PicoBlog

It’s always strange to me to encounter early movies starring Shirley MacLaine when she was stuck firmly in her ingenue stage. I grew up with her as an older woman in dramatic roles, and still can’t wrap my head around all these flicks where she plays ditzy sex ba-bombs. “Gambit” hasn’t aged all that well since 1966, notably for the fact it has MacLaine playing a Eurasian showgirl who spends most of the movie done up in a stereotypical Chinese style working to pull one over on an Arab millionaire, played by a Czech-born actor.

Well, it’s been quite a journey. When I first started this intermittent series to watch all the previously unseen Academy Award Best Picture winners, I figured it’d take a few months — at most. After all, how many films could that possibly be for a professional critic who prides himself on having a broad and deep taste for movies? As it turned out, it was about five years. I was surprised when I counted up the unseen winners and found it was nearly two dozen titles.

Everyone loves the story of Jack Palance winning an Academy Award at the end of his career for “City Slickers,” nearly 40 years after losing the Oscar for his previous nomination as the menacing villain in “Shane.” The one-armed stage pushups, Billy Crystal’s endless host quips thereafter, and the redemptive story of a not-quite-star finally getting his golden recognition have officially entered Hollywood lore. What most people don’t realize is “Shane” wasn’t Palance’s first Academy Award nomination.

“The Broadway Melody” was just the second Best Picture winner at the Oscars, and was also the first “talkie” and first musical to do so. Musicals were very popular as prestige filmmaking for a long time, winning eight more best picture statuettes between 1937 and 1969, and then a long hiatus before “Chicago” won the most recent 20 years ago. (“La La Land” came close, but…) “Broadway” was a huge hit and spawned a number of films that weren’t so much sequels as extensions of the franchise with chronological suffixes: “Broadway Melody of…” 1936, 1938 and 1940, respectively.

This review is part of our free offerings to subscribers and visitors. Please consider supporting Film Yap through a paid signup to our Substack to receive all our premium content, now at a huge discount! Get 30% off forever By any fair reckoning, “The Plainsman” is a pretty anachronistic example of Golden Age Hollywood filmmaking. It’s a rousing Western adventure movie that, other than accurately using the names of Wild Bill Hickock, Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill Body, is pretty much a complete sham of the historical record, even by the mythological standards of Old West lore.

"White Lightning" is the film that made Burt Reynolds a breakout star -- the biggest in the land, for a not-inconsiderable amount of time -- and also firmly established his niche of fast cars, bad cops, frisky women and smoldering machismo. It's not a particularly great movie, landing more toward the trash end of the action/comedy spectrum with lots of poor car chases and ill-staged fistfights. Reynolds boasted it was made so cheaply that they didn't care if it played in any theaters north of the Mason-Dixon line.

I tried Reese’s new Creamy & Crunchy peanut butter cups. As part of this promotion Reese’s is asking fans to vote on which peanut butter cup they prefer. Reese’s cups are one of my all time favorite candies, so I was excited to give these varieties a try. I tried the Creamy cup first. Classic Reese’s cups are also made with creamy peanut butter, so I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect.

Boker tov and Shavua tov! We are in the Jewish month of Adar, a time of exuberant joy and celebration. Adar is the month of Purim, a holiday during which we dress up in costumes and commemorate the miraculous salvation of the Jewish people from a decree of destruction. According to Jewish tradition, the month of Adar offers us a unique opportunity to tap into the Divine energy of joy and laughter.

I've always known that this project would end and have to take on a different shape. Sport at the highest levels is a fleeting pursuit. Some of us choose where that end point is and for others it's imposed by circumstance. It can kill, maim, and ruin you mentally. It has taken friends of mine and the awareness that every race or training day could be my last is something that has shaped my relationship to sport.