Oscar history: Titanic's not-quite clean sweep, Julia's ascendance, and Chicago vs The Pianist

5 things that happened today, March 23rd, in Oscar History only...

1950 The 22nd annual Academy Awards honoring 1949 are held. All the King's Men wins Best Picture but it's the Olivia de Havilland classic The Heiress, among the Best Picture honorees, which wins the most Oscars (Actress, Costume Design, Art Direction, and Score) and has had the longest cultural shelf life thereafter.

1990 Pretty Woman hits movie theaters becoming a sensation and Julia Roberts ascends to superstardom...

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Fav Halloweens: Living my "Pretty Woman" fantasy

We thought it might be fun if Team Experience shared a few of our favourite Halloween memories with you.

by Christopher James

Some people mark time by birthdays. I mark them with Halloween costumes.

Halloween costume planning was always a weeks long planning process growing up. Harry Potter, James Bond, Ash from Pokemon - I did it all. Seven year old me wanted to be cool so bad he begged his parents for an Anakin Skywalker costume even though he had never seen any Star Wars movie yet. As you can tell by those examples, Halloween reflected my pop culture taste at the time. It was my yearly permission to pretend I was in one of my favorite movies. It’s safe to say, I never grew out of my love for Halloween.

It wasn’t until I was 25 that was able to finally pull off dressing as my ultimate pop culture hero - Vivian Ward. Yes, we’re born gay, not made gay...

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Performing Spectatorship

by Cláudio Alves

As people who love cinema, I think we can all understand the power art can yield over those who experience it. Whether finding refuge in an escapist dream or seeing an ugly truth reflected at us, the act of being an audience has the potential to startle and surprise, to devastate and entertain. I can often recall those moments when a film overwhelmed me in such ways that I ended up making a spectacle of myself. There were my sobbed laughs at a Whitney Houston karaoke in Toni Erdmann, the breathless shock at Hereditary's peanut panic, the miraculous tears when faced with Parasite's perfect montage and so much more. Those memories are like precious jewels, bright reminders of why I love cinema.

Because of this, I have a special fondness for films that try to capture that inchoate ecstasy that happens when an audience is similarly enraptured…

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Julia Roberts' Big Mistake

by Murtada Elfadl

Today marks the 30th anniversary of Pretty Woman. It was released on March 23rd 1990. Of course now it’s remembered for making Julia Roberts one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history. It launched her career to the stratosphere and she still ranks as a major star even if the star system itself has evolved drastically in the last thirty years...

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Stage Door: "Beetlejuice" and "Pretty Woman"

by Dancin' Dan

Adapting a non-musical film to a stage musical is always a dicey proposition. Leave the story exactly as is and just add songs, and you risk the show feeling rote and uninteresting. Change the story so that it fits a musical structure better, and you may alienate fans of the source material. This Broadway season has practically been a study in how to adapt a film to a musical. We’ve already talked about Tootsie, but this season saw three other screen-to-stage adaptations of varying levels of quality: Beetlejuice, King Kong, and Pretty Woman: The Musical. Each has proven divisive in varying ways, and they had much different degrees of success with the Tony nominations. I’ve recently seen two of them, and what one lacks, the other has in spades...

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