Soundtracking: Ghost

by Chris Feil

A convergence of the romantic, the spooky, and the outright earnest happened in the early 90s with Ghost, most notably immortalized through song through the ripe feeling of The Righteous Brothers’ version of “Unchained Melody”. It was the kind of megasmash that only this era could have produced, and the kind of instantly classic movie moment that distills the era. But for the past thirty years, the sight of Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze in clay-mate-tion has been burned into our minds and our cultural loins in ways few musical scenes can equally measure.

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Hollywoodland. And other anniversaries today

On this day in history as it relates to the movies...

1793 Jean-Paul Marat is born in Prussia. Goes on to become a famous political activist and journalist during the French Revolution. His murder is dramatized in the famous play Marat/Sade (also known as The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade which was made into a film in 1968 starriing Patrick Macgee and Ian Richardson. I once saw a production of this play in Harlem and it was just fascinating.
1863 British Egyptologist, "Grandmother of Wicca" and proto-feminist Margaret Alice Murray is born in India. I only mention this because so many fascinating, influential and controversial women exist in history but we only ever get biopics of men. Why doesn't she have a biopic? It could be great.
1923 The iconic HOLLYWOOD sign is officially dedicated in California. It originally says "Hollywoodland" but the "land" is dropped twenty-six years later.

more after the jump

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"Ghost" and Other Blockbuster Best Pics

Today is the 25th anniversary of Ghost (1990), that wildly successful supernatural-comedy-romance-adventure-whatsit from 1990 which briefly iconized Demi Moore's single teardrop face, revived the popularity of a 1955 song hit, made pottery-wheel lovemaking into a meme (before memes were called that) proved that Patrick Swayze was more than just Dirty Dancing, made the world hate the grandson of legendary movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn, and won Whoopi Goldberg her Oscar, the first acting win for an African American woman since Hattie McDaniel in 1939 (it's since become far more common... at least in Supporting Actress).

Ghost is among the most atypical Best Picture nominees of all time, and one that would never have been nominated without its phenomenal grosses. It ended 1990 as the top global grosser with over half a billion in the bank, though Home Alone, Pretty Woman and Best Picture winner Dances With Wolves were not far behind). 

So here's a quick Oscar talking point about the last, oh, 40 years of Oscar history. Which of these Best Picture nominees, arguably none of which would have been nominated without their blockbuster phenom cred given their genres and non-prestige foundations, is your favorite?

Star Wars (1977)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Fatal Attraction (1987)
The Fugitive (1993)
The Sixth Sense (1999)
District 9 (2009)
The Blind Side (2009)

How do you think Ghost (1990) stacks up to that list? None of them actually won Hollywood's top prize in their year. 

Black History Month: Whoopi Goldberg in "Ghost" (1990)

Our Black History Month through the lens of Oscar continues with abstew on Whoopi...

It took fifty-one years after Hattie McDaniel's historic win for Gone With the Wind (1939) for another black actress to hear her name called as the winner on Oscar night. Her successor scored an Oscar factoid of her own becoming the first black actress to score two Oscar nominations (thankfully, she is no longer alone with that distinction, having been joined by Viola Davis). Instead of prestigious talents along the lines of a Cicely Tyson, Ruby Dee, or Alfre Woodard, the honor went to a comedienne that took her stage name from a gag toy that makes fart sounds. Not exactly the typical Oscar winner, but that uniqueness has always been what defined Whoopi Goldberg as a performer and her Oscar win for playing medium Oda Mae Brown in the hit film Ghost (1990) is perhaps the quintessential Whoopi performance.

Born Caryn Johnson, Goldberg's first encounter with Oscar came for 1985's The Color Purple from director Steven Spielberg and based on Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winner. While performing in her one-woman show on Broadway, Goldberg was asked by Spielberg to play the lead, Miss Celie, in the film. She won the Golden Globe and became the 5th black woman to be nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award, but she lost the Oscar that year to sentimental favorite Geraldine Page in The Trip to Bountiful, who finally won her Oscar on the 8th try. 

Goldberg had much better luck the second time around, but her Oscar-winning performance was almost not to be. [More...]

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Tweets o' the Week: Batman Returns, Last Christmas, and More

Good morning! It's just three days until Christmas. THREE! To note that I am unprepared is to state, shrugging, 'he thinks movies are alright'

I mean we haven't even started the Year in Review! Rectifying. Rectifying.

This is the kind of time frame wherein you need little friendly woodland animals to be doing all your busy work so that you can focus on the important things like Going to the Ball. I illustrate twitter collections with a picture of birds and today Cinderella seemed natural since Into the Woods is soon upon us. I hadn't really thought about this before but Cinderella is supposed to have this miserable indentured servant life but look at that view from her bedroom window!  Talk about a room with a view... that's prime real estate. Shouldn't she be sleeping in the cellar or something? 

Herewith some tweets that amused, edified, or otherwise cocked a brow this past week for a variety of reasons, posted to get this week chirping away quickly, happily. Enjoy.

(SO MUCH POSTING DUE THROUGH NEW YEAR'S. BEAR WITH US... VISIT A LOT, OKAY?)

Fav Tweets Non-Celebrity Division...

"Oh Mommy, Mommy!! Lizzy and Jane are going to the Golden Globes ball!" screamed Kitty. pic.twitter.com/TQ9SM5BipY

— Awya (@awya) December 13, 2014

The Hobbit movies are immensely popular, though no one I know likes them or talks about them. The Hobbit is the NCIS of movie franchises.

— Mike Ryan (@mikeryan) December 21, 2014

"What'd you do today?" "Um you know...generally just...monitored opinions on Twitter and, like, interjected." "Did you go out?" [Hangs head]

— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) December 15, 2014

Sadly that tweet describes so many ill advised days o' mine! Moving on with GHOST, BATMAN RETURNS after the jump...

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