Review-O-Sphere

 To see part 1, click here . Overture~Max Steiner - Sergeant York Oh boy, am I excited for this one. The 14th Academy Awards are often regarded as one of the absolute worst snubs in the history of the institution and of the Academy giving the award away for studio politics rather than actual artistic merit. The film that How Green Was My Valley beat makes this one of the most ludicrous, asinine and just flat-out wrong decisions in the Academy’s history. We concluded the last installment talking about Walt Disney’s legendary output in the early 40s. His studio released two of the greatest movies ever made in a single year in 1940; this year they followed up with Dumbo , the iconic story of the large-eared elephant who joins the circus. While it’s a great and enjoyable movie, it definitely sticks out as the weakest movie of Disney’s initial lineup. Disney’s first three movies (and fifth one) were all considerable groundbreakers but Dumbo really isn’t. Despite this, however, it’s...

  How Green Was My Valley Suite~Alfred Newman - How Green Was My Valley John Ford is probably the most influential director of the Golden Age of Hollywood whose name might escape modern pop culture. While men like Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock still remain ubiquitous to the average moviegoer, Ford’s name remains obscure to all but the most devoted of cinephiles. Ford was part of the first wave of Hollywood directors, arriving in Tinseltown back in 1914 and becoming one of the on-lot directors for Universal Pictures. From there, he made himself useful for the powers-that-be, having a steady and brisk pace of films made for the studio. His career received a relative breakout when he made The Informer (1935), which earned him the Oscar for Best Director, and then received an even bigger breakout when he made Stagecoach (1939), the film that revitalized the movie Western (both films we’ve discussed previously). From here, Ford is a name that would become most well-known with the...