McKay (4), Roma's Alfonso Cuaron (3), If Beale Street's Barry Jenkins (3), BlacKkKlansman's Spike Lee (3), Bohemian Rhapsody's Bryan Singer (2) and At Eternity's Gate's Julian Schnabel (2) all add to their previous tallies since each had previously directed either one or two actors to a nomination.

In the 91 year history of the Academy Awards, 1757 performances were directed to an Oscar nomination.  I tracked every single one of them to come up with these numbers. More notes after the jump...

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Podcast: Smackdown Reflections and Film Critics on Acting

Nathaniel talks to Sheila O'Malley, one of the best film critics on acting, as they reflect on recent Smackdown adventures, the chaos of acting careers, and the problems with "best" designations.

Index (43 minutes)
00:01 Acting training, Geraldine Page, and critics who "get" acting
06:45 Glenn Close and Robert Redford Reveries in The Natural
14:00 The quality of acting fields & self-selecting "Oscar movies"
20:45 Romancing the Stone and the "realm of fantasy" versus the "gritty" farm wife movies. Why do some movies hold up so well over time?
27:00 Peggy Ashcroft and Lindsay Crouse. Plus: making out with Ed Harris.
33:00 The rumors about Swing Shift and Jonathan Demme's original cut. Did we lose a masterpiece?
40:18 Sheila's connection to Gena Rowland's Honorary Oscar.

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you?  

P.S. Read more about Sheila's Gena Rowlands tribute here.

a conversation with Sheila O'Malley

The Furniture: Decorating Madness in A Streetcar Named Desire

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...

The 70th Tony Awards are in just a few days. I certainly can't be trusted with predictions, but I’ll make one guess. The award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play probably won’t be split three ways. That sort of near-impossible result has only occurred once, all the way back in 1948. The 2nd Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play was shared by Judith Anderson, Katharine Cornell, and Jessica Tandy. Tandy won for the original broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Of course, she didn’t get to be in the movie and so we will leave her behind. Elia Kazan’s film of Tennessee Williams’s masterpiece premiered less than two years after its Broadway run ended. Its success was that instant. It won four Oscars, though all but one was for acting. That fourth prize, of course, was for production design. [More...]

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