109 days 'til Oscar. And the FBI Agent nominees are...

by Nathaniel R

This year marks the 109th anniversary of the FBI. They were founded in 1908 during the Roosevelt administration. This anniversary begs the question -- at least for us Oscar freaks -- of how many actors have been nominated or won Oscars for playing FBI agents? The only one that pops immediately to mind is Jodie Foster as Agent Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs a movie we dug deep into here at The Film Experience last year.

But one can't be the right number. Working for the FBI is a rarity in real life but on the screen it's a different story; FBI agent is up there with doctors, cops, waitresses, lawyers, actors, serial killers, superheroes, and assassins as ubiquitous career goals...

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111 days 'til Oscar

Can you believe Germany's WINGS OF DESIRE (1987) was not nominated for Best Foreign Film? It won numerous prizes that year but Oscar skipped it.

According to numerologists 111 is a very powerful number, sometimes called an "angel number" for spiritual guidance. It signifies that a gate of opportunity is opening -- your dreams can become manifest with positive thinking. (Or some such. Don't ask me I'm not a numerologist. I'm just trying to find cute ways to count down to Oscar, okay?)

In other words those current long shot Oscar campaigns need to be harnessing all their positive thinking on this very day! So tell us your #1 dream for Oscar night this coming March 4th. What reality shall you will into being, nomination-wise or statue win? You know mine already. 

113 days 'til Oscar. The Existential Question of the Honorary Oscars.

by Nathaniel R

Audrey Hepburn giving King Vidor his HonoraryThe Honorary Oscars, which will be given out again tonight to a very deserving quartet (Donald Sutherland, Owen Roizman, Agnes Varda, and Charles Burnett), have always been a curious and quite arbitary distinction. Like competitive Oscars the timing has to be just right. You have to be on people's minds. You have to have a cheerleading section in the right places within the Academy. You mostly have to be of a certain age (so if you die before you're 75 or so, forget about it!). Curiously, though, you don't have to be overdue having lost a bunch of previous Oscars. This year's recipients fit into the tradition of "overdue because they've been under-honored" but this is not always the case. The Honorary Oscars, even since the beginning have often gone to people who've won competitive statues. That's a strange thing, if you ask us, since shouldn't the point be to cover your bases? Quite a few great stars who have never been the single best in any particular year so the Honorary is a perfect way to honor them. At the very least it's a better way to honor them than a competitive statue in a year where they don't really deserve one (and that's happened so often!)

At the 1978 Oscars the 111th through 114th Honorary Oscars were handed out and they illustrate this confusion as to the award's purpose...

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114 days until Oscar

This season's Oscar ceremony, the Academy's 90th annual shindig, is on March 4th, 2018. Did you know that only two Oscar ceremonies have ever happened on a March 4th? Late February, Late March, and early April have been the most frequent time frames over the decades.

the acting winners of '42: Van Heflin, Greer Garson, James Cagney, and Teresa Wright

Both of the March 4th ceremonies were very early in Oscar history:The 1936 Oscars honoring The Great Ziegfeld (March 4th, 1937 at the Biltmore Hotel) and the 1942 Oscars honoring Mrs Miniver (March 4th, 1943 at the Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel). I was delighted to realize that we've written about a few of the winners from those years in the past: the dance direction in The Great Ziegfeld,  My Gal Sal's Art Direction, Mrs Miniver as Best Picture, The Great Ziegfeld as Best Picture, and Black Swan's Cinematography. 

75 days until Oscar nominations...

The upcoming Oscar ceremony is their 90th but guess who's having their 75th birthday this year? Oscar's bad seed step-sister The Golden Globes, that's who! We kid. We love the Globes, bad seed reference aside, in all their adorably flawed glory. What should we do to celebrate the Globes 75th birthday this year?!?

To honor their impending anniversary ceremony, here are 10 random times that the Globes were smarter than Oscar:

• 2010 The Social Network, Best Picture (The King's Speech won the Oscar)
• 2005 Brokeback Mountain, Best Picture (Crash won the Oscar)
• 1996-1999 Their choices for Best Supporting Actor always preferrable to Oscars! 
• 1995 Sense & Sensibility, Best Picture (Braveheart won the Oscar)
• 1984 Kim Basinger was nominated for The Natural instead of Glenn Close at the Oscars for the same movie (Close is a better actress, sure, but Basinger is way better in The Natural)
• 1980s They recognized that Cher was a brilliant actress long before Oscar (three nominations and a win even before Moonstruck!)
• 1967 Edith Evans, Best Actress for The Whisperers (Kate Hepburn won her second of four Oscars for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner)
• 1962 Angela Lansbury, Best Supporting Actress The Manchurian Candidate (Category frauding Patty Duke took the Oscar for lovely work in The Miracle Worker)
• 1960 Janet Leigh, Best Supporting Actress Psycho (Shirley Jones won the Oscar for Elmer Gantry)
• 1959 Marilyn Monroe won the Comedy Best Actress Globe for Some Like It Hot (she was not Oscar nominated)

Can you think of any others?