Best Shot Choices & The Best Actress Race -- Romancing the Stone (1984)

Our film title this week on Hit Me With Your Best Shot was in response to the soon-to-open Sandra Bullock/Channing Tatum vehicle The Lost City. More on that one later but for now if you've never seen its kickoff inspiration, 80s classic Romancing the Stone, that's streaming on HBOMax. Here are the Best Shot choices from seven participants to celebrate this fabulous adventure romcom. Plus some thoughts on the 1984 Best Actress race since we always go to BEST ACTRESS... 

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Kathleen Turner and Straight Camp

by Nathaniel R

Romancing the Stone's most famous sight gag. © 20th Century Fox

At the risk of accidental humiliation, like having a stranger end up face down in your lap due to a freak mudslide, I would like to propose a theory that Romancing the Stone (1984) is straight camp. Since no one can agree on a definition of "camp", let alone a heternormative variation on such a traditionally gay style / point of view, it's a risk. But looking back at Robert Zemeckis' classic adventure rom-com, the word 'camp' if not 'campy' kept coming to mind.

Right from its defining cheesy prologue, a heightened visualization of the last pages of a romance novel's already purple prose, it's an artificial wonder...

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Showbiz History: "Blame It (on the Alcohol)" or Pazuzu

8 random things that happened on this day, January 26th, in showbiz history...

1931 Cimarron premieres in NYC. It becomes the first western to win Best Picture

1961 The Mark opens in theaters. You have to see the trailer to believe it (film distributors were so excited at the new raciness of the 1960s). Stuart Whitman, a rising star of the time and a last minute replacement for Richard Burton, received an Oscar nomination playing a ex-con child molester who is suspected of a new crime...

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Podcast: Smackdown Reflections and Film Critics on Acting

Nathaniel talks to Sheila O'Malley, one of the best film critics on acting, as they reflect on recent Smackdown adventures, the chaos of acting careers, and the problems with "best" designations.

Index (43 minutes)
00:01 Acting training, Geraldine Page, and critics who "get" acting
06:45 Glenn Close and Robert Redford Reveries in The Natural
14:00 The quality of acting fields & self-selecting "Oscar movies"
20:45 Romancing the Stone and the "realm of fantasy" versus the "gritty" farm wife movies. Why do some movies hold up so well over time?
27:00 Peggy Ashcroft and Lindsay Crouse. Plus: making out with Ed Harris.
33:00 The rumors about Swing Shift and Jonathan Demme's original cut. Did we lose a masterpiece?
40:18 Sheila's connection to Gena Rowland's Honorary Oscar.

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you?  

P.S. Read more about Sheila's Gena Rowlands tribute here.

a conversation with Sheila O'Malley

Box Office Special: 1984 Hits

Rather than talk about this weekend's boring box office results (nothing new to see here beyond a big weekend for that new kill-the-trespassing-teenagers flick Don't Breathe) let's travel back to 1984 which was a hugely influential year for franchises of many kinds. What can the biggest hits tell us about the then and the now? 

TOP TWENTY OF 1984
numbers adjusted for today's dollars via box office mojo

01 Ghostbusters $589.6  
Two Oscar nods. Spawned 1 terrible sequel, two animated TV shows, and this year's reboot

02 Beverly Hills Cop $581.5
Led to two sequels, a TV remake, and a TV pilot that wasn't picked up. Beverly Hills Cop 4 has been in some stage of development for 20+ years and is still supposedly being made. We'll believe it when we see it.

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