By John H. Foote I am watching the Oscars this year in a seething rage. A great injustice will take place tonight when Martin Scorsese, the greatest living film director, and his magnificent film The Irishman will be ignored for Best Director and Best Picture. Yes, great films are often overlooked, but a film so…
By John H. Foote On the eve of the Academy Awards, each year on a beach under a tent, the Independent Spirit Awards are handed out for excellence in independent cinema. The film must have been made for less than $25 million, and these awards have helped further the art of “indie” cinema, drawing attention…
By Alan Hurst I’ve watched Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood twice. The first time was with an underlying sense of dread at what I had assumed would be the film’s climax. The second time was with an almost a giddy appreciation for the bygone world that Tarantino was able to create…
By John H. Foote Great directors once again dominated the decade as they had the seventies, resulting in some of the greatest films ever made. Steven Spielberg won two Academy Awards for Best Director for Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998), while Quentin Tarantino emerged as the most exciting filmmaker since Martin Scorsese…
By John H. Foote The eighties are often a much maligned 10-year period coming after the seventies, the greatest decade in American film history. The staggering financial failures of major big budget auteur projects allowed the studios to take back the power and lower budgets drastically, but in fairness the eighties has many great films.…
By Nick Maylor On this episode, John and I discuss the annual Academy Awards ceremony and offer a preview of the upcoming 92nd Oscars. Make sure to check out our official YouTube channel to like, share and subscribe! Nick MaylorNick is an actor/writer/comedian/musician from Hamilton, ON Canada. Having been a film nut since the early…
By John H. Foote A five-part series exploring the ten greatest films ignored for Best Picture in their respective year, my hope is not to condemn the Academy by explore that greatness has often been overlooked, just as often as it has been rewarded. Before the Oscars are handed out this year, I promise to…
By Nick Maylor At three and a half hours, Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is an epic epilogue to a story it feels like the veteran director has been telling his entire career. It’s also the best film of 2019. Sadly, at this point in time, there seems little chance that Scorsese or the film will…
By John H. Foote There were nine films nominated for the coveted Academy Award for Best Picture this year, though there was room for one more given this silly rule of increasing the nominees to up to 10. Oddly in the years since they have had this increase, there has never been 10 nominees. This…
By Alan Hurst When it was announced that Great Gerwig, fresh off the success of the wonderful Lady Bird (2017), would be turning her attentions to yet another film version of the Louisa May Alcott classic “Little Women” my first thought was, really? Another version? At the time the BBC had just broadcast a three-part…