Shakespeare in Love > Saving Private Ryan (your periodic reminder)

On this day in movie history...

1617 Though the exact date of her death is unknown, Pocahontas's funeral was held on this day. She died on a ship with husband John Rolfe (played by Christian Bale in The New World but he wasn't a character in Disney's Pocahontas because that woulda been hella depressing). She was only 21 or 22
1880 "Bronco Billy" Anderson, the original movie cowboy star (he made hundreds of silent shorts) is born
1941 The Sea Wolf starring Edward G Robinson and Ida Lupino is released. Director Michael Curtiz is warming up for his rather incredible peak decade (Captain of the Clouds, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Casablanca, Mildred Pierce and more are next)
1949 Slavoj Zizek of The Perverts Guide to Cinema (2006) is born
1956 The 1955 Oscars. Marty becomes both the shortest film to ever win Best Picture and the first indie to do so.
1958 Gary Oldman is born...

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Revisiting Beauty and the Beast (1991) - Rank the songs!

By Lynn Lee

With the live-action remake of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast just around the corner, what better time to revisit the original animated masterpiece and its endlessly hummable songs?  If you saw the movie when it came out in 1991 and happened to be a bookish, musical theater-loving little girl (or boy) at the time, odds are you got the soundtrack and learned it by heart.  (I plead guilty on all counts.) 

While I have no idea what happened to my copy, every beat and lyric – by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman, respectively – are still firmly etched into my memory.  I never saw the Broadway musical, which restored a song that had been scrapped from the movie (“Human Again”) and added several new songs by Menken and lyricist Tim Rice, but reportedly the new movie isn’t including any of the latter.  Instead it’s adding four newly new songs by Mencken and Rice.  However, fear not, fellow original Disney B&B enthusiasts: it appears that all of the Mencken-Ashman songs from the 1991 movie will be in the mix.  As Cogsworth would say, “If it’s not ba-roque, why fix it?” 

We’ll have to wait to debate the merits of the new songs but we can discuss how the original ones stack up against each other.  With the caveat that this feels a bit like picking one’s favorite kid, here’s my ranking from lowest to highest...

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Best Sound Mixer Kevin O'Connell: 21st time's the charm

Tim here. Somewhat overlooked in all the furor over the rightfully furor-inducing parts of the Oscars on Sunday, a little bit of history was quietly made.

When the four-member team from Hacksaw Ridge took to the stage of the Kodak Theater to accept the award for Best Sound Mixing, the worst losing drought in the history of the Academy Awards ended. Kevin O'Connell received his first nomination in that category in 1983, for the subdued domestic drama Terms of Endearment, which perhaps unsurprisingly lost to The Right Stuff. 33 years and 21 nominations later, in a career including 209 films to his credit as a mixer, he finally picked up his very first statue on Sunday. You may remember him as the guy who thanked his late mom for helping him to get his first job in the industry, and who asked as thanks only that he'd mention her one day as he accepted an Oscar.

Whatever feelings one might have about the film, it's hard not to be excited on O'Connell's behalf...

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Double Winners & Chart Updates

No Oscar Trivia today. Unless you count all the stuff that's on the Oscar pages. The major category charts have been updated with our popular "how'd they get nominated?" speculation, chosen preferred Oscar clips, and other sorts of trivia. Every acting chart plus Picture and Director are update! Woooo

Thoughts? Comments? Feelings? Nonsense? Opinions? Do share. (Note: The final predictions full article will go up tomorrow but you can see a sneak peek of the predictions on the chart index.)

Okay fine, fine. You have to have your daily trivia don't you? As if the charts aren't enough! You're so greedy, sometimes, I swear. After the jump the six double winning actors who are two for two in that they won both times they were nominated, never losing an official Oscar race. (Obviously they lost out on nominations over the years but that's a different thing and everyone does. Even Streep)

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Five (Other) Times Nicole Kidman Should Have Been Oscar Nominated

With Nicole Kidman returning to the Oscars this weekend as a nominee, here's Abstew on a handful of roles for which Oscar did not recognize her...

When I was a child there was an Oscar almanac that I would consult for my Oscar obsession (this was long before the days of the internet). The list of actors with multiple nominations didn't begin unless the actor had 5 nominations or more. Ever since then I've had it in my head that 5 is the magical number when it comes to Oscar; a sign of a better actor, showing that their body of work over the years is worth recognition, rather than the "one and done" that so many actors face. Since Nicole Kidman has always been one of my favorites, I've thought it odd that she's been nominated a relatively low number of times compared to the quality she produces. Certainly she ranks with Kate and Cate, for example, who both have 7 nominations...

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