Young and Hungry Susan Hayward

HAYWARD CENTENNIAL FINALE

by Nathaniel R

Oscar buffs might be the only people who still regularly talk about Susan Hayward but her Oscar record was impressive enough to warrant that conversation. Five nominations with one win, all in the Best Actress category, is not nothing. In fact, her record is a match with Audrey Hepburn and Anne Bancroft and another Susan (Sarandon). But when I first got interested in Susan Hayward before I'd seen any of her films, what drew me in was the abundant hysteria within the posters, titles, and taglines for her movies. Or to quote Rupert Everett in My Best Friend's Wedding:

The misery. The exquisite tragedy. The Susan Hayward of it all!"

She lived (onscreen at least) for exclamation points so it's fitting then that her Oscar win came from I Want to Live! (1958). But to close out our celebration counterintuitively in reverse, let's end with a film from when Hayward was a young and hungry actress without much pull...

Click to read more ...

On this day in history, the 1944 Oscars

Today in 1945, the 17th annual Academy Awards were held with Going My Way (1944) the big winner taking 7 Oscars. This year is a interesting for a couple of reasons...

Click to read more ...

15 Days Until Oscar: The habit, get into it.

15 is today's magic number. As far as I can tell -- though I am not Pope-infallible-- 15 women have been Oscar nominated over the years for playing nuns or nun apprentices... what are they called, novitiates? novices? problems-like-Maria?

Let's pray for them together after the jump. Which of these nominations do you most approve of and why is it so hard to win for playing a Sister or Mother Superior? 

Click to read more ...

On this day: Lady Jane, Devil Dolls, Bergman Wedding, Phase Three

Helena Bonham Carter & Cary Elwes star in Lady Jane (1986)On this day in history as it relates to the movies

1553 Lady Jane Grey takes the throne in England. Her reign is just nine days long and Helena Bonham Carter plays her in her feature film debut (filmed just before A Room With a View though it was released second)
1856 Nikola Tesla, famed inventor and futurist is born in the Austrian empire. He's later played by David Bowie in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige (2006) but isn't it strange that he has never received his own major biopic given his fame and eccentricity and pop culture relevances (bands named after him, characters based on him, etcetera)?
1871 Marcel Proust, French novelist is born.

 1925 The "Monkey Trial" in which a man is accused of teaching evolution in science class, begins in Tennessee. It's later adapted into a famous play and the Stanley Kramer film Inherit the Wind (1960) nominated for four Oscars
1936 The Devil-Doll, a horror flick directed by Dracula's Tod Browning opens in US movie theaters starring Lionel Barrymore, who masquerades as an old womenfor nefarious purposes (!), and Maureen O'Sullivan.

1937 Ingrid Bergman gets married for the first time at the age of 21 in Sweden to Petter Aron Lindström. They are married until 1950 when she divorces him to marry Italian director Roberto Rossellini (Stromboli, Journey to Italy) temporarily making Bergman persona non grata in Hollywood for her scandalous adultery
1946 Sue Lyon, Kubrick's Lolita (1962) is born. She won the now defunct award "Most Promising Performer" from the Golden Globes that year but her career was rather shortlived
1958 Fiona Shaw, British great of stage and screen, is born
1959 Ellen Kuras, great cinematographer (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Summer of Sam) is born
1966 AO Scott, Film Critic for the New York Times is born. He recently released the book "Better Living Through Criticism". Happy 50th, A.O.
1977 Chiwetel Ejiofor, Oscar nominated star of 12 Years a Slave, is born 
1983 Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani (star of About Elly and The Patience Stone) is born. Charlie McDowell is born to actors Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen on this day as well.  He has recently become a director with the Twilight Zone like romantic dramedy The One I Love and next year's scifi romance The Discovery starring his girlfriend Rooney Mara as well as Riley Keough and Jason Segel 

1992 Roland Emmerich's Universal Soldier battles it out with the live action animated hybrid Cool World and the romantic dramedy Prelude to a Kiss on their opening day in US movie theaters (none of them are unable to unseat A League of Their Own, which stays at #1 in its second week.)
2020 Marvel Studios has already blocked out the date - supposedly for the penultimate film in their "Phase 3" plan though we don't yet know what that is.

Who should join Angelina Jolie in the Murder Cast?

Murtada here. Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express is being remade by Kenneth Branagh. He will direct and play the lead part of Belgian detective Hercule Poirot who’s investigating a murder that happens on the famous train as it is making its way across Europe. The novel has been adapted several times, most famously into an Oscar winning film in 1974 by Sidney Lumet and an all star cast, led by Albert Finney as Poirot. Angelina Jolie was announced as Mrs Hubbard, an American loquacious socialite, played in 1974 version by Lauren Bacall. It’s good casting as the part calls a star with lots of presence.

Even though I haven’t read the Christie novel, I have seen the movie version and a 2010 British TV version with Jessica Chastain right before she hit it big. The story lends itself to an all star cast as basically every character gets an intro, one big scene and gets to participate in the finale. And everyone has a secret of course so the parts are juicy and fun and not too taxing on the actors. Hopefully lots of entertaining actors will sign up.

Who would you cast? Our suggestions for some of the characters after the jump...

Click to read more ...