Joseph L. Mankiewicz Centennial

Four-time Academy Award winner screenwriter-director-producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz will be saluted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a special 50th anniversary screening of a recently restored print of Suddenly, Last Summer, starring Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor (above, and right, with Mankiewicz), and Montgomery Clift. The screening will take place on Thursday, May 21, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The evening will also celebrate the recent gift of the Joseph L. Mankiewicz Papers to the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library. Turner Classic Movies host and The Young Turks co-creator Ben Mankiewicz, Joseph L.’s great nephew and grandson of Citizen Kane co-screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, will host [...]

Honorary Oscars Bypass Women

Mary Pickford

At the 1936 Academy Awards ceremony, D. W. Griffith became the first individual to win an Honorary Award for his body of work. Seventy-one years and 77 (my count*) Honorary Oscar winners later, a mere eight women have been recognized for their cinematic oeuvre. The chosen 8 — 6 of them actresses, plus one actress-producer — are: Greta Garbo (at the 1955 ceremony), Lillian Gish (1971), actress-producer Mary Pickford (1976), editor Margaret Booth (1978), Barbara Stanwyck (1982), Myrna Loy (1991), Sophia Loren (1991), and Deborah Kerr (1994).
Considering the amount of female talent that has gone un-honored these past seven decades, I find it impossible not to believe that the Board of Governors of the Academy of [...]

Best Films – 2002

A man is dead. Who among the greedy, ruthless, amoral singing-and-dancing suspects stuck in the snowbound countryside mansion has done it? 8 women is an acquired taste, bien sûr. What seems silly the first time around becomes increasingly wittier and funnier — though no less bizarre — with each repeated viewing. Beautifully shot by Jeanne Lapoirie and chock-full of bitingly sardonic lines and situations (adapted by director François Ozon and Marina de Van, from Robert Thomas’ play), this murder musical is dotted with 8 of the brightest stars of the French cinema of the last 7 (!) decades.
More than seventy years after her film début, Danielle Darrieux, in full form both as an actress and as a singer, joins [...]

Best Films – 1953

Jacques Tati in Mr. Hulot’s Holiday
FILM
The Bandwagon
d: Vincente Minnelli; scr: Adolph Green, Betty Comden
The Big Heat
d: Fritz Lang; scr: Sidney Boehm
Blowing Wild
d: Hugo Fregonese; scr: Philip Yordan
Calamity Jane
d: David Butler; scr: James O’Hanlon
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
d: Howard Hawks; scr: Charles Lederer
How to Marry a Millionaire
d: Jean Negulesco; scr: Nunnally Johnson
I Confess
d: Alfred Hitchcock; scr: George Tabori, William Archibald
Madame De… / The Earrings of Madame De…
d: Max Ophüls; scr: Marcel Achard, Max Ophüls, Annette Wademant
Peter Pan
d: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske; scr: Ted Sears, Bill Peet, and others
Pickup on South Street
d, scr: Samuel [...]