By John H. Foote When the Academy Award nominees for film excellence in 1967 were announced, there were some audible gasps when the Best Picture category was read. As expected Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and In the Heat of the Night were nominated, all richly deserved. But also among the five was Guess Who’s…
By John H. Foote They say most people cannot remember who won the Academy Awards a year later. I am not among those people, nor is Alan Hurst, a top notch movie historian writing for the site. We tend to remember everything. I mean everything, like Best Costume Design in 1939, or Best Song for…
By John H. Foote They won not because of a great campaign but because they so deserved to win. They were the towering top of their category and the Academy recognized this, which to be fair sometimes they do not. These are the most deserving winners I could narrow down. Purely indulgent, these are winners…
By Nick Maylor Having faces on money is an ancient tradition. Here in Canada, there has only been one face on the back of our coins for my entire lifetime, and that of my mother; Queen Elizabeth II. It’s just a reality of being Canadian. That’s the face on every coin (and a few paper…
By John H. Foote These are 10 extraordinary directing achievements that DID NOT win the Academy Award and, when you read them, discovering who they are you might be stunned. It is one thing to think that Kubrick or Pakula or Ashby never won an Oscar, it is quite another to realize Coppola lost for…
By John H. Foote Martin Scorsese once said, “for a filmmaker, history is the only critic that counts.” Could truer words have been spoken? Yet while most directors are aware it might take years for their film to be embraced, they are stung when not nominated for an Academy Award. They might earn a DGA…
By Alan Hurst The Academy Awards are always the subject of intense scrutiny for performances or films that get left off the ballot or eventual winners that are true head scratchers. But one of the branches of the Academy that has come under the most intense criticism has been the music branch – and that…
By John H. Foote As with the actresses, the actors suffer a similar fate, some of their greatest work snubbed for an Oscar. Perhaps it is more noticed with the Best Actor race because so often the Best Picture nominees yield so many Best Actor nominees. This was a tough category because there simply so…
By Nick Maylor I don’t remember a part of my life without Batman. When I was a kid, I relished in watching the William Dozier series starring the late Adam West as the “Bright Night”. I didn’t understand at the time that Batman would grow with me as I grew up and discovered the “dark”…
By Alan Hurst With each day and every new award precursor it’s looking like Glenn Close is becoming a sure thing for this year’s Oscar for Best Actress for her superb performance in The Wife. But with that, there are the ever-increasing whispers that it’s because she’s due for a win after six nominations and…