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Success or Snub? Midnight Cowboy (42nd Academy Awards Review Pt. 2)

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To see part 1, click here. Once Upon a Time in the West Suite~Ennio Morricone - C'era Una Volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West)           So Midnight Cowboy is indeed a great movie but the reason for its success and relevance can also be traced to a large degree of serendipity that there was no possible way for the filmmakers to plan. In 1969, the Gay Liberation/civil rights movement began when the Stonewall Riots occurred in New York City’s West Village. Also of note that year was Mart Crowley’s famous Off-Broadway play, The Boys in the Band (1968), which had been running for the past 2 years. We’ll go more into detail of this play when reviewing the film adaptation for the 1970 rundown but The Boys in the Band was the first mainstream work that analyzed gay culture and problems. Long-story short: 1969 was the year that homosexuals joined the various other civil rights movements in agitating for equal rights before both the law and culture. ...
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Oscars Retrospective: Oliver! (41st Academy Awards Review)

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Overture/Main Titles~Lionel Bart - Oliver!           With the exception of A Christmas Carol (1843), Oliver Twist (1839) was arguably the most famous novel of early 19th century British writer, Charles Dickens, and is usually the story that first springs into mind when the adjective “Dickensian” is used. Dickens’ stories and their Dickensianism have always been a ripe subject for film adaptations. But while A Christmas Carol has a new film adaptation about every 10 years, and it’s very debatable which is the best one, film adaptations of Oliver Twist are much more rare and the one that is almost universally regarded as the most definitive, iconic and beloved interpretation of the story was the 1968 musical film (originally a play released in 1960). In some ways, this movie could also be considered the last hurrah of the British Invasion as this was the last British film to win Best Picture after several victories in a row and pop culture would refocus ba...
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