Category Archives: Uncategorized

Directed by Nathan Juran

Screenplay by

Starring Kerwin Mathews, Kathryn Grant, and Torin Thatcher

This is fact: all special effects will eventually look like shit.  No matter how good they appear in the moment to audiences of the time, or how cutting edge they may have been, they will all come to look janky, threadbare, and horribly laughable.  The only unknown is the amount of time it takes, and the size of the laugh they get.  For The Scorpion King, that turn happened instantly, literally the moment the images left the computer.  For 2001: A Space Odyssey and Zodiac, it hasn’t happened yet.[1]  And maybe in that juxtaposition we can learn a valuable truth: the best VFX are those that don’t reach beyond their capabilities,[2] while the worst try to live out there just beyond the cutting edge. Continue reading →

Hello, all.

While for you, my loyal readers, the Also-Rans Project came to an end just two weeks ago, it’s basically been over for me for about six weeks.  That’s when I wrote the last of the entries and scheduled them for publication.  In that time, and even before then, I was hard at work on collecting all the entries together and editing them all over again.  Well, after three passes at it, the work is done, and you can now buy the collection in digital and paperback form.  The digital copy is $3.99, the paperback is $19.95.  You can click on the link here, or the cover photo at left, to go to the page to buy it.

Be aware that I do not get rich on the backs of these books or this blog.  I don’t even make enough money to justify my time in doing this.  I only do it because I love it and, while I’d love it if the whole world would buy copies of everything I write, I know that won’t happen.  Nevertheless, because you’ve enjoyed this site for free for years now, it would be good kharma if you bought something for a change.

In other news, I’m going on a slight hiatus here as I contemplate my next project.  I promise to be back by March 15, 2019 with more info as we kick off something new.

Thanks for reading!

This is not my daughter.

The oldest of my children – that being my darling daughter – graduates high school this week.[1]  That’s right, loyal reader: your friend and humble narrator is old enough to have a daughter graduating high school.  And not because he got started as a teen parent, either: nope, I am legitimately old enough to have fathered an adult.[2]  And Happily, she will be a Michigan State Spartan, just like your friend and humble narrator.

Go Green!

Go White! Continue reading →

Hello, loyal readers, I’m pleased to announce that, as The Best Picture Project winds down – admittedly, it’s a slow wind-down – I’m starting a new project to carry me through the next four or five years, which is about the length of time it’s taken me to get through The Best Picture Project.

The new one?  The Also Ran’s Project.

What is The Also Ran’s Project, you ask?  Well, to answer that, I have to start with a digression.

With The Best Picture Project, my goal was to watch every Oscar winner for Best Picture and weigh in with my thoughts of them in a very uncoordinated way.  The posts came on no timetable, in no discernible order, and with no overt structure.  In essence, they were my free-form thoughts on anything that interested me about the particular movie or that the particular movie inspired in me.  The only thing that seemed a piece of them all was I decided whether that film was, or wasn’t, the Best Picture of that year.

Curiously, I was never wrong.

The Also Ran’s Project will be similar to The Best Picture Project in that I will watch an Academy Award nominee for Best Picture from every of the Oscars – particularly a nominee I haven’t seen before, so as to close in some of the blind-spots in my cinema experience.

Obviously, there will be years where I’ve seen everything nominated so there me be a time or two of improvisation, but we’ll cross those bridges when we come to that.  And much like The Best Picture Project, I’ll share my thoughts on the movie, life, and anything else that seems relevant.

Hopefully, completion of this Project will not take five years.

Hey there, loyal readers, two recent stories of mine were added to Smashwords.  And you know what’s great about Smashwords?  They convert everything into whatever format you want!  Kindle, PDF, whatever!

So, One is free, the other is just $0.99.  Amortized across the pair, that’s not even $0.50 per story.  When you look at it that way, what’s to stop you from buying.

Go there now!

Directed by Robert Wise

Screenplay by Ernest Lehman, adapted from the stage show and book

Starring Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, a bunch of children and the blondest Nazi you ever saw

The Sound of Music was the second-to-last of the old-style Hollywood musicals to win Best Picture – the last being a lesser Carol Reed film, Oliver!  In fact, since the 1960s, only a single musical has won Best Picture – Chicago in 2002.  Which is strange because, in the 1960s alone you had four – West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), The Sound of Music (1965) and Oliver! (1968).   I suppose when you think about it, the fact that the 1960s were the decade of the Best Picture musical, whereas the 1970s were the decade of the grittier Best Picture drama, is ample evidence of just what can happen when there is a changing of the guard in any establishment. Continue reading →

As long-time readers of this site will no doubt remember, a survey was made some time ago of the Longest Surviving Oscar Winner’s by Category.  Over time I’ve done my best to update the list, as needed, and have to do so today as our longest surviving Best Actress winner, Luise Rainier, died.  She was 104.

A star in the 1930s, Ranier made history by becoming the first back-to-back Oscars — in her case, she was Best Actress two years in a row.  The first of these was for The Great Ziegfeld, a previous entry in The Best Picture Project.  The other was for The Good Earth.

Despite scaling to such heights, the fall for Ranier was fast and by 1938 she’d all-but-abandoned her career.

Here is a scene of her’s from The Great Ziegfeld:

(As an aside: with the recent passing of Mike Nichols, we also lost our oldest surviving Best Director).