By Alan Hurst Trying to take 87 years of Oscar winning songs and pick the best is ultimately a futile task. I started the process by making a Spotify mix of every Oscar winning tune, but I admittedly lost the interest to listen once I got to the tail end of the 1990s. My own…
By John H. Foote Amy Adams has been a frequent nominee for Best Actress yet has just as many times been a shocking omission – Enchanted (2007) and Arrival (2016) the most bizarre of the performances passed over. In the past it was often a challenge to find five female performances to nominate, though in…
By John H. Foote In honor of the great Delroy Lindo, one in a very long line of actors snubbed cruelly (this year) for his sterling performance in Da Five Bloods, I went back through the last 20 years and chose ONE to TWO snubbed actors who deserved to be there for their performance. Knowing…
By John H. Foote And now the ladies! Did they win because of the sheer genius of their performance, or because they were “due” or for sentimental reasons, or they represented the flavour of the moment? As with the Best Actor choices, posted last week, the correct answer is all of the above when the…
By John H. Foote Should they have won or was another actor more worthy? Was their performance truly for the ages, as an Academy Award winning performance should be, or a win to atone for losing a deserving award earlier in their career? Did they somehow become the flavour of the month during their film’s…
By John H. Foote There have been so many, narrowing it down to ten was a nightmare, but I felt rather do a massive extended list I would practice discipline and stick with 10. Yes it was difficult, yes I could have done a list of thirty. Here are the greatest travesties of the Academy…
By John H. Foote By the end of the nineties audiences would know precisely what the following things and people were: CGI, Jurassic Park, the American western, Apollo 13, Dances with Wolves, Woody and Buzz, Quentin Tarantino, Jim Carrey, Paul Thomas Anderson, M. Night Shymalan, Truman Burbank, Tyler Durden, John Travolta, Hannibal Lector and Clarice…
By John H. Foote In a decade when artistic films seemed to disappear after the debacle of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980), studios took back control over the filmmakers and ruled the day. Great films were less frequent, which hampered the industry and ended the director’s era, so exciting in the seventies. Obviously there were…
By John H. Foote They happen, each and every year. There are films, performances, direction, writing, cinematography, or many crafts ignored for their obvious artistry. Who knows why it happens, but it does, without fail, each year. In this first of five pieces, I explore the greatest decade in film history, the seventies and the…
By Alan Hurst Oscar oversights are a favourite discussion points of cinephiles and have been for quite a while. I remember as kid constantly going through a dog eared softcover book on the Academy Awards and compiling my own lists of films and performers: who should have been nominated, who should have won, who should…