Did you know? Shortcuts to an Oscar Pt. 3

October 2, 2015 admin 0

  2010    Natalie Portman played a schizophrenic ballet dancer in Black Swan. This would become the first of five consecutive Best Actress Oscars going to portrayals of characters with mental illnesses. Natalie trained for an entire year (at her own expense) as a dancer for this role. She also lost […]

Stolen Oscars? Pt. 3

September 24, 2015 admin 26

  Part 3 of ‘Stolen Oscars?’ looks at some of the individual Academy Award winners who, for want of a better word, purloined their statuettes. I shall start with the Best Actor category. 1930/1             Lionel Barrymore for A Free Soul I haven’t actually seen any of the other nominated performances […]

Did You Know? – Points of Interest Pt. 4

August 26, 2015 admin 0

  Throughout the seventies and eighties Richard Dreyfuss had an immense drug problem. Just four years after winning the 1977 Best Actor Oscar for The Goodbye Girl he made a movie called Whose Life Is It Anyway? The damage his drug-taking inflicted on his memory was such that, even today, […]

A Cry In The Dark (1988)

February 4, 2015 admin 0

A CRY IN THE DARK (1988) This film, starring Meryl Streep, tells the story of a bizarre real-life tragedy that transpired near Ayers Rock (now called Uluru) in central Australia on 17 August 1980. On that day a ten weeks old baby named Azaria Chamberlain was taken from the family’s […]