Thankful for... Lynn Lee

This year for our "thankful for" column we've been mixing it up by interviewing various team members (the ones that volunteered -- we love the other ones, too!). If you're just taking a break from family this holiday to peak around the web, please give it up for LYNN LEE.

We were first introduced to Lynn by her friend Nick Davis (of Nicks Flick Picks fame). It was yet another example of Nick's impeccable taste, not just in movies but in people. Lynn began as a contributor back in 2015 (with a Mad Men @ the Movies featuring Joan Crawford as Mildred Pierce) and given the long hours that come with the lawyer life we don't see her enough but when she's here we love it. Some posts to check out include takes on both 1994's and 2019's Little Women remakes and  a personal piece on Minari's grandma.

Other pieces she's written are linked from our mini interview that follows... 

When did you first fall in love with the movies?

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The Oscars and World War I

by Cláudio Alves

Tomorrow we might witness Oscar history being made with the crowning of the very first non-English Best Picture winner. Of course, it is just as likely that we'll see history repeating itself. If Parasite falters and 1917 claims the top prize, that's another muscular war film joining the ranks of the Best Picture pantheon. More specifically, a World War I epic of great technical ingenuity and daring, a project not too unlike the original Best Picture winner, Wings. From 1927 to 2019, movies with similar historical settings have found great success with the Academy, though World War I stories were more regularly found on the big screen when that conflict was still an actual memory for the living. 

For the Oscars' first decade, many war pictures won plaudits. For a time Hollywood let go of the heroic romantics of Wings and adopted a more melancholy view of recent History, with antiwar sentiment as well as complicated class studies that saw a broken society through the prism of war. All that would change with the arrival of World War II. The newer global nightmare readily took the place of the old war in the Academy's eyes, first as propaganda and then as more ponderous retrospective. To this day, people still joke that a sure way to win an Oscar is to do a World War II drama.

But back to the first World War. Here are the 12 Best Picture nominees that have told stories from that global conflict...

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Anne V Coates (1925-2018)

by Nathaniel R

One of Hollywood's most important artists has died. The film editor Anne V Coates who won both a competitive and an Honorary Oscar has died at the age of 92. Her career began in the editing room of 1940s pictures -- she worked on The Red Shoes (!!!) -- but it didn't take her long to become a lead editor. Her first lead editing gigs were in British cinema in the early 50s. Her career really came roaring to life with Lawrence of Arabia (1962) for which she won her first and only competitive Oscar...

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Omar Sharif (1932-2015)

Sharif Photographed by Andrew Walker in 2011Hollywood's first and still only Egyptian movie star passed away at 83 today of a heart attack. It had recently been announced that he was suffering from Alzheimers and after such a full life this may feel like a mercy to some, though his loved one are surely grieving and our hearts go out to them.

Though moviegoers roughly 35 and up surely remember him, here's the gist of it for younger budding cinephiles: Sharif began and ended his career in Arabic language cinema but in the vast middle (1960s-1990s) he achieved global stardom via Hollywood and British cinema. His English language debut Lawrence of Arabia (1962) brought him a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and he became a genuine superstar in short order, headlining one of the all time biggest box office smashes (Doctor Zhivago, 1965). In his third enduring classic from that decade he helped Barbra Streisand ascend into the pantheon in her film debut Funny Girl (1968). 

In fact, his performances in those three hits are rather fine illustrations of what was so special about his onscreen persona: his generosity and a certain intangible 'eye of the beholder' transference. He was one of the greatest romantic leading men precisely because he seemed so believably in thrall to the particular charismas of his co-stars. And he had great ones: Sophia Loren, Barbra Streisand, Julie Christie, Peter O'Toole, Julie Andrews and more. 

And while he drank in their inimitable beauty, he looked like this:

Dr Zhivago (1965)a portrait from the 1950s when he starred regularly in Egyptian cinema
The Tamarind Seed (1974) and More Than a Miracle (1967)

Double the pleasure, then, for moviegoers who were ready to swoon. And swoon they did, all over the world. 

What's your favorite Omar Sharif performance?

Oscar Trivia Detour: Albert Finney as Lawrence of Arabia?

In an alternate universe this could have happened...

Jigsaw Lounge posted that image to twitter last night in response to a thread started by Deux Ex Cinema, one I hadn't seen. It blew my mind to learn that the great actor screen-tested for Peter O'Toole's signature part and was, according to some, David Lean's first choice. The question posed: 

Did this five time nominee ever come close to actually winning an Oscar?

I'd argue that he never did though some will disagree. He was way too young for Oscar when he headlined a Best Picture Winner (Tom Jones, 1963) as he was only 27. That would have made him the youngest winner of all time in that category, a record that would have still held since Adrien Brody is the current record holder at 29. At the time I believe Finney was the sixth youngest man ever nominated for lead, but he's since been pushed out of the top ten in the last decade or so by 26 and 27 year olds who were a smidge younger in their years like Ryan Gosling, Heath Ledger, and Jesse Eisenberg. By the time Erin Brockovich (2000), his last nomination, rolled around he was up against a juggernaut contender in Benicio Del Toro (Traffic) who was so popular that he won the SAG as Leading actor before winning the supporting Oscar for the same role.

Albert Finney's last screen appearance was in Skyfall (2012) but he's still alive at 79. Will some filmmaker give him one last great role or should Oscar give him an Honorary?  

Here's a list to ponder...

Living Men with the Most (Acting) Nominations Who've Never Won

1. Albert Finney (5)
2. [Tie] Warren Beatty*, Ed Harris, and Leonardo DiCaprio (4 each) 
3. [Tie] Brad Pitt*, Joaquin Phoenix, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Bradley Cooper, Nick Nolte, and Kirk Douglas* (3 each)

* they have Oscars for something else but not a competitive acting Oscar