Monday, July 13, 2020 at 1:15PM Are you enjoying our super-sized Supporting Actress Smackdown season? We've already discussed 1947, 1957 (new!), 1981, and 2002. Ready for the fifth episode this season? It's focused on 1991 and it's coming up in just two weeks on Sunday July 26th so get watching and voting. Ready to meet the panel?
PLEASE WELCOME IN ALPHA ORDER ...
Monday, July 13, 2020 at 10:00AM Before each Smackdown (and the next is for 1991), Nick Taylor suggests Supporting Actresses from an alternate ballot...
What do you call the experience of watching a film with only one or two Oscar nominations to its name and discovering it’s one of the most jaw-dropping, accomplished films of its year? Maybe the Academy honored strong, worthwhile films across the board, maybe it didn’t, but you’re still left wondering how this stone cold masterpiece only got a modicum of the attention it so richly deserved. Case in point for 1991 is Boyz n the Hood, where writer/director John Singleton earned an Original Screenplay nomination and made history as the first black filmmaker ever nominated for Best Director. Boyz n the Hood ranks among the best of an Academy vintage that's largely filled with formally impressive, generically diverse, time-tested films. Its inclusion is even more exciting considering how easily it might not have happened. Who knows what chance it had of cracking the technical categories given how prescriptive those fields are against films as small as Boyz? On the other hand, the inability of Ice Cube or Laurence Fishburne to make headway in that anemic Best Supporting Actor lineup is another matter entirely. But the real topic for today’s sermon is the equally deserving and less regularly heralded performance from Tyra Ferrell, doing the most startling work of the female ensemble from the film's edges...
Wednesday, April 29, 2020 at 9:00AM 
Happy 50th Uma!by Mark Brinkerhoff
Uma's early Vogue cover. Shot by Patrick "We have Patrick" de MarchelierMonday, April 20, 2020 at 3:30PM by Jason Adams
It was said that the director Ken Russell helped the actor Oliver Reed modulate his performances with a scale ranging from "Moody One" to "Moody Two." And while I am in no way insinuating that the actress Jessica Lange has in any way that sort of limited range -- step off, Lange-anistas, I love her too! -- it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility to gauge her work on a sliding scale of how much hand fluttering each role involves. And using that system Cape Fear comes out, blissfully, near the top.
Normally if I was feeling inclined to talk about the terrific actressing going on in Martin Scorsese's hot-brained 1991 remake I'd make a bee-line straight for the (rightfully) Oscar-nominated Juliette Lewis, who's the best in show over every single one of her far older and more experienced co-stars...
Thursday, April 16, 2020 at 10:05PM 
on the set of Empire of the Sun (1987) with Christian Baleby Nathaniel R
The film industry has lost another major talent to the coronavirus. Five time Oscar nominated cinematographer Allen Daviau has passed away at age 77 from complications from COVID-19. The acclaimed director of photography was born in New Orleans but grew up in Los Angeles so he was close to the movies before making them.
He met Steven Spielberg in the 1960s and worked with him before either of them had ever had a Hollywood gig on the short film Amblin' which Spielberg's production company was later named for. Though Daviau was never particularly prolific and retired from the cinema in 2004 he left behind beautiful pictures and was honored with a liftetime achievement award from the American Society of Cinematographers in 2007. Let's celebrate that fine eye after the jump with some of his work...
