The Oscar Project #7: It Happened One Night (1934)

by Chris Marshall:

Now here’s a good movie! At the most basic level it is just a light-hearted romantic comedy, but everything is executed so competently, and the performances by Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert so convincing, that it feels like a masterpiece. Which, of course, it is; it’s one of only three movies to win the “Big Five” Oscars: best picture, best actor, best actress, best director, and best screenplay (the others are One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs).

Gable earned his reputation as one of the greatest stars in the history of Hollywood by coming across as effortlessly charming and likeable, and it’s a testament both to his charisma and acting ability how easily I fell for him in this film. But Colbert’s performance should not be overlooked. She plays the daughter of a rich banker, and she is able to portray her spoiled, petulant side to perfection.

While boating with her father, Colbert jumps overboard after he objects to her marriage to another rich magnate (named King, of course). She eludes capture, makes it to shore in Miami, buys a bus ticket to New York, and meets Clark Gable, who happens to be on the same bus. They argue over a seat, and soon enough, due to a series of misadventures, he is leading her on a journey back to New York, except they don’t have that bus helping them out anymore.

The Oscar Project #6: Cavalcade (1933)

by Chris Marshall:

Why couldn’t King Kong have won? It was released the same year, and it’s an all-time classic. Instead I had to watch Cavalcade, adapted from the Noel Coward play, and it was a chore. It was more like a series of vignettes set during various important moments in British history between 1900 and 1929 than a single narrative. The net result was a disjointed mishmash of events that couldn’t hold my interest, no matter how hard I tried.

In general, I object to describing a movie as “boring,” particularly if it’s used as a pejorative. When people say a film is boring, they generally mean that it is unexciting, which is a major difference. Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light, one of the greatest of all films, is extremely slow and methodical. It could quite accurately be called boring. But that’s exactly what it means to be. The characters’ lives were, for the most part, dull and uninteresting, so it only made sense for the movie to reflect that.

Here lies the problem with Cavalcade. This is presumably a very exciting—if tragic—period in British history. Yet, despite everything that happens, from the Second Boer War to the sinking of the Titanic to the outbreak of World War I, I never cared about anything that happens. It was slow, unexciting, and, yes, boring, but it made no sense within the context of the movie. I kept praying for it to be over already, but it seemed like the end would never come.

The Oscar Project #5: Grand Hotel (1932)

by Chris Marshall:

Grand Hotel is the gold standard for Rich People Problems movies. The entire story takes place within Berlin’s fanciest hotel, and two of the main male characters are a Baron and an Industry Magnate. But at least there’s a twist: the Baron’s Rich Person Problem is that he has no money. How he affords to spend so much time in Berlin’s fanciest hotel is never directly addressed, but I suppose it’s best not to ask too many questions.

If nothing else, Grand Hotel was the first star-studded Best Picture winner, featuring five recognizable names: Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Wallace Beery, and John and Lionel Barrymore. Crawford, Beery, and Lionel Barrymore all won Oscars for lead acting in their careers (Garbo was nominated four times but never won), and they all delivered solid performances here. Beery was particularly effective at portraying the sleazy, villainous Industry Magnate, but based on everything I know about him, that hardly required acting.  

Predicting the First Round of the NBA Playoffs: Eastern Conference

Chicago Bulls (1): vs the Philadelphia Sixers (8)


c: Evan Turner appears to have been granted his one wish but his dream of advancing in the playoffs will most certainly be denied. Philadelphia has a negative chance of winning this series (think about that for a moment). Maybe on Earth Two Philadelphia has enough talent to pull off an amazing upset but unfortunately for Turner we do not reside in that realm. I'll give the sixers a charity game and say they lose in 5.
m: I'd say Evan Turner is overrated, but he's not much of anything in the NBA. He was way overrated in college, and I am still waiting to be impressed. I think the Bulls will clean up these games and get ready for the big boys, but the Sixers have been a surprise for everybody this year, and Rose's injuries could come back to hurt the Bulls a little. Luckily, the rest of team should be able to handle the Sixers. I say 4 - 2, Bulls.

