At the 96th Academy Awards, Diane Warren failed to win Best Original Song for the fifteenth time in fifteen tries. Shockingly, “The Fire Inside,” written for the movie about the guy who did not in fact come up with the idea for hot Cheetos, did not win. On the other hand, I’m willing to wager… Read More The Warren Index: Will They Win a Competitive Oscar Before Diane Warren?
July 1st Pompeii (2014, dir. Paul W.S. Anderson) Soylent Green (1973, dir. Richard Fleischer) The place I want to start with Pompeii is its budget, because it’s a blockbuster/spectacle movie and, cynically, I have a hard time starting anywhere else with those. The numbers vary, but let’s call it $90 million in 2014 dollars. My… Read More Movie Diary 2023 (7/1-7/5): Please Stop Making Me Watch Clips from High Society
Okay, two sentences each, let’s make this happen, ready, hike. Force of Evil, 1948, dir. Abraham Polonsky / America’s commitment to leftist filmmaking runs shallower than you’d find in many other countries, but that’s not Polonsky’s fault. His first feature (made not long before he was blacklisted) puts everyman John Garfield in a decent suit,… Read More Movie Diary 2023 (6/1-6/30): Great Caesar’s Ghost I Still Have a Lot of These Left
Two sentences per movie. The last time I did a retro movie diary, I had three weeks to catch up on. Now I have…more than that. No sweat! Seabiscuit, 2003, dir. Gary Ross / I wasn’t prepared to enjoy this as much as I did, but, ahem, never count out the power of an ornery… Read More Movie Diary 2023 (4/6-5/31): Let’s Just Get Through May to Start
Steven Hyden introduced his five-albums test more than a decade ago as a third way to judge a band, short of its popularity or its critical acclaim. While this one is not meant to stand on its own—for example, he’s not sure that either Bob Dylan nor the Rolling Stones had made five great albums… Read More The Five-Movies Test or: Which Director Has Had the Best Stretch of Consecutive Feature-Length Films in English?
