hi, bigboy.

I can console myself with the fact that I did not work too hard on that one.

Cavalcade - blah blah glory of England blah blah passage of time blah blah our sons are dead blah blah let's drink to our boring lives blah blah you survived the Boer war only to get run over by a horse-drawn carriage in London ya goddamned drunk blah blah here's a song blah blah what's with all the squeaky-voiced actresses blah blah nonsensical montage blah blah you're kinda chipper for a guy returning from the front blah blah dance number! blah blah yeah you kinda telegraphed that Titanic twist by revealing the date before the scene blah blah drink more blah blah faint blah blah stare into the middle distance blah blah blah.

Twist: This has never been released on region 1 DVD so I had to bittorrent it and watch it on meh lappy. It had a bad picture and Spanish subtitles.

Did it deserve to win?: Nope. Not a lot stands out from 1933, but at least you had King Kong or The Invisible Man to consider. This one wasn't even among the more popular films of that year, so who knows what they were thinking?

(out of 5)

Hi Wally.

Thanks for posting today, bigboy.

It Happened One Night - Dude and chick meet on a bus. They hate each other at first, but then they lose their cash, get stranded, come to rely on each other, and eventually fall in love. Sound familiar? That's the plot of a shitload of rom-coms that have come out since this one was first released. On one hand, we can hate it for that. It's been a bad influence. On the other hand, this movie is actually funny and pretty damned entertaining. Plus it was made back when a dude could slap a bitch and not have the story turn into a womyn-empowerment revenge tale. Chicks just took their shit back then. And I never knew much about Clark Gable other than him being a matinee idol, but he had some skills.

Bonus Brush with Celebrity: There's a cameo in here by a young The Skipper from Gilligan's Island. One summer, my brother worked at a Marie Callenders restaurant in California, and The Skipper used to come in there all the time with his family. The Skipper was a chain restaurant kinda guy. Bet you didn't know that about him.

Did it deserve to win?: Simply for being a trailblazer for future lazy screenwriters, I'll say yes. This won the big 5 awards that year, so the Academy really loved it, and they finally figured out how to use the awards to meaningfully reward what they believe to be greatness. This is the earliest winner that feels like a deserving classic and not just a sack of shit that was impressive in its own time.

P.S. If none of this makes sense, I'm blaming the cough syrup.

(out of 5)

The Skipper was 11 when that was filmed. Alan Hale Sr was the spitting image of his kid and was a huge character actor in the 20s and 30s.

I bet you'll never bet against Stu again.

That doesn't change the fact that The Skipper was a chain restaurant kinda guy.

hey tit,

another suggestion to make this a premium thread, at the end of each decade could rank the winners.

Mutiny on the Bounty - Ok, this task is beginning to become less of a drag. This movie was badass. I'd never seen any of the Bounty movies, but I at least knew the basic story and the names of the main characters. There's a mutiny on a boat. Captain Bligh's a dick; Fletcher Christian leads the way. The thing that makes the movie is Charles Laughton's performance as Bligh. He's such an asshole, you can't wait til they start giving some back to him. The first half of the movie is fantastic, as his cruelty slowly drives the crew toward the tipping point. There's a bit of a slowdown when they reach Tahiti and there's too much frolicking on the beach with natives, but once the action gets back to the boat, things take off again. Clark Gable is a badass again, and he looks great without a shirt. It drags some more toward the end, once the court-martials start, but aside from the slightly slow parts, this movie is first rate.

Did it deserve to win?: Yes. It was the most popular movie of 1935 and nothing else stands out artistically. It was nominated for 8 Oscars, but only won the top prize, making it the last BP winner to only get one award. Charles Laughton should have won Best Actor.

(out of 5)

Were the natives topless like in the Mel Gibson/Anthony Hopkins remake?

Charles Laughton was a master at creepy. This movie was on TCM two weeks ago. He was just as big a tool in Les Miserables, also from 1935. He is also great in 1939's Hunchback of Notre Dame.

No, but the leader of the natives was a white dude who sounded like Father Guido Sarducci.

Hell, now I see he also wrote and directed Night of the Hunter. He had skillz.

What's amazing from those old movies are how many extras they use and the sets constructed. There's no cgi going on.

I mentioned that for some of the war films. Some of those shots are damned impressive. Tons of extras around and they blow up a building right beside them.

one of the best movies of all time

the black and white movie? DENIED!

You don't get to deny anything.

Sanctuary! Sanctuary!

Can we get an update?

The Great Ziegfeld is next. Probably watch it this weekend.

