Comment Party: What do you think of 1989?

Though it seems like the Oscar are right around the corner they're actually 89 days away!

So let's talk 1989 while your host here works on current Oscar charts. The 62nd Academy Awards has always struck us as an odd Best Picture vintage... maybe because we'd nominate none of them. But all were very popular with audiences at the time. The Oscars went for 2 blockbuster hits with Dead Poet's Society and Born on the 4th of July (yes, kids, audiences used to go for a little of every genre at the movies, not just superhero films. Both were among the top ten grossers of the year alongside things that would be hits nowadays like Batman and Ghostbusters II). The eventual winner was another very big hit in Driving Miss Daisy. To fill out the category a not-so little sleeper success Field of Dreams, and 1 arthouse favourite My Left Foot. With the exception of the Oliver Stone war drama and My Left Foot (inexplicably rated R), all were family friendly, too...

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West Side Story's Oscar journeys (then & now)

by Nathaniel R

3 of West Side Story's Oscar wins: SUPPORTING ACTOR (Chakiris), DIRECTOR (Robbins & Wise), SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Moreno)

The original West Side Story, which premiered on October 18th, 1961, and which we've discussed in great detail here, was a true four-quadrant blockbuster. It was not only the top-grossing film of its year but an all out Oscar smash. By the spring of 1962 West Side Story was so popular that it did a near complete sweep at the 34th annual Academy Awards ceremony, losing in only one of its categories: Best Adapted Screenplay (which went to the Holocaust courtroom drama Judgment at Nuremberg). But that wasn't all in terms of West Side Story mania. The very next month it competed for "Album of the Year" at the 4th Annual Grammys Awards (it had to settle for winning Best Soundtrack Album since "Judy at Carnegie Hall" took the top prize) and stayed at #1 on the Billboard album charts for almost an entire year (no joke).

How well will the new West Side Story fare? That's a difficult question because a lot of things have changed since West Side Story's initial movie run 60 years ago, including the popularity of musicals within mainstream culture, the number of Oscar categories, the nature of both Oscar campaigns and moviegoing, and even one role within the famous musical...

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Directors Guild of The Philippines speaks out on their absence in the Oscar race.

Academy members who volunteer for the nominating committees on Best International Feature Film are currently choosing their favourites from the available 93 films. Voting on this first round closes on the 15th but one country that won't be honored this season, no matter how voting goes, is The Philippines. They didn't submit. That's unusual for them. 

The absence of The Philippines from Oscar voting has prompted a hand-wringing statement from the Directors Guild of the Philippines which reads as follows...

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Top Ten: The Countries Oscar Forgot To Honor

by Nathaniel R

Any discussion of Oscar's Best International Feature Film competition throughout history begins with Italy and France. They dominated the early years and though they rarely win now they can still generate buzz with comparative ease (including this year with Hand of God and Titane). Oscar voters have (virtually) travelled to every continent and every major film market at least once or twice since the birth of the category in the 1950s. Their choices don't always reflect where the hot spots in world cinema are, though -- They notoriously missed the entirety of the Romanian New Wave in the Aughts, the provocative if brief Dogme 95 period in Denmark, apart from Japan they're super stingy with Asian cinema in general to the point where it took an international blockbuster ($259 million globably for Parasite) for them to finally notice what was happening in South Korea. Still, it's a fascinating category both for its triumphs and its failures.

All that said it's also worth repeating that no one is ever truly fair to Oscar in their critiques. It's an impossible sisphyean task to sum up the best of what's happening in non English language cinema throughout history via only five titles each season, especially since you can't control which titles will be in the mix and you cant have more than one per country. 

Here are the 10 admirably persistent countries that keep trying despite Oscar's refusal to acknowledge them. They've submitted the most often without receiving a single nomination. Will their fates change this year?

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"Oh, Moses, Moses. You stubborn, splendid, adorable fool."

by Nathaniel R

It's 120 days until the Oscars. So for today's random number celebration let's talk Moses! According to the Bible he lived to be 120 years old. The most famous Moses film is inarguably The Ten Commandments (1956). We always forget that Charlton Heston wasn't actually Oscar-nominated for playing Moses in that now camp classic despite the film receiving seven Oscar nods including a Best Picture citation. Curiously and conversely, the film's only Golden Globe nomination was in Best Actor, Drama for Charlton Heston. How about that?

More Moses movie trivia after the jump...

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