The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on April 9, 2010

This story is connected across four countries and represents the vitality of communication.  It’s not told within its correct time line, but within one that builds each storyline’s drama together. In Morocco, a rural family buys a rifle so they can kill jackals that try to eat their goats.  The...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on April 9, 2010

I remember being twelve years old when Princess Dianna died.  My family and I were out camping for the weekend and didn’t hear a thing about it until we got home.  My mom was upset, she might have cried and said that if we hadn’t been out in the woods...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on April 8, 2010

Directed by Clint Eastwood, Letters From Iwo Jima is the better half to Flags of Our Fathers and depicts the Japanese side of the landmark battle of WWII. The film is centered on the story of a young soldier named Saigo.  He was once a baker with his wife and...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on April 7, 2010

In the seedy carnival of London, a horrible and fascinating creature is discovered.  The story goes that his mother was trampled by wild elephants while pregnant with him.  Most don’t care about the story; they just want the curtain to lift so they can gawk at The Elephant Man. Dr....   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on April 6, 2010

Shot in stark black and white, Raging Bull was Martin Scorsese masterpiece as he was reborn into the film industry.  The story is that of real life boxer Jake La Matta.  It begins as he starts his professional boxing career and we watch him rise and fall both in and...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on April 6, 2010

The film takes place in the aftermath of tragedy.  Older all-star son, Buck, was killed in a boating accident and surviving brother, Conrad, blames himself so harshly that he tried to commit suicide.  After being released from the hospital (we assume for psychological problems, but it’s never explic   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on April 5, 2010

Unfortunately, there are probably too many young people out there who don’t know who Loretta Lynn is.  Not many people listen to classic country music today when there’s Lady Gaga, T-Pain and YouTube.  But my mom’s side is from Kentucky, I grew up with radios tuned to country and I...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on April 4, 2010

Based on the novel by Thomas Hardy, Roman Polanski brings the story of a young peasant woman onto the screen.  It all starts when Tess’s father, John Durbeyfield, learns that he is descended from an upstanding family; d’Urberville instead of Durbeyfield.  He sends his eldest child, Tess, to in   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on April 3, 2010

Happy Saturday! I first encountered Patton in Mr. Acton’s American history class in high school.  Though my depiction of a civil war battle was red and blue cowboys glued to a piece of cardboard, I learned more about history in Acton’s class than any other.  We also watched 1776 and...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on April 2, 2010

Welcome to the 1970’s, where disasters became big in the box office.  Airport was one of the first to make big bucks over depicting a day where everything goes wrong and lead the way for films like Earthquake, The Towering Inferno and the rest of the Airport series.  But perhaps...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on April 2, 2010

Set up just three miles from the front lines in Korea, the men and women in MASH stitch soldiers back together while trying to keep their sanity in tact.  The level of comedy is dark, and revolutionary, and helped promote anti-war movements in Vietnam.  MASH holds true today, standing at...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on April 1, 2010

Robert, or Bobby to most, seems like your average blue collar drifter.  He works the oil fields, hangs out at the bowling alley, in his friend’s trailer and with his white trash girlfriend.  He’s rough talking, sarcastic and doesn’t seem to respect anyone.  You’d never imagine a guy like that...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on April 1, 2010

Yes, it’s that wonderful day again, where the people I love slowly hate me more and more throughout the day.  But why should I have all the fun when I can pass some ideas to you?  Here are some fun film themed tricks to play today, see if your friends...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 31, 2010

Ah, young love.  Here we meet Oliver, a Harvard hockey jock full of his family’s money and high expectations.  He falls in love with Jenny, an idealistic girl studying music whose father owns a bakery.  After a cute college courtship (complete with a frolic in the snow montage) Oliver and...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 30, 2010

Based off a novel by Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca is the story of a widower, his new wife and the memories of the old wife throughout their mansion.  When we meet the girl (she never has a name until she becomes the second Mrs. de Winter), she is a traveling...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 29, 2010

I think this film made me laugh more than any other film, ever.  There might be some close runners up, like Snakes on a Plane, or that time my sister and I watched Napoleon Dynamite at 1am on a tiny minivan tv.  Unlike those two, The Great Dictator filled me...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 28, 2010

From John Steinbeck’s great novel, The Grapes of Wrath is the American classic portrait of The Great Depression.  We follow the Joad family as they’re pushed out of their Oklahoma home and journey to California for a better future.  Out there, mythic jobs are promised where they’ll be picking peache   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 27, 2010

Wait…this was a comedy? Shortly after Tracy (Katharine Hepburn) and Dexter (Cary Grant) are married they have a heated divorce.  Two years later, she’s getting ready to marry respectable George.  Dexter has plans to spoil the big day and even get it in the dreaded tabloid, Spy, after blackmailing Tr   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 26, 2010

This forgotten gem stars John Wayne.  Based on four one-act plays by Eugene O’Neill, the film follows the lives of the sailors aboard a freighter ship.  They’re comrades and stick together through thick and thin, but at sea, loneliness and of fear enemy submarines come between them and make th   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 26, 2010

The film opens on a full moon night in Singapore, where Leslie (Bette Davis) has just shot and killed a man.  She tells her husband and lawyer, Howard, with much conviction, that it was in self defense against a friend who wanted to be her lover.  But when the victim’s...   read more