In which it turns out Joseph Stalin had decent taste in movies!

Captain's log: January 25
Last movie watched: Across the Universe (verdict: rather awesome)
Song currently in head: Run Around by Blues Traveller. Specifically the "Once upon a midnight dreary" part.

So lately I’ve been attempting to watch as many of the Best Picture Oscar winners as I can. I’ve got, let’s see...44 of 80 (yay, halfway!) which is nothing to be sneezed at (bless you!). And so I shall be educating you all on my favourite offerings from the various decades. And no, I haven’t seen any from the 1920s. And yes, the later decades are much more respectable, hit-wise, but I’m not made of money, and there’s no way I’m sitting through Olivier’s Hamlet. I’ve seen fifteen slooooow minutes of it, and I think that’s satisfactory (don’t worry, I’m not counting it as one of the 44).
Anyway. We begin with the 1930s. When films were finding their stride, colour was infiltrating the talkies (hell, they’d only just started talking) and apparently a lot of new boundaries were being broken. Of these I have seen two Best Picture winners, although one of those was Gone With The Wind, and so I think that’s worth 2 of itself. Longest film I’ve ever seen, or at the very least it felt as much, and though I was only eight when I saw it I’m fairly certain I got the gist, so no need to sit through that 222 minutes again.
Here goes:

A very disagreeable southern woman makes life difficult for a lot of people. At the end Clark Gable swears (GASP!).

Ok, yes, it’s probably more involved, and yes, I should probably treat it with more respect, considering how immensely popular it seems to be. And give it its due. It gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar, for crying out loud (although her character, “Mammy”, has garnered some criticism for implying that all slaves were basically happy. Whee! Racism!). It also has a legacy of being very difficult to get off the ground – it went through several directors and scriptwriters, not to mention numerous casting possibilities. Its most famous line has its own Wikipedia page. (No kidding! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankly,_my_dear,_I_don%27t_give_a_damn) Apparently a lot of decision making went into the use of the word “damn”, and whether it was appropriate. It was finally decided that since it was quoting the novel, it was ok. We’ve certainly come a long way.

Speaking personally my favourite summation comes from the Umbilical Brothers (in under 2 minutes, including intermission), and if anyone knows where I can download this skit, please notify me at once.

Onto the other film from the 1930s – it’s one of my very favourite films ever – 1934’s It Happened One Night, starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable (hello again!). Basically it’s about a spoiled heiress who goes on the run to escape an arranged marriage, and the newspaper reporter who tags along with her, looking for a story. Sounds almost formulaic now, but remember this was made in the 1930s. This created the formula, people! It’s witty and sweet and, according to the Library of Congress, “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”. Those sentimental bastards.

It was the first of only three films to win all the “Big Five” awards at the Oscars – these being the Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Writing awards. The most famous bit of trivia is that during the “Walls of Jericho” scene (you don’t know it? Well watch it, people!...ok, it basically involved two single people of the opposite sex sharing a room (GASP) and constructing a partition out of a blanket. Look, I told you to watch it...) Clark Gable did not (as was the fashion) wear a vest under his shirt, since it was too complicated to do his lines while removing it. As a result, they say, undershirt sales plummeted, and manufacturers tried to sue.

Oh, and look! It’s one of Joseph Stalin’s favourite films! How could it not be awesome!?

While we're at it I should probably talk about the Oscars themselves. So we'll start with the awards that tend to get sandwiched between the more well known ones. These are the awards with the most entertaining titles.

Animated Short (pretty entertaining category, especially since Pixar shows up here quite a bit), Documentary Short (must be incredibly difficult to tell a decent story in a short time), Live Action Short and Documentary Feature (the most famous of which, really, is Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth). I'm notoriously bad at getting around to seeing these, although I have seen Animated Short nominee Presto. I give it two animated thumbs up. This year's favourite title is La Maison en Petits Cubes, for Animated Short film. I'm assuming it's French for "The House of the Little Cubes".

Brilliant.

"You show me a good piggy-backer and I'll show you a real human. Now you take Abraham Lincoln for instance. A natural born piggy-backer."
--- Clark Gable - It Happened One Night ---