You've seen my Top Ten (I hope); now, the 27 films nominated in 18 categories for...the 1948 Retro Hollmann Awards! After the jump...
Showing posts with label Romance on the High Seas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Romance on the High Seas. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 25, 2023
Monday, July 24, 2023
Top Ten of 1948
Yesterday, I stated that I found the Best Picture nominees of 1948 to be...lacking overall. On Friday, a friend of mine messaged to tell me he found my Best Actress rankings of 1948 to be lacking overall, so truly, there's no accounting for taste. As you're about to find out!
I started with 75 films:
It took a lot to narrow it all down to these. With apologies to the almost-made-its - Call Northside 777, Fanny, A Foreign Affair, Panic, Raw Deal, Red River, and The Red Shoes - I present my Top Ten of 1948, in alphabetical order:
Monday, July 17, 2023
1948: Original Song
In 1956, The Red Balloon made history as the first short film to win an Academy Award in a category other than the short film categories. A little less than a decade before that, however, "Wet Blanket Policy" became the first short to be nominated outside the shorts.
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The Woody Woodpecker cartoon runs a little over six minutes and was not even among the five up for Best Short Subject - Cartoon, a category won by MGM's "The Little Orphan," starring Tom and Jerry. Instead, it found itself up for Original Song, thanks to the new composition of a title tune, "The Woody Woodpecker Song." The song was a hit and is credited with really getting out the word on the bird, with fan clubs springing up and cinemas screening matinee blocks of Woody Woodpecker cartoons.
He still didn't win the Oscar, of course. Here's the competition:
Wednesday, July 12, 2023
1948: Best Musical Score
How does one rate a score? True, this entire exercise is one of subjectivity (I'm sure there are Agnes Moorehead fans tsk-tsking), but how does one sit down, watch any of the five films listed today, and argue, "Well, clearly what Victor Young does with The Emperor Waltz is of a far superior quality, due respect, to what Alfred Newman is tasked to accomplish with When My Baby Smiles at Me?"
It'd be one thing if we were ranking the songs (that, I suspect, is why this category eventually became Best Song Score and went to the songwriters rather than music adaptors, but we'll save that for next month); we could very easily discuss the merits or otherwise of these particular Irving Berlin or Cole Porter scores. But this is more...complicated. This isn't about the songs but about the underscoring between songs, the dance breaks within those songs, and the opening credits made from the songs. It's not just about whether or not you like Berlin, but about whether what Green & Edens do with Berlin is effective enough to keep you entertained when you aren't hearing the lyrics.
To that end, here we go - the nominees for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture...
Wednesday, July 5, 2023
1948: Summer Songs
Summer is upon us, and what do you suppose the folks in 1948 were watching? By the looks of this lineup: musicals. Not just because four of the films below are musicals, but because two of them ended up among the highest-grossing films of the year - though, naturally, the two I prefer are neither of them. Sprinkled among those songs of the summer: Charlie Chan (not a season goes by without him!), a lot of noirs, and the greatest crossover any Cinematic Universe ever thought to put out...
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