Adam's Rib @ 75: The Best Tracy/Hepburn vehicle

by Cláudio Alves

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn's love story is the stuff of Hollywood legend. Whether you believe their devotion or side-eye the whole affair, whether you're charmed by their commitment or support the lavender allegations of some, it's impossible to deny how each of the actors' mythos exists in conversation with the other. Part of it stems from the bleeding of off-screen liaisons into the screen proper, immortalizing their partnership at 24 frames per second. They starred in nine pictures together, starting with 1942's Woman of the Year and ending with 1968's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, for which Hepburn won her second Best Actress Academy Award. 

Out of this silver screen ennead, Adam's Rib is probably their best, joining the couple with George Cukor's elegant touch and a fantastic Oscar-nominated script by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin. Today, the comedy celebrates its 75th anniversary…

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Oscar Trivia: When the Academy Nominates Lovers Together

by Cláudio Alves

Love is in the air…at the Oscars. Both lead and supporting acting categories feature a nominated couple. Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem are on the hunt for their second statuette with Parallel Mothers and Being the Ricardos, respectively. Then, there are Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons, who played a married couple in the movie that finally earned them long-deserved Oscar nods. The Power of the Dog stars are the first real-life romantic partners to earn nominations for playing an on-screen couple since Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain – though, of course, the Burbanks have a better marriage than the doomed Del Mars. 

But how often do couples get nominated together at the Academy Awards? As it happens, much more often than you'd think...

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Jean Harlow on Criterion

by Cláudio Alves

During the past years, the Criterion Channel has highlighted the careers of many Old Hollywood stars. After Carole Lombard, Mae West, Joan Crawford, Jean Arthur, Rita Hayworth, and many more, it's time to celebrate Jean Harlow. In this case, the selection of titles entices because of how encompassing it is. The Criterion Channel presents 14 films, every feature the starlet did while on contract with MGM, from 1932 to her untimely death in 1937. By watching these works, one can get a good sense of Harlow's meteoric rise, how her persona evolved, how it changed to accommodate personal and physical transformations, a transfiguration of industry ideals and popular tastes. Furthermore, the movies showcase other great stars and the work of such vital 1930s screenwriters as Anita Loos and Dorothy Parker. It's a perfect treasure trove of Old Hollywood moviemaking, history, and scandal…

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Almost There: Myrna Loy in "Test Pilot"

by Cláudio Alves

Myrna Loy's an interesting case as far as the Oscars are concerned. She was a great star, a charming performer with a magnetic screen presence, and even appeared in more than one Best Picture winner. It's easy to imagine that such a person would be a shoo-in for an Academy Award nomination at some point in their career, but Loy was never that lucky. Of the many times she came close, we're here to discuss Test Pilot. This Victor Fleming-directed romantic drama nabbed three nods back in 1938. Among them was a Best Picture citation, though no love was shown to the movie's actors…

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Oscar's ridiculous accents

by Cláudio Alves

The Academy loves transformative performances, ones where an actor's chameleonic abilities are on full display. While the recent avalanche of biopics winning acting Oscars may suggest such dynamics are a recent phenomenon, it isn't so. Since the 20s, we've seen it happen regularly. Just look at Warner Baxter who won the second-ever Best Actor Oscar for putting on brown face and playing the Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona. That particular example also brings up another favorite bit of acting work that the Academy seems to adore beyond reason – accents. Bad ones at that.

Some performers, like Meryl Streep, are brilliant at mimicking regional and personal accents, doing them so naturally that one forgets the artifice. Many others, can't be helped and often fail at the task. To be perfectly frank, I'm not a person that's much annoyed by bad accents onscreen. Nicole Kidman's American accent in The Portrait of a Lady is quite unconvincing, for instance, but I still consider it one of the actress' best works. That said, sometimes there are levels of incompetence too flagrant to ignore.

Such is the case of some Oscar champions, including a Best Actor winner whose efforts are cringe-worthy… 

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