"Best Pictures From the Outside In" Returns

Many of you have been asking (publicly and privately) about the trifurcated Best Picture Oscar series that united Nick's Flick Picks, Goatdog's Blog and The Film Experience. Mike, Nick and I created the series together but the ball dropping was all me. I take full responsible for the unfortunate hiatus. Thanks for your patience.

Mrs. Miniver & Mr Schindler. World War II will change them both.

IF YOU'RE A NEW READER the series works like so: We started in early 2008 grabbing the earliest best picture winner (Wings) and comparing it to the most recent (at the time) No Country For Old Men. Then we started working inwards from both directions of Oscar's timeline. Eventually the series will conclude in the late 60s, the halfway point of Oscar's chronology. Here's a complete index of all 15 episodes (thus far) which cover the years 1928-1942 and 1993-2007. Nick is also maintaining a tournament poll of your favorites and ours so, vote.

If you want to really dive into the discussion with us and enrich your knowledge of Hollywood's grand back catalogue, consider renting the match-ups that are on the way. In a couple of weeks we'll be pairing two of Hollywood's most iconic men, Bogie & Clint for a discussion of Casablanca (1943) and Unforgiven (1992). Then it's on to Going My Way (1944) and Silence of the Lambs (1991).

But right now...

Mrs. Miniver and Schindler's List

NICK: Having watched my conspirators in pleasure show such effort and ingenuity in our last two installments to put our disparate films in dialogue with each other, I get to enjoy a ready-made Oscar juxtaposition of World War II dramas: Mrs. Miniver, the first entrant from this AMPAS-beloved genre to swipe the top prize, and Schindler's List, frequently hailed as a highpoint in the Best Picture heritage. Neither film is a battlefield picture; instead, they each focalize the magnitude of the war through the expanding consciousness of the titular character, and the subversion of her or his habits of thought and action. Both were the first movies by their pedigreed, Oscar-friendly auteurs to cop the Best Picture and Best Director trophies after multiple winless nods.

Of course there are also clear markers of dissimilarity between these films and the stories they tell. Mrs. Miniver confronts the war as a crucible of combat, thrift, and social disruption at a time of siege; Schindler's List reconstructs and scrutinizes the supremacist and genocidal ethics and terrible, sometimes enforced complicities that both inspired and drew force from the Nazi war machine. Kay Miniver is a radiant paragon of noble citizenship and domestic steadfastness; Oskar Schindler is a rake and a profiteer whose unlikely emergence as an objector and protector arrives with all kinds of vagaries and caveats attached. Mrs. Miniver was not in every respect a picture that Wyler cherished; Schindler's List was self-consciously conceived, produced, and received as the technical, cultural, and moral apotheosis of Spielberg's career...

Read and comment on the entire discussion at Nick's Flick Picks

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"Both of you... It's wonderful!"

Last night I watched Mrs. Miniver for the first time but I had already read the details in Inside Oscar. That might have been a small mistake. I knew that Greer Garson fell in love with the actor playing her son Richard Ney --a story the tabloids ate up back in 1942. Garson was huge that year. Think Nicole Kidman in 2001 and then amplify it. Not only was she in the highest grossing film of the year (this one) she had a second huge hit too in Random Harvest.

For those who haven't seen this Oscar-showered film, here is a little clip. Greer Garson plays the title character. Her soon to be daughter-in-law Teresa Wright is at the top of the staircase with her (they both won Oscars for this). The happy fella in the scene is the aforementioned loverboy, Richard Ney. The knowledge that he and Garson were having a little affair made this clip unintentionally funny to me.

"I sort of don't know which way to turn..." (hee)



I watched Random Harvest and Mrs. Miniver back to back and am officially (at this moment) head over heels for Greer Garson. Nick had just watched them both as well since we're preparing for StinkyLulu's 'Supporting Actress Smackdown' this Sunday. Nick told me that Garson was lots of fun to watch and it's true. Both of these roles are the type that could be played very Jennifer Connelly-ish, a la mopey and tragically. Instead Greer brings real spark and unexpected humor to very traditionally stuffy roles like "grieving wife" and "war mom." I loved her in both films (though she is not, as the star, the actual subject of this upcoming 'supporting smackdown')

Mrs. Miniver is top notch all the way around, too. It takes some flack for being a "propaganda" film, debuting as it did in the middle of World War II and being filled with valiant and patriotric Londoners during the blitz. And it does in fact end with a clunky "fight for freedom" speech and a title card about purchasing war bonds. Yet within the war framing I found it to be a lovely, funny, and moving family drama. It won me over right at the beginning: Clearly the war is about to start and there will be upheavals aplenty but the filmmaker (the great William Wyler) still wants you to treasure (and not judge) the frivolity of Mrs. Miniver buying a silly hat that she can't really afford. The hat as it turns out is hideous but if you love freedom you'll want Mr & Mrs Miniver to have many more days filled with silly impulse shopping.

"Both of you... It's wonderful!"

Last night I watched Mrs. Miniver for the first time but I had already read the details in Inside Oscar. That might have been a small mistake. I knew that Greer Garson fell in love with the actor playing her son Richard Ney --a story the tabloids ate up back in 1942. Garson was huge that year. Think Nicole Kidman in 2001 and then amplify it. Not only was she in the highest grossing film of the year (this one) she had a second huge hit too in Random Harvest.

For those who haven't seen this Oscar-showered film, here is a little clip. Greer Garson plays the title character. Her soon to be daughter-in-law Teresa Wright is at the top of the staircase with her (they both won Oscars for this). The happy fella in the scene is the aforementioned loverboy, Richard Ney. The knowledge that he and Garson were having a little affair made this clip unintentionally funny to me.

"I sort of don't know which way to turn..." (hee)



I watched Random Harvest and Mrs. Miniver back to back and am officially (at this moment) head over heels for Greer Garson. Nick had just watched them both as well since we're preparing for StinkyLulu's 'Supporting Actress Smackdown' this Sunday. Nick told me that Garson was lots of fun to watch and it's true. Both of these roles are the type that could be played very Jennifer Connelly-ish, a la mopey and tragically. Instead Greer brings real spark and unexpected humor to very traditionally stuffy roles like "grieving wife" and "war mom." I loved her in both films (though she is not, as the star, the actual subject of this upcoming 'supporting smackdown')

Mrs. Miniver is top notch all the way around, too. It takes some flack for being a "propaganda" film, debuting as it did in the middle of World War II and being filled with valiant and patriotric Londoners during the blitz. And it does in fact end with a clunky "fight for freedom" speech and a title card about purchasing war bonds. Yet within the war framing I found it to be a lovely, funny, and moving family drama. It won me over right at the beginning: Clearly the war is about to start and there will be upheavals aplenty but the filmmaker (the great William Wyler) still wants you to treasure (and not judge) the frivolity of Mrs. Miniver buying a silly hat that she can't really afford. The hat as it turns out is hideous but if you love freedom you'll want Mr & Mrs Miniver to have many more days filled with silly impulse shopping.