October Highlights

October was busy busy busy with two festivals, the classic NYFF and the new Middleburg and our semi-annual Oscar Horrors (though a fourth season is somewhat unlikely given that we're running out of nominees outside of music and sound categories!). Here are 16 highlights from the spooky best-weather month in case you missed any of them. The fall is too too short, don't you agree?

8 Favorites
re: Isabelle Huppert's emails -Nick's scandalous discovery
Kiss Me Kate the peak of George Sidney's fluffy fun as a director? 
Loving those 20th Century Women a first impressions top ten 
Moonlight in Three Acts a tag team review 
Janis Joplin Biopics an incomplete history 
Judy & Liza "Together Wherever We Go" 
Oscar Horrors: Flatliners' Sound a confession of love for Schumacher 
Lion at Middleburg  a new festival, a winning film

8 Most Discussed
Viola Davis will be an Oscar record breaker in January
The Departed 10th Anniversary Oscar Look-back
Glenn Close is The Wife a new fim lined up
Pablo Larrain's Great Year Jackie and Neruda
Gwyneth Goes Grocery Shopping a photoshoot 
Michelle Williams Oscar Moment? Manchester by the Sea 
Oscar Horrors: The Sixth Sense Do you remember your first time? 
Posterized: Emily Blunt are you a fan?

Coming in November:
Jessica Chastain as Miss Sloane, the wonders of Lion and Arrival, Cape Fear's 25th Anniversary, Warren Beatty's Rules Don't Apply, The Honorary Oscars, Disney's Moana and a look back at our favorite film noirs. Any requests? 

Oscar Horrors: The Uninvited

Boo! It's "Oscar Horrors". Each evening we look back on a horror-connected nomination until Halloween. Here's Tim Brayton on a '40s ghost story...

The Uninvited (1944)  is a rarity among 1940s horror films twice over. For one thing, it's one of the vanishingly tiny number of genre films from that decade to receive Oscar attention, nabbing a Best Cinematography nomination – which is why we're here now, of course. For the other, it's one of the almost-as-tiny number of American horror films of its generation that actually commits to the paranormal. For years, stretching back into the 1930s, almost any time you saw a Hollywood film set in a haunted house, it was an easy bet that by the end of the last reel, you'd find out it was just an elaborate ruse by jewel thieves or some other damn thing. Not so for The Uninvited! Its ghost is real, and presents a genuine danger.

The film's readiness to tell an old-fashioned ghost story without apology or restraint is undoubtedly connected to the recognition given to Charles Lang's deeply shadow-soaked cinematography. 

Click to read more ...

Oscar Horrors: Japan's Ghost Story "Kwaidan"

Boo! It's "Oscar Horrors". Each evening we'll look back on a horror-connected nomination until Halloween. Here's Dancin' Dan on a spooky Japanese beauty...

Have any of you ever seen Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan? I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't. Even among Japanese films, it's not much talked about today, though it deserves to be. Kwaidan is a rarity in so many ways - an omnibus film made by one director, a truly artful horror film, a groundbreaking work of art. It was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film in 1965 (losing to the heartrending The Shop on Main Street from Czechoslovakia), and it's a bit hard to imagine it getting that far today, even with its arthouse bona fides like a Special Jury Prize at Cannes...

Click to read more ...

Oscar Horrors: "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"

Boo! It's "Oscar Horrors". Each evening 'til Halloween we look back on a horror-connected Oscar nomination. Here's David on the cinematography of a camp classic...

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is hardly remembered as a horror classic; its camp reputation precedes it, as its recent appearance on RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars attests. (Only the finest for that crop of drag queens!) While the film is not what we might traditionally think of as a horror film, it has the same elements of lost souls, grotesque faces and physical cruelty that you might expect from any product of the genre. Just one year after Alfred Hitchcock changed the genre forever with Psycho, Baby Jane features a close-up of Joan Crawford’s face mushed against the floor - an eerie recall of Janet Leigh’s glassy-eyed demise.

Click to read more ...

Oscar Horrors: "Dr Jekyll and Mr Mouse"

Boo! It's time for "Oscar Horrors". Each night at 7 through Halloween we look back on a horror film or horror-adjacent film's Oscar nomination until Halloween. Here's Nathaniel R...

Here's an odd statistic to consider. Did you know that Tom & Jerry was Oscar's favorite character-based cartoon franchise? The MGM cat and mouse team won seven Oscars in the Best Animated Short category, more than any other series but for Disney's "Silly Symphonies" which also won seven times. Tom & Jerry's very first short was nominated and they won for four consecutive years from 1943-1946 at the peak of their fame.

Click to read more ...