Juneteenth is finally an official US holiday. Will we get more movies about it?

Following recent voting in Congress, Juneteenth is finally a federal holiday. It's been too long in coming. And speaking of since this is a film site ... Have you caught up with last year's Miss Juneteenth yet? It's so good and Nicole Beharie is just perfect in the leading role, as a former beauty queen who has to learn to let go of trying to strictly mold her daughter into a new version of herself. She won the Gotham Award and was a medalist here at TFE as well. For our money she was better than the bulk of Oscar's acting nominees last season...

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Hal Holbrook (1925-2021)

by Nathaniel R

Do you occassionally think of Hal Holbrook in Into the Wild (2007) and just tear up? It's a common completely understandable affliction! Here's another reason to tear up. The Oscar nominated and Emmy and Tony-winning actor passed away just a few weeks shy of his 96th birthday. (He actually died before Cloris Leachman and Cicely Tyson but the news has only recently arrived; we lost three beloved acting legends in just a five-day stretch). Holbrook had become a widower 11 years ago when his wife of 26 years, Dixie Carter (Designing Women) passed away.

But what a long life and enduring career this man had. Born and raised in Ohio, a project in college (still in Ohio) led him to his greatest role:  Mark Twain. He first played the famous writer/wit when he was in his twenties and began developing his famous solo show Hal Holbrook: Mark Twain Tonight! by the age of 30. What's your favourite Holbrook performance? Twain and a dozen other key roles are after the jump... 

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The New Classics: Lincoln

By Michael Cusumano 

Abraham Lincoln abilities as a writer probably would have earned him a place in history even without his accomplishments as a statesman. He is surely the best writer that has ever occupied the Oval Office. Capable of expressing complex ideas with remarkable economy, he had a deft hand with allusions and was responsible for many evocative turns of phrase that resonate far outside the political context of their time, “The better angels of our nature” or “The dogmas of the quiet past”.  Hell, simply opting for “Four score and seven” over “eighty-seven” reveals a writer’s ear for the musical potential of language.

It's a fitting tribute then, that the most prominent film about the sixteenth president, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, with a screenplay by Pulitzer prize winning playwright Tony Kushner, exudes that same love of language. There’s scarcely a scene without some memorable linguistic spin. There's much to admire in Spielberg’s film from the beautifully worn production design to the momentous performances, but the real reason I’ve returned to it repeatedly since 2012 is simply because the characters are such fun to listen to. All of the film’s dramatic peaks involve the spectacle of verbal fireworks, particularly my favorite scene, where Tommy Lee Jones blasts his way out of a political trap firing off ornately worded insults like cannonballs... 

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Is Daniel Day-Lewis the best triple Oscar winner?

by Cláudio Alves

In the past 92 years, only a handful of performers have managed to win more than one Oscar. More than two is even rarer and more than three is a feat only ever achieved by Katharine Hepburn. In the relatively exclusive club of three-time Oscar-winning actors, we can find six names, four men and two women. Despite their golden prizes, perusing their winning performances can be a sad affair with most of them having at least one terrible victory in their collection. For Meryl Streep it's The Iron Lady, for Ingrid Bergman Anastasia and Murder on the Orient Express. Jack Nicholso's win for As Good As It Gets isn't very well-regarded and Walter Brennan's first two victories are rather dire.

Only one rises above the others as a perfect case of the Academy honoring an actor for the right performances. It's Daniel Day-Lewis, of course…

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On this day: Best Actress Tie, Lincoln Assassination... and a Tarzan and Jill Marriage.

On this day in history as it relates to showbiz...

1865 President Lincoln is assassinated. He's surely the President that's hit the movies the most often, most successfully in Steven Spielberg's fantastic Lincoln (2012)

1894 The first commercial motion picture house opens using Thomas Edison's "kinetoscope" device. You had to look through a peephole though so it was only one viewer at a time, though the venue had 10 of the machines. Coincidentally Thomas Edison will be played by Benedict Cumberbath in this year's Oscar hopeful The Current War which is about Edison's battle with George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) over sustainable electricity in America...

1904 Sir John Gielgud, one of the great British actors, was born. He won the Oscar for Arthur (1981) but his filmography stretches all the way from the silent era through Elizabeth (1998)

1925 Oscar regular Rod Steiger (On the Waterfront, The Pawnbroker, In the Heat of the Night) born

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