Review-O-Sphere

 To see part 1, click here . 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Suite~Paul J. Smith - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea As you can gather by this point, 1954 (or 55 when this ceremony took place) was the high water mark of the Blacklist movement in Hollywood and the Academy was probably the most conservative it had ever been (and probably ever will be). Not that this is necessarily a bad thing but, in terms of judging art, yeah, this is kind of a bad thing. I’ve come to learn that there are two types of Academy Award ceremonies we complain about here on the show. There’s ones where the actual winner sucks but then there are ones where the winner’s a good choice but the nominees they narrowed down to a top 5 are where the snubs are. Case in point: On the Waterfront is a pretty great movie. The other 4 nominees for the 27th Academy Award for Best Picture are not. The Academy decided to nominate The Caine Mutiny an overly-long and blasé ripoff of Mutiny on the Bounty (1935); The Country Gi...

   On the Waterfront Suite~Leonard Bernstein - On the Waterfront As we’ve been clicking off the list of Academy Award winners that came out during the McCarthy and HUAC era, I realize that I have been complaining quite a bit both about the hypocrisy of the Academy as well as the general ugliness of this episode in American history. I try to eschew my own personal politics from these blogs so I think now is as good a time as any to reframe our mission with this series back to where it belongs. The goal isn’t necessarily to castigate the Academy for their politics so much as it is to castigate the fact that they choose the Best Picture for petty studio politics instead of what actually qualifies as the best picture of the year. Ergo, if a film were to be pro-McCarthyism but was still a great and groundbreaking movie regardless, then the argument of it being the best movie of the year could hold water. That brings us to On the Waterfront , one of the greatest films of the 1950s...