Pop Culture Odds and Ends, Part Two

These bits were originally posted to the now-closed Castle Co-op between December of Twenty-and-Eleven and March of Twenty-and-Twelve. I'm reposting because why not and shut up.

Best Robbed Picture

(or; Best film to be nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award but not win.)

The history of the Academy Awards is replete with Best Picture Winner travesties, so it’s been, as I’m sure it has been for others, difficult to single out the most frustratingly cheated nominee of all time.

1994 is a particular cornerstone of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ ability to get it so very, very wrong. The winner that year was Forrest Gump, against clearly superior films Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption and Quiz Show. (One suspects that the trio of more-deserving films split the vote and allowed Gump to triumph.)

But for me, the single greatest Best Picture nominee to have been so horridly deprived of its rightful crowning is Citizen Kane. Perhaps the most glaring mistake ever made by the members of the Academy was the loss of Orson Welles’ 1941 masterpiece to, of all things, How Green Was My Valley!

An intense investigation into the life and legacy of newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane – based upon real-life newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst – Citizen Kane is often cited as the greatest American film ever made. Kane was a wonder of innovations in cinematography, film scoring and film narrative. It changed the way filmmakers told their stories. It began a new period in filmmaking history.

They went with How Green Was My Valley.

Best Picture To Rule Them All

(or; Best film to have won the Best Picture Academy Award.)

Rifling through all of the Best Picture winners, it becomes apparent the list of truly fantastic movies to win the Holy Grail of film awards is suspiciously thin, considering the number of truly fantastic movies to have existed.

You’d think that having a small pool to work from would make this decision easier, but it really doesn’t. Although angling towards the Coen brothers’ No Country For Old Men, I couldn’t escape the notion that it’s youth meant it hadn’t yet proven its status as a classic. But then, is such a status a prerequisite to winning or being considered the best of the winners? (Definitely not the latter, I know.)

I have therefore selected as Best Picture to Rule Them All, Francis Ford Coppola’s undeniable classic, commercial and artistic success, and sequel-of-all-sequels -- if we’re not talking about The Dark Knight -- The Godfather Part II, telling the story of two generations of Corleone men.

I’ll never forget how it made me feel on the first watching, the silhouette of Fredo sitting in apparent safely in the fishing boat, rod in hands, saying a Hail Mary to aid his efforts. Michael watches stoically from the house. We know what’s coming.

This was a culmination of two fantastic and engrossing movies, and represented, parallel with his father Vito’s journey, a great and decisive change in Michael’s character.

And, in my opinion, the best of what the Academy got right.

Most Anticipated Film of 2012

So many films to look forward to this year, but like a great white elephant with glow-sticks raving in the corner of the room, and with apologies to Messrs. Whedon, Anderson – both, actually – and Cuarón, my most-anticipated film of 2012 just has to be The Dark Knight Rises.

Christopher Nolan has proven himself a master storyteller with each of his films, but with The Dark Knight he successfully melded genre with enriched, tense and masterful film-making, and now, he believes he can unleash a worthy sequel upon us.

Gotham City, after eight years without the Batman, has seemingly eradicated its organised crime problem. In the film’s trailer, the city’s elite is self-congratulatory and thoroughly unprepared for the inevitable fall. You think this can last. There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches. ‘Cause when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us, warns Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle.

If the IMAX prologue is anything to go by, Tom Hardy’s Bane, the film’s primary antagonist, with his voice and physicality, will be the stuff of nightmares.

Am I nervous? Hell yes. The plot is mostly still under tight wraps, and there is a lot of anticipation and high expectation. But I’ll be there, day one, ready to be as enthralled as I was with The Dark Knight, and I can’t doubt it being my most anticipated film of 2012.