Predicting the First Round of the NBA Playoffs: Western Conference

This will be a series of "discussions" between Carlos and Myself on how we think the NBA playoffs are all going to shake out. It's pretty much what we do in real life anyway. Without further ado:

THE WESTERN CONFERENCE

(M): Let's start with the West: San Antonio Spurs (1) vs. Utah Jazz (8)
Here's where it's a shame Utah is in at all. Do they even have any good players? Minnesota should have been here. Poor Rubio. I think San Antonio is going to crush this. Tony Parker is playing great, so is Tim Duncan, and whatever spell that's keeping them all alive hasn't worn off yet.
(C): Utah has a very solid frontcourt. Definitely one of the more underrated c/pf combinations in the league with Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap. I think Utah wins one game in Utah to make it remotely interesting but this series is more or less over before it starts. San Antonio makes it to round two where they promptly lose to the grizzlies for the second year in a row.
(M):  Agreed. If anything the Spurs will try to rest some people for part of the series. 4-1 sounds good. The next round is going to be the big trouble for the Spurs. I think they'll fall apart.

The Oscar Project #4: Cimarron (1931)

by Chris Marshall:

Wow, where to start with this one? Most likely, modern viewers will be too preoccupied with the casual and gratuitous racism pervading the film to see anything else. That was certainly my first reaction. I stopped watching at the halfway point[1] the first night I turned it on, and I told my roommate the next day that I still needed to finish my “racist Western.”

To be fair, I’m not sure if the film itself was racist or just the characters within it. It’s an important difference, of course, and there was evidence of at least some progressive views on race. But it’s hard to take the hero’s pro-Indian rights stance seriously when he makes “black people sure do like watermelon” jokes to his young black servant, or when his wife tells their son to stay away from the “dirty, filthy savages” (aka Osage Indians).

The Oscar Project #3: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

by Chris Marshall:

What happens when you take American actors who speak English with American accents, put a German army uniform on them, give them German names and characters, and roll the cameras? You get a Best Picture winner, of course!

Lewis Milestone’s film adaptation of Erich Maria von Remarque’s classic novel All Quiet on the Western Front was the second World War I film to win the Oscar in its first three years of existence, and it’s easy to see why. In just over two hours, it manages to make the whole business of war seem absurd and pointless. In many ways, it is the spiritual forerunner of Catch-22.

Perhaps more impressively, it works not only as a message film, but it succeeds on a narrative level as well. Once I got over the initial weirdness of the casting and accepted the actors as actual Germans, I was totally engaged (and really, I guess the American accents were no more ridiculous than speaking English with a pseudo-German accent). I genuinely cared about Paul, the central character, and his journey from being a naïve, enthusiastic army volunteer to a cynical, grizzled veteran truly seemed to matter.

The Oscar Project #2: The Broadway Melody (1928)

Talking! What a novelty!

by Chris Marshall:

Movies have come a long way in the past 84 years, but at least some things have stayed the same. If you look at the list of Best Picture winners, you’ll see that almost all of them fall into some combination of three categories: War Film, Rich People Problems, or Historical Epic.[1] Wings took care of the first, so it’s only fitting that the second winner, The Broadway Melody, would take care of the second. In this case the rich people are two sisters with the completely normal names Hank and Queenie. Their “problems,” such as they are, are that they’ve just moved to New York to try and star on Broadway, and god forbid, they aren’t given top billing in their first show. Oh, and somebody mispronounces their last name.

Granted, the real conflict in the story centers around the love lives of the protagonists. The problem was that the film tried to set up Hank as the heroine (in the loosest sense of the word), but she came across as shrewish and intensely unlikeable. Hank and Eddie, a performer in the show, were “together,” I guess, I don’t know, we’re just supposed to accept it, and meanwhile, a wealthy socialite named Jock (or Jacques, depending on the scene) began courting Queenie. Both Hank and Eddie are opposed to this blossoming relationship, for reasons that are clear in Eddie’s case and utterly baffling in Hank’s. It turns out that Eddie is secretly in love with Queenie, while Hank just badgers her and tells her not to see him, ad nauseum, without ever explaining why. And they sang songs every now and then.

Know Your Rappers: Action Bronson

His voice doesn't sound anything like what he looks like

Let’s say you’re a respected gourmet flame-chef in New York. You have a bunch of friends that like to hang out and rap, but you’re doing your thing, and then they invite you over when they’re making a mixtape and so you give it a try. Then you find out you’re pretty much better than them, and you’re actually really good at rapping, and you happen to sound like Ghostfaced Killah. Then you decide to swap the knives for the mic, and voila! Enter Action Bronson.

