Streaming Roulette, Nov: The King Lives by Night

As is our practice we've selected a handful plus of new-to-streaming titles and frozen them at utterly random moments without cheating (whatever comes up comes up!). What should you queue up for NOVEMBER 2019 ? (★ means we definitely recommend catching) 

Let's get started...

-Meet me in the garden tomorrow

The Thief of Bagdad (1940) on Criterion Channel
This fantasy adventure based on The Arabian Knights won 3 Oscars in its year (Special Effects, Cinematography Color and Art Direction Color). Fill in those Oscar gaps! Weird trivia note: NONE of those categories it won had the standard 5 nominees. It took the Academy awhile to settle on the "five per category" rule that dominated the Oscars for decades. There were 14 films nominated for Special Effects that year -- the visual effects category in particular has had multiple strange incarnations and volatility. 

I'm going to ask you to deliver this message to France given your... familiarity with its recipient.

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75th Anniversary: Double Indemnity

by Eric Blume

This week marked the 75th anniversary of Billy Wilder’s seven-times Oscar nominated noir classic Double Indemnity (1944).  If you haven’t seen this movie -- and I surprisingly never had, despite not one but two film noir courses in college -- rush post haste to view it:  it’s a classic noir that holds up powerfully.

Fred MacMurray is the patsy, an insurance guy who is convinced by Barbara Stanwyck to murder her husband and cash in on the double indemnity clause in the policy they conspire to have him secretly sign.  The performances by MacMurray, Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson (as the insurance boss) have incredible force.  Yes, this style of acting went out less than ten years later, but the raw power of their acting is undeniable...

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Showbiz History: On a Clear Day You Can See Peter Dinklage in Jurassic Park?

Six random things that happened on this day (June 11th) in showbiz history

1966 On a Clear Day You Can See Forever starring the great Barbara Harris and John Cullum closes on Broadway shortly before the Tony Awards, where it will lose all three of its nominations. It was snubbed in Best Musical where Man of La Mancha won and Mame, Skyscraper, and Sweet Charity were all nominated. Nevertheless it was quicker than all but Sweet Charity in getting a big screen adaptation. Barbra Streisand starred.

1969 Peter Dinklage is born (Happy 50th!). Do you think he's headed for a fourth Emmy win for Game of Thrones? Do you remember the first time you saw him? For us it was The Station Agent (2003), such a gem from the early Aughts...

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Showbiz History: Star Wars' Oscar Ceremony & Matthew Goode's Birthday Suit

8 random things that happened on this day in history (as it relates to showbiz). Happy April 3rd!

1882 Jesse James is Assassinated by the Coward Robert Ford (Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck recreating that for you above circa 2007).

1930 The 2nd Oscars are held with Broadway Melody taking Best Picture. (No film won more than 1 Oscar at that ceremony but that's less crazy than it sounds since there were only 7 categories then.)

1942 Zoltan Korda's The Jungle Book opens in movie theaters. It certainly won't be the last film adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's wild boy and jungle animals adventure but it receives the most Oscar nominations of any of them by far in four categories (Cinematography, Production Design, Visual Effects, and Original Score)

After the jump the historic 50th Oscar ceremony. So much good trivia awaits you...

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Happy Teresa Wright Centennial

The Oscar-winning actress of Mrs Miniver fame, was born 100 years ago on this very day in Harlem, where I'm typing this from. (Well, not literally where I'm typing this from - this apartment probably didn't exist in 1918 but who knows.) 

a lesser known distinction: she was Marlon Brando's very first romantic interest in a film (his debut The Men, 1950)She didn't consider herself a glamour girl, which could account for the sparcity of glamorous photoshoots compared to other 'it girls'. Wright's screen heyday was short-lived as many careers are when the success is so instantaneous and large. Still, it's hard to knock the girl next door beauty  for not being able to live up to her first two years in Hollywood. Her first three movies (Little Foxes, Pride of the Yankees, Mrs Miniver) all brought her Oscar nominations. An Oscar winner by the age of 24 with batting a thousand record there was essentially nowhere to go but down. Still, before the inevitable fade of her career she managed two more all time classics, doing her best acting for Alfred Hitchcock in Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and appearing the perfect ensemble of one of the very best Best Picture winners The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Her big screen career died quickly due to diminishing popularity and fights with her studio but she worked frequently on TV beginning in the 1950s.

Do you have a favorite Teresa Wright film?