At last, we can all relax.  Meryl Streep has her third Oscar, the one that has been eluding her for nearly three decades.  As Oscar’s most nominated player (with 17 nods), Streep is also the Academy’s biggest loser, including her just-ended run of twelve consecutive losses, ranging from Silkwood (1983) to Julie and Julia (2009).  Suspense about an inevitable [...]

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The main problem with the Oscars is that they’ve become drearily predictable.  They are now simply the last stop on the assembly line of award shows, the final stamp of approval, the confirmation of a consensus that builds for two winter months.  Individual preferences and tastes seem barely to figure anymore.  Oscar voters seem to wait and watch as Globes, SAG awards, BAFTAs, [...]

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All the hoopla surrounding The Artist and its unstoppable ride to Oscar glory has got me thinking about the first Oscars, that one and only time in which the awards were concentrated on silent movies.  Despite its enormous charm, shimmering black and white, and authentic-looking late-1920s filmmaking techniques, I found The Artist to be disappointingly slight, more [...]

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Tall, dark, and handsome (not to mention muscular) John Payne (1912-1989) first became a popular leading man in Fox musicals of the first half of the 1940s, alternating romancing Alice Faye, Betty Grable, and Sonja Henie.  He occasionally assisted them musically but primarily was on hand to provide sturdy masculine support.  That was Payne in pictures like Sun [...]

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