I’ve been following Action for about 6 months now, and it’s in agreement that he’s the real deal. He puts out albums and mixtapes constantly, so it’s easy to see him evolve, and he’s starting to get a real following. He’s unique in the sense that he blends lyrics about New York, food, women and being a gangster all together pretty flawlessly. He uses tons and tons of food metaphors throughout everything, like comparing the taste of lamb laced with fennel to doing [NAUGHTY THINGS] in the back of the rental. He’s mental! But really, something about the way he layers his rhymes with food and feelings really creates these distinct images, even tastes of what he’s seeing and doing. It’s pretty cool to listen to.

The Oscar Project #1: Wings (1927)

by Chris Marshall:

When I decided to undergo my Best Picture project, I knew that the very first winner, a 140 minute silent film, would be a major hump to get past. I’ve seen several silents before, but they have tended to be comedies, which I think hold up much better than their dramatic counterparts. Wings, which is a romance/action hybrid set in World War I, did not offer the prospect of much comic relief.

As it turned out, there were some laughs, but I’m not convinced they were intentional. “Herman Schwimpf? What kind of name is that for fighting the Kaiser?!” is an example, especially when coupled with Schwimpf’s “proof” of his patriotism: an American flag tattooed on his flabby bicep. Indeed, the American army, as portrayed in the film at least, was an exceptionally pasty, out-of-shape bunch. That may well have been the case at the time, but the net result was one of the least intimidating fighting forces imaginable.

Such concerns aside, however, the movie holds up quite well 85 years later, and I was impressed by how “modern” it seemed in many respects. The aerial dogfight scenes in particular were spectacular, and I still haven’t figured out how they pulled off one scene in a Paris nightclub, where the camera slowly zooms over table after table toward the drunken protagonist. It had the feel of a Steadicam shot, except that the Steadicam wouldn’t be invented for almost half a century.

So Much for World Peace

Has anyone seen this?

I’ve seen a lot of hits in basketball, and fights in sports and all that other stuff, but this one really stuck out to me. I think it’s Metta World Peace's face, right before he swings. You can see his face is all hyped about the dunk, and he puts one arm into his chest, and then his other arm starts moving, and he feels Harden, and then he grits his teeth just a little bit and tightens his eyes and completely drills Harden in the back of the head with his elbow. I  couldn’t even believe it.

Manly Things at BWWs: UFC Lightweight Championship

by Mike Hanus

So, the five of us spend a lot of time at Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the major sporting events of our era. We’ve watched everything from playoff basketball to Wrestlemania at B-dubs, and each time is pretty good for trash talking, table bets, and a lot of other craziness. I figured these hallowed moments of guy-time deserve their own blog posts, so I’ll be writing these up each time we do one. Tonight, UFC.

The Main Event: So, my love for UFC fights extends only to the nights Carlos really wants to go and watch them. I never grew up watching UFC, boxing or wrestling. They all seem odd to me. UFC is always weird to watch, because half of the matches have these really long prolonged wrestling matches on the ground where two guys slowly grapple around until one submits or the round is called. I should appreciate these parts for how calculated each move and positioning (and Carlos will shout things like “oh he’s almost in the Crucifix he’s in trouble now”), but usually it’s just really boring to see. UFC does have some pretty spectacular “Oooh!” moments, and a bunch that make me visibly cringe when some knee or elbow or whatever knocks somebody out cold. I mean, that dude just dropped his elbow into the other dudes temple. Then someone gets cut, and they’re sliding around on each other’s sweaty bloody faces and eww.

The Oscar Project

by Chris Marshall:

I’m a sucker for the Oscars. Even though I think the Academy makes the wrong decision more often than not, I still respect the award. It means something. Every movie that wins Best Picture, deservedly or not, becomes part of the canon. Every winner in the acting categories will have that title to fall back on for the rest of their careers. Studios can feature it on every movie poster: STARRING ACADEMY AWARD WINNER CUBA GOODING, JR.

As a fledgling cinephile, though, I’m shamefully lacking when it comes to actually watching these films. Before this project started, I had seen a mere 22 of the 84 Best Picture winners, including only 8 of the first 50. Time certainly hasn’t been kind to many of the early winners, but they still deserve to be seen.

With this in mind, I began a quest at the beginning of April. I will watch all 84 winners, even those I have seen before, in order, and I will finish before the end of 2012. I must watch them from beginning to end. No skipping through the boring stuff. Counting my current progress, I will need to watch one winner roughly every three days to pull it off. This is very doable.