Months of Meryl: Sophie's Choice (1982)

Hi, we’re John and Matt and, icymi, we are watching every single live-action film starring Streep...

#8 — Sophie Zawistowska, a Polish Holocaust survivor now fighting back personal demons as a Brooklyn émigré.

JOHN: Meryl Streep is as defined by Sophie’s Choice as Tiffany's is by diamonds. Her “choice” is perhaps the most notorious scene in Streep’s oeuvre, known by people who have no idea that The Deer Hunter or Silkwood or Ironweed even exist. In only our eighth entry, we have already arrived at the performance in which the legend of Streep was crystallized forever...

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Months of Meryl: The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)

Hi, we’re John and Matt and, icymi, we are watching every single live-action film starring Streep...

 #6 — Sarah Woodruff, an outcast of ill repute in Victorian England, and Anna, the philandering actress playing her...

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Dennis Quaid Still Has "The Right Stuff"

by Nathaniel R

Dennis Quaid as "Gordon Cooper" in THE RIGHT STUFF (1983)

Have you noticed how many movie stars are doing audiobooks these days? (I have a friend who keeps raving about Armie Hammer's reading of Call Me By Your Name.) But it's not just current movies with complimentary audiobooks. There's a new audiobook out this week for Tom Wolfe's 1979 nonfiction bestseller "The Right Stuff" about the astronauts of the Mercury Space Program in the 1940s and 1950s. Dennis Quaid is doing the audiobook honors this time and he famously co-starred in that book's Oscar-favored adaptation in 1983.  The Right Stuff (1983) won four craft Oscars in its year (splitting the below-the-line prizes with Ingmar Bergman's Fanny & Alexander) and if you haven't seen it you really should. It's quite good.

Here's a little bit of Dennis's familiar comfy gravel voice reading the book... sadly it's not a scene about his character but a scene involving Fred Ward's character Gus Grissom.

Honorary Oscars: Owen Roizman and "Tootsie"

We're revisiting work from this year's Honorary Oscar winners. Here's Eric Blume on cinematography Owen Roizman

Sydney Pollack’s 1982 movie Tootsie is one of my all-time favorite films. It's a perfect treat to revisit when you need to feel like there’s hope in the world.  Despite many viewings, I’ve never truly contemplated the cinematography by one of this year’s Honorary Oscar recipients, Owen Roizman.

Tootsie marked Roizman’s fourth of five Academy Award nomination (the others are The French Connection, The Exorcist, Wyatt Earp and Network).  It’s not the kind of work that typically generates an Oscar nomination. Indeed, the competition that year (Gandhi, Das Boot, E.T., and Sophie’s Choice) were the more magical, lyrical, expansive sort of films that are usually recognized in that category.

But Roizman’s contribution to Tootsie is gigantic, key to the film’s tone and success. It's also an excellent example of how many careful, intelligent decisions go into a more typical, mainstream film and the difference they can make...

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124 days until Oscar...

Just 124 days until Hollywood's High Holy Night, now. Time for a little silly trivia. Only two Best Picture winners have ever been exactly 124 minutes long. Curiously enough, those titles were back-to-back winners: Ordinary People (1980) and Chariots of Fire (1981) both of which beat critically-obsessed-over competition in Raging Bull (1980) and Reds (1981).

Admit it: You heard the Chariots of Fire theme song in your head and visualized Mary Tyler Moore's ice cold mom as soon as you read the titles. 

Where else did your mind's eye take you?