Wednesday, January 1, 2020 at 4:00PM With just 39 days to go until Hollywood's High Holy Night, let's look back on "Hollywood's Greatest Year" and tell us who had your vote and heart in the historic 1939 Oscar races? My votes are the choice of image ;). The ★ means they won the Oscar.
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Friday, November 1, 2019 at 11:31AM It's exactly 100 days until the 92nd Academy Awards. What amazing Oscar record would you scream "100%!" at?
Our answer: Vivien Leigh's two-for-two Best Actress wins (Gone With the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire) both monumental pieces of lead acting, but in different modes though both characters are iconic Southern Belles. The first win was an A+ screen presence triumph, the epitome of a "star turn" or 'star is born' movie-movie event. The latter win was for the kind of exquisitely nuanced, passionate depth to a gloriously meaty part that only actors of that caliber are able to achieve. TFE is here for Leigh both times without question. Usually two Oscar wins can feel excessive (when so many top notch actors never manage one) but not in this case.
Friday, February 22, 2019 at 12:30PM by Nathaniel R
With just 2 days to go until Oscar let's talk famous couples who've both been Oscar blessed. This year we have loved the offscreen symmetry of A Star is Born's Sam Elliott finally having an Oscar nomination to match his beautiful wife's; Katharine Ross was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The Graduate (1967) and now Elliott has a matching nomination in Supporting Actor just before their 25th wedding anniversary. They were married around the time Elliott started work on Mask (1985) and Ross started work on the Dynasty spinoff The Colbys (1985-1987). They co-starred together just last year (albeit briefly) when Ross played Elliott's character's ex-wife in The Hero (2017).
It's fairly rare for two members of a couple to win or be nominated for Oscars while they're together (lots of Hollywood relationships being short-lived) but the gold standard is surely Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward...
Monday, April 2, 2018 at 4:15PM Jason Adams from MNPP here on the surface of the Moon (aka lower Manhattan covered with farcical April snowflakes) and primed to toss a bone your way with this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast" which is wishing Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey a happy 50, which it turns today. The film premiered in Washington D.C. on April 2nd 1968 and in New York the following day, and it has probably been running on some stoner's projector every day since. The film was nominated for four Oscars and rightly won for Best Visual Effects - basically every movie that's gone to outer space ever since has been mercilessly ripping it off, just like every movie set in the future post-Blade Runner throws up a neon billboard or twenty. But for all its trippiness it's still at its heart just a "boy and his dog" movie. So what of the boy and his dog then?
PREVIOUSLY We faced down two of the greatest performances ever put on a movie screen last week with with A Streetcar Named Desire but y'all didn't have much trouble making your choice - Viven Leigh's Blanche DuBois roundhoused Marlon Brando's Stanley with 59% of strangers' kindnesses. Said adri:
"I always think of Tennessee Williams as expressing his soul through Blanche. So yes, my dearest Tennessee, I am with you on Blanche, no matter how messy, and a failure and a figure of ridicule she may be."
Monday, March 26, 2018 at 12:31PM 
Howdy y'all Jason from MNPP popping in to clear my throat and let out a rollicking "STELLA!!!" in honor of the master Tennessee Williams birth - he was born in the town of Columbus, Mississippi (three hours south of Memphis) on this day in the year 1911, and went on to basically shape the entire Southern United States with his writings; I'd argue he's had more of an effect on our modern view of the sub-Mason-Dixon than maybe anybody but Margaret Mitchell did. And to think a gay man did that!
Anyway for this week's "Beauty vs Beast" let's zoom in on his most famous story, the one about the Streetcar Named Desire that you take to the one called Cemetery that you take to Elysian Fields. And yes that means we're facing down arguably two of the greatest movie performances ever put on screen - Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois and Marlon brando as her brother slash ape in law Stanley Kowalski. But whose side are you on? Do you wanna sparkle in that rhinestone tiara or swap sweaty tank tops with Stan?
PREVIOUSLY Right after the Oscars we riddled you about a pair of the night's meme-worthy moments and it turns out that you'd rather ride on a jet-ski with Dame Helen Mirren than get Armie Hammer's weiner flung into your face (PS y'all crazy) to the tune of 55%. Said AlexD:
"This was impossible. But it seems reasonable that a proud queen like myself would only turn down Armie's hot dog for a real queen, Helen Mirren herself. And jet skiing at that!"
