32 Days til Oscar. Have you seen "Grand Hotel"?

How will you spend those days? Since 32 is the magic number today, please spare a thought for the wildly undervalued Best Picture winner of 1932, Grand Hotel.

It only won a single Oscar, but that's all it was nominated for. There were no supporting acting categories just yet, as honors were given only to stars (same as now, basically, only with category fraud as the cause instead of no category at all) but, had there been, Joan Crawford would have certainly been deserving. She gives an unusually warm performance (for her) in this picture. 

This is also the film that gave us the image of Greta Garbo that stuck, as a solemn "I want to be alone" diva. More gorgeousity and a few gifs after the jump if you're so inclined...

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HBO’s LGBT History: Remembering the Artist (2014)

Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions.

 For the past two weeks, we took an Oscar-themed break by looking back at the 1993 and 2003 acting races. We imagined a world where Ian McKellen and Lily Tomlin could have nabbed another nomination and wondered aloud if Jessica Lange could have earned nomination #7 had HBO films been released theatrically. This week, we're back to our normally scheduled history but there's still an Oscar winner involved: We're looking at Remembering the Artist: Robert De Niro Sr., a documentary on the Taxi Driver actor's artist father.

The detours into hypothetical Oscar history were meant to remind us that HBO’s LGBT content has been consistently strong for over three decades now, at times dwarfing the mainstream fare that has found itself invited to the Oscars this past few years. But sometimes, as we’ll see this week, the HBO imprint is not enough to guarantee that the issue of sexuality will be given its due.

In Remembering the Artist: Robert De Niro, Sr., directors Perri Peltz and Geeta Gandbhir offer us, we’re told early, an attempt by Bobby De Niro to give his father the due that so eluded him in his lifetime (he died of prostate cancer complications in 1993). [More...]

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A Year With Kate: Sylvia Scarlett (1936)

Episode 9 of 52 wherein Anne Marie screens all of Katharine Hepburn's films in chronological order

In which Katharine Hepburn looks better in a suit than Cary Grant.

I will never turn down a movie about a lady in a suit. Two reasons: 1) Early exposure to As You Like It and  2) An experimental phase in college film studies during which I flirted heavily with the Hays Code.

What I’m saying is, I was predisposed to love Sylvia Scarlett no matter what. Still, it wasn’t what I expected. Kate in Sylvia Scarlett gets lumped in with Greta Garbo in Queen Christina and Marlene Dietrich in Morocco as a member of the Cinematic Sapphic Sisterhood. But after this week’s viewing, I actually think that’s reductive. Instead, Morocco, Queen Christina and Sylvia Scarlett all deal with different shades of androgyny, sex, and gender.

Too academic a subject? I will include pictures of ladies kissing. I’m unselfish that way. Adjust your tie, fix your lipstick, and we'll start with Morocco.

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