The Great Ziegfeld - Sumbitch. This fucker was LONG. Biopic about the dude who created the Ziegfeld Follies and a bunch of other musical entertainments. Doesn't really tell you much about the guy himself other than he could talk his way into and out of any situation and he was always going broke. Some of the musical pieces are impressive, especially the "Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" number. It's done in one unbroken shot as the stage slowly rotates and the camera moves spirally up along the tiered set featuring dozens of singers and dancers. It lasts for several minutes, and the set is impressive even by today's standards, much less for 1936. There are other pieces that are also impressive, but they start to distract from the story. This movie clocks in at 3 hours. Some cuts could have been made to the musical numbers. Aside from the one I mentioned, the best is the simplest: Ray Bolger tap dancing his ass off for a few minutes. That dude was made out of rubber. But it's not as though the story itself is particularly fascinating. Ziegfeld was your typical overachiever who was slick and smart enough to take advantage of the people and opportunities he came upon. He was visionary and obsessive. That's about it. It was amusing to see him continually outsmart his competition for the latest in big talent, but the series of disappointed wives gets old. Finally, this is the first film I've had to sit through that has an overture, intermission, and end music. That tacked about 8 minutes onto the total run time. What a friggin' waste.

Bonus: This may be the only Best Picture winner to feature a song by a dude in black face.

Did it deserve to win?: It's not a bad movie. Definitely overlong, but the sheer spectacle must have been too much to resist back then. Chaplin's Modern Times came out the same year. It's better.

(out of 5)

Boy, the overture was a big player in the late 50s and early 60s.

Your next assignment, Tit.

Actually, I highly recommend the book, a fantastic resource. All the reviews are the original ones from when the films premiered.

I might be up for that, but it should be a group thing like Oprah's Book Club.

Curious: are all of the oscar winners in there? I'm wondering if Crash made the cut.

It only goes up to 1998 (despite being revised in 2004). Several Oscar winners are missing. They do a good job of not just choosing old foreign films, but they have Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Nightmare on Elm Street, Die Hard and numerous others like that. But noticeably absent is at least the Sting, yet they include Mrs. Doubtfire. No Jaws but they have Beverly Hills Cop. Some choices are odd.

It does have the NY Times top 10 for each year since like 1932 or so. If I'm not stepping on Tit's toes, I'll post them when he posts a review for each year as a comparison. Not all of the top 10s are included in the book, several reviews in the book are very negative (they're the original reviews). In fact the review of Dawn of the Dead is about three paragraphs and the first is about how the reviewer walked out after 15 minutes.

By all means, post anything in reply after any of my reviews. You're not stepping on anything. Especially from these early years, I've seen barely anything to make a legit judgment.

They're all on Netflix except for two of them, Wings and Cavalcade. I watched Wings on youtube and bittorrented an .avi of Cavalcade. I've rented or streamed about half so far from Netflix and recorded some others off TCM when they ran a buttload of Oscar winners in February.

I'm watching everything including the ones I've seen 50 times. Starting out, I had seen around 35 of them, and some of those (like Ben Hur and My Fair Lady) don't count since they showed them to us in high school over 4 days and I slept most of the time. So in fairness, I'm watching them all again. And I'm gay.

No top 10 from the NY Times, but the only other movie from 1929 in their Best 1000 Movies ever made:
Disraeli
Neither Wings nor Broadway Melody is included in the book.

This one is included in the book. Others from that year:
L'Age d'Or
Anna Christie
Holiday
Outward Bound

This is the first year of the NY Times top 10 list:
Arrowsmith
Bad Girl*
La Chienne (The Bitch)
City Lights
A Connecticut Yankee*
Frankenstein
The Guardsman*
Private Lives*
Skippy*
The Smiling Lieutenant*
Tabu*

*These are not included in their Best 1000 Ever Made

Others included from that year:
Little Caesar
M
The Public Enemy
Dracula

1932 NY Times Top 10:
A Bill of Divorcement
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The Doomed Battalion*
Grand Hotel
Maedchen in Uniform*
The Mouthpiece
One Hour With You
Der Raud der Mona Lisa*
Reserved for Ladies*
Trouble in Paradise

The only other included in the book:
A Nous la Liberte

Top 10:
Berkeley Square*
Cavalcade
Dinner at Eight
His Double Life*
The Invisible Man*
Little Women
Morgenrot*
The Private Life of Henry VIII
Reunion in Vienna*
State Fair

Others included:
King Kong
Duck Soup
Zero for Conduct
Footlight Parade

Top 10:
The Battle*
Catherine the Great*
The First World War*
The House of Rothschild*
It Happened One Night
The Lost Patrol*
Man of Aran*
One Night of Love
Our Daily Bread*
The Thin Man

Others:
It's a Gift
Twentieth Century
L'Atalante
The Count of Monte Cristo

They're full of it. Cavalcade was a dog turd.

Top 10:
Chapayev*
David Copperfield
The Informer
Lives of a Bengal Lancer
Love Me Forever*
The Man Who Knew Too Much
Les Miserables
Ruggles of Red Gap
The Scoundrel
Sequoia*

Others:
The Thirty-Nine Steps
Mutiny on the Bounty
Top Hat