Posterized: How Many Hepburns Have You Seen?

We end our Katharine Hepburn theme week on The Great Kate's birthday, today! Katharine Hepburn made 43 motion pictures in her 62 years on the big screen. How many have you seen? I've collected the posters here of only her Oscar nominated roles, 12 of them in total, because 43 is too many for an episode of posterized. Let's get all the Hepburn/Oscar talk out of our systems. Starting now...

Two things are thrown into sharp focus when looking at that sprawling Oscar track record stretching from 1932 to 1981. First, that though only Meryl Streep has ever bested her for Most Lead Actress nomination (14 versus 12) at least a couple of Hepburn's nominated roles would probably have been considered "Supporting" by today's much looser non-definition of the category (i.e. anything goes). Second, though four Oscars is still the record for any actor, male or female, her reputation as an Oscar magnet is arguably over stated since AMPAS weirdly didn't become OBSESSED until after she'd passed the age by which they usually start ignoring great actresses! A full 2/3rds of her nominations came after she turned 40 and 75% of her wins were after the age of 60! This is rather shocking considering that only 8 Best Actress Oscars have been handed out to women over the age of 60. Three of those eight times the name being read out was "Katharine Hepburn".

10 more films and mucho Oscar history after the jump

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75th Anniversary: In Old Chicago's Stolen Oscar!

On this very day in 1938, 75 years ago, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences met for the 10th time to honor the films of 1937. There was still no television to compete with but that also meant no televised ceremony. Which is too bad really because how great would it be to see one of Oscar's very oddest anecdotes happening "live"? According to legends, though the legends conflict either an Alice Brady impostor or a impostor Brady representative accepted the trophy which was never recovered! Drama. What then? Either the statue was replaced 12 days later or the more dramatic the statue was never replaced. This much is true: Brady, the second winner of this then brand new category, died a year and a half later at only 47 years of age.

In Old Chicago
Alice Brady plays the matriarch of the O'Leary clan (anniversary aside, since we're approaching St. Patrick's Day, it felt like appropriate viewing). After the father dies in a dumb luck tragedy on the way to the big city in 1854, dragged to his death by runaway horses, widowed Brady raises her three sons alone in the rapidly rising city described in the title cards as "a fighting, laughing, aggressive American city". Within seconds of arriving she makes a name for herself as a talented laundry woman.

Two of her sons become major power players, one an honest crusading lawyer (Don Ameche), the other a charming playboy (gorgeous Tyrone Power) with a taste for money and women of questionable provenance.

Yes, by all means Tyrone, find a reason to get your shirt off...

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "The Wizard of Oz"

A brief preface for new readers: "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" is a series in which we invite all movie lovers to share their choice of 'best shot' from a single pre-selected film on their own web space (twitpic, blogger, tumblr, whatever) each Wednesday night. The joy of the series is seeing the same film through multiple eyes. "Best", not just Beauty, being in the eye of the beholder.

I love the sepia opening scenes more than I can say...

So, what is the takeaway image of The Wizard of Oz (1939) for you? How do you define best and does that definition change with each movie? My choice and several others are somewhere over the rainbow after the jump

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Top Ten 1930s

Apropos of nothing other than my urge to throw a tuesday top ten at you, my favorite films of the 1930s. The order and even the titles might be different if you ask me tomorrow, but you didn't ask me tomorrow. I asked me today.

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. It Happened One Night
3. The Awful Truth
4. Gone With the Wind
5. Dodsworth
6. L'Atalante
7. My Man Godfrey
8. Trouble In Paradise
9. The Women
10. Bringing Up Baby

With apologies to: Min & Bill, "M", Grand Hotel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Jezebel and many more. Which 30s movies do you love most and have you seen all of these? 

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Our Kind of Voting Pt. 2

image shamelessly grabbed from My New Plaid PantsI'm feeling anxious today -- everyone around me is too.

We won't know who won the Presidential Election until late tonight but since all I can think of today is voting, we'll continue with our actual favorite kind of voting: Oscar voting.

Or, rather, retroactive hypothetical Oscar voting. See part one if you missed it or enjoy this exercize

So tell me who wins your vote in some of the most famously divisive, contentious, or just plain fabulous categories ever! Explain your choices in the comments.

2003 BEST ACTOR
SEAN PENN (Mystic River) vs. BILL MURRAY (Lost in Translation) vs. JOHNNY DEPP (Pirates of the Caribbean) vs JUDE LAW (Cold Mountain) vs BEN KINGSLEY (House of Sand and Fog)

1974 BEST ACTRESS
ELLEN BURSTYN (Alice Doesn’t…) vs. DIAHAN CARROLL (Claudine) vs. FAYE DUNAWAY (Chinatown) vs. VALERIE PERRINE (Lenny) vs. GENA ROWLANDS (A Woman Under the Influence)

1939 BEST PICTURE
GONE WITH THE WIND vs DARK VICTORY vs GOODBYE MR CHIPS vs LOVE AFFAIR vs MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON vs NINOTCHKA vs OF MICE AND MEN vs STAGECOACH vs THE WIZARD OF OZ vs WUTHERING HEIGHTS

2007 BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
CATE BLANCHETT (I’m Not There) vs. AMY RYAN (Gone Baby Gone) vs. SAOIRSE RONAN (Atonement) vs. RUBY DEE (American Gangster) vs TILDA SWINTON (Michael Clayton)

Ready? Set. Go!