Oscars

Old Movies

by James McNally on December 4, 2001

in Awards,DVD,Oscars

The weekend was spent in front of the tube, watching old movies. This is prob­ably a pre-emptive strike against the sort of frantic last-minute shop­ping I’ll have to do for the next couple of week­ends. I’m also behind on sev­eral other pro­jects, so my guilt has offi­cially kicked in. Friday night we enjoyed The Lady Eve (1941), star­ring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, dir­ected and written by Preston Sturges. Saturday night was Charade (1963), star­ring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, and dir­ected by Stanley Donen. I’ve been in an old movie mood lately, and just today picked up On the Waterfront (1954), which joins other recent vin­tage DVD pur­chases The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and Casablanca (1942). A few months ago, I men­tioned that out of the AFI Top 100 Films list, I’d seen 33, and Brooke 50. Now I’m won­dering how many I’ve seen (OK, I checked: 40). Or how many of the Best Picture Oscar™ win­ners I’ve seen (OK, I checked: 26). How about you? Are you as film-obsessed as me?

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Oscars 2001

by James McNally on March 26, 2001

in Awards,Directors,Oscars

Oscars were good last night. Glad to see that Traffic won most of its nom­in­a­tions, although it should have taken Best Picture, too, in my opinion. Steven Soderbergh is the best dir­ector working today. I got to see him in person at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1996, after a screening of his film Schizopolis, a film he credits with opening him up cre­at­ively. Check it out if you can, it’s a bit of a fun­house mirror. I thought Steve Martin was great, too, making lots of cut­ting remarks about Hollywood. He also moved things along well. It was nice to have the show end before mid­night (Eastern Standard Time) for a change.

Tagged as: soderbergh

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