Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

He is greatly missed. I wonder if he would have been able to update the book - I'm afraid the crop of Oscar films in recent years might have kill any such motivation in him - not a single nun in sight, I'm sorry to say.

Roma is a reach across a chasm. Not just the black-and-white/subtitled/Netflix thing. This is a deep-art film -- a story told so indirectly it hardly seems to have a narrative at all. Not to start any debate about the relative merits of the films, but this is like The Tree of Life winning best pict...

Big Magilla wrote:Too late for this year's In Memoriam?

I'm sure (hope?) he will be at least mentioned by one of the presenters if not officially included in that segment.

It striked me now - Page and Close actually went head to head 34 years ago, both losing to an old veteran - Peggy Ashcroft, alas, in that case they did lose to one of the greatest winning performances ever.

If she wins, I'm sure that in 20 years, if anyone is still interested in the history of the Oscars at all, Close's performance will be canonized, the way Geraldine Page's in A Trip to Bountiful was even on this board when we revisited the best actress race of 1985. But in both cases (that is, if Clo...

If this year is Malek and Close, then they would tie with George Arliss/Norma Shearer (1930) for the third biggest gap ever. Ahm, we know Arliss was born in 1868, but when was Shearer born? 1902? I remember when she was supposed to have been born in 1900. And then there's the burning question of ho...

Big Magilla wrote:Although no one could match Mercury's range, the false teeth that Malek wore supposedly enabled him to reach higher notes than he normally could.

Not that the rest of the stuff doesn't come off as PR bullshit, but this is really, but really, pushing the envelope.

Rami Malek's portrayal of Freddie Mercury is easily the best such portrayal since James Cagney impersonated George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy . I even went down to my knees to look under the bed and I still couldn't trace a hint of sarcasm in this statement. Really? No Susan Hayward in her sho...

A man comes to the Rabi and says: “my wife is like this and that and I can’t stand it”, and the Rabbi says: “you’re right”. Then that man’s wife comes and says: “my husband is like this and that and I can’t stand it”, and the Rabbi says: “you’re right”. Then the Rabbi’s wife, who heard it all says: ...

I wonder if, when it comes to Adams, there’s something of an American/non-American thing. (At first, I thought straight American thing, but no). It's the cross-race effect – you seem to be more attentive to nuances and depths I tend to rather blindly generalize, as you say. For me, she appears to be...

Reza wrote: A "problem" she has in common with Deborah Kerr.

Thank you, but we'll have to disagree about Kerr - I get where you're coming from, but "bland" and "not in your face" are not the same. I love Deborah Kerr. Adams - nah.

Part of the annual closure of the year ritual, along with person/book/song/trend/whatever of the year, we also get suggestions for word of the year. Since this is our conclusion of the last cinematic year, I guess as far as the Oscars are concerned, the current Word of the Year must be “Obvious”. An...

Elia Kazan got nominees in three of the four categories with his fourth film ( Gentleman's Agreement ) and hit all four categories with his seventh ( A Streetcar Named Desire) . By the time Gentleman's Agreement scored nominations for actor, actress ans supporting actress(es), Kazan had already had...

I just realized that by Foy not getting in Supporting Actress, Chazelle fell short in being one of the few directors to get his actors acting nominations in all 4 categories. And he would have done this in just his first 4 films. Does anyone have the updated list of directors to achieve this? And w...