The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 11, 2011

Being the smart-ass kid I was, I never took The Sound of Music seriously.  Something about that beginning image of twirling on an Austrian hilltop immediately turned me away.  Yet I had a deep love for Mary Poppins.  Now that I have finally seen The Sound of Music entirely as...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 10, 2011

Based on Boris Pasternak’s novel, Doctor Zhivago is the story of a doctor/poet during the Russian Revolution.  In the present, we have Zhivago’s half brother, General Yefgraf (Alec Guinness), questioning a young girl, whom he thinks is Zhivago’s child.  With a collection of Zhivago’s poems in hand,   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 9, 2011

It’s true, the world is quite the bowl of mixed nuts.  Some of the most interesting interactions you will ever see are of complete strangers from all walks of life crammed into one place.  As the title suggests, this ship, sailing the Atlantic in 1933, is full of all kinds...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 8, 2011

What luck that I’d have a film like Darling to talk about on International Women’s Day.  Directed by John Schlesinger and starring Julie Christie as Diana, Darling is the story of a selfish young woman who uses her beauty and promiscuity to climb higher in her modeling career and society...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 7, 2011

Three and a half hours after the Academy Awards ceremony had ended, I was catching Smilin’ Through on TCM.  I’m not much of a night owl, by ten my eyes are usually drooping.  Being up in the middle of the night to watch a predictable 1930’s melodrama did not make...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 7, 2011

A cavalcade is a procession, or parade of sorts.  In the film, the transitions between chapters show that literally, with images of trail of people on horseback in medieval period clothes.  They seem to just be the past looking on and ushering history.  The real cavalcade is all about time...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 6, 2011

Don’t we all have big dreams of changing the world for the better at some point?  Some want to be scientists discovering new species or form of energy, others want to write the next great novel and inspire generations to come.  For Andrew Manson, the dream was to be a...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 5, 2011

Test Pilot is a story where men put their lives at risk for the sake of aviation and women find that irresistible.  Clark Gable plays Jim, the cocky hotshot test pilot who tries to moonlight as a lady’s man.  Spencer Tracy is his right hand mechanic, Gunner, who spends most...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 5, 2011

Music professor Adam Lemp (Claude Rains) has four lovely, musically inclined daughters.  They all live happily at home and form a band.  There is Thea (Lola Lane) at the piano, Emma (Gale Page) at the harp, Ann (Priscilla Lane) playing the violin and Kay (Rosemary Lane) sings.  As suitors start...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 4, 2011

If you have any love for Francis Ford Coppola’s original Godfather, than that love only gets expanded in his The Godfather Part II.  For me, my first full viewing of The Godfather just teetered on really good, it almost fell under great.   After finally seeing Part II in one sitting,...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 3, 2011

The role of a private investigator is to snoop.  To get down into the muck and find out the dirty truth.  That’s exactly what JJ ‘Jake’ Gittes (Jack Nicholson) does in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown.  It is 1937 in Los Angeles and Jake is a private detective specializing in cases of...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 2, 2011

My first encounter with Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation was about four years ago in my first film class.  The professor chose this film to study sound and how it relates to image, and yesterday I found my old term paper breaking down a few scenes into the most minuscule...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on February 28, 2011

If you go to see most stand up comedians today, you’re likely to hear a few F-words or racy jokes.  Back in the sixties, Lenny Bruce was fighting to use those words and jokes in his act.  He wasn’t just trying to use his foul mouth simply for a shock...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on February 26, 2011

When we hear such a dramatic name like The Towering Inferno we can instinctively do two things in the year 2011:  jokingly scream Oh the humanity! and grab a strong drink.  That is not a bad way to approach this film, but that is also stereotyping.  Sure it’s one of...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on February 26, 2011

We are now entering the final hours of Oscar season and I haven’t made an official post spelling out my predictions for tomorrow that we come to expect from every film blogger across the world.  Oh me, oh my!  I’ve been writing about the Oscars all year.  I eat, sleep,...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on February 24, 2011

When Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) loses her father to a senseless gunfight, she steps up to take care of the arrangements for his body and to take vengeance on his murderer, Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin).  This girl is only fourteen, but with her father gone, she assumes the role as...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on February 24, 2011

Back in January, I was that twenty-something woman seeing Black Swan alone.  I never carry a purse, that day I had on a superhero t-shirt and my grey converse shoes.  The eight other people in the theater, all women, may have made some assumptions, especially if they knew some of...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on February 23, 2011

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, The Last Emperor is an epic biopic about Pu Yi, a boy crowned Emperor of China at the age of two in 1908.  Through the use of the film flashing backwards and forwards in time, we are shown his whole life and its events against China’s...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on February 22, 2011

At this point in the blog, I’ve seen so many WWII movies they all start to run together.  Soldiers, sailors.  American perspective, Japanese perspective.  Normandy, Iwo Jima.  Lovers torn apart, families reunited.  Join the navy, war is hell.  They’ve filmed it, I’ve seen it.  But Hope and Glory fin   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on February 21, 2011

Today, our news shows can be comprised of stories that aren’t news at all, depending on the events of the day.  Just look at the Today show.  The local news usually gets the big stories out first.  A crash on the highway, a building on fire, a robbery, then a...   read more