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Remember those ads actress Melissa Leo did in the weeks leading up to the Oscars asking members of the Academy to consider her for the little gold man? Well, it’s back – but this time it’s Pee-Wee Herman preening by a pool in a faux-fur coat. The pitch-perfect spoof is a little reminder that alter ego Paul Reubens’ Pee-Wee HBO special is up for an Emmy.
This video contains the title cards from every movie that has ever won the top Academy Award, now known as the award for Best Picture. {wiki} The only exception is The King’s Speech, which won the 83rd such Oscar just last night. I’ve seen 55 of these movies; I’m not going to admit to how many of them I saw in first run theatrical release. How many have you seen? -via Nag on the Lake
Many of us have trouble remembering what movies won Academy Awards only a few days after they are bestowed. How can we be expected to remember those that didn’t win? Or maybe you do! In today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, you’ll be given films that were nominated for Best Picture. Can you match them to the film that actually won that year? I scored 55% (6 out of 11), and only because the year is included with each question. You will do better! Link
Here in LA, a skeletonized Oscar-esque statue suddenly appeared atop Runyon Canyon days before the awards show last week. For those who don’t know it, Runyon Canyon is a park in Hollywood that’s very popular with joggers, hikers and dog lovers (dogs can go unleashed and run up the canyon trails).
No one knows who sculpted the giant Oscar, but clearly there’s a message behind it. Has plastic surgery taken over Hollywood? The world? Is there anything wrong with plastic surgery? (via Los Anjealous.)
The Academy Awards will be given out Sunday night. Every year we compare this year’s winner with past winners and find they have certain similarities. The first page at the link lists the roles most likely to win an Oscar. Continue with the slide show for overwhelming evidence of each scheme’s success. Link -via YesButNoButYes
The announcement of Bea Arthur’s death today made me think about actresses that we think of as kind of grandmotherly types. Obviously, they didn’t always look like nanas. Here are five ladies that we know and love(d) for their portrayal of older women, but I think the pictures will make you see them in a different light. They made me see them in a different light, at least!
Betty White has been on the screen – small and silver – since 1945 when she had a part in Time to Kill, a George Reeves movie. But she was modeling before that, which I totally believe looking at that picture. Who knew Betty White was such a stunner? By the mid-50s she had her own sitcom called Life With Elizabeth (clip below) and ever since then she’s been in high demand, starring in shows such as Date with the Angels, Mary Tyler Moore, The Betty White Show, Mama’s Family, and, of course, Golden Girls. Her latest work is The Proposal, a movie due to be released in June starring Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock.
Anyone who associates Angela Lansbury with Jessica Fletcher – and let’s face it, who doesn’t? – is probably pretty shocked by how gorgeous she was in her younger days. I know I was. She and her mother and brother moved to L.A. in the early ’40s when her mother, actress Moyna Macgill, decided to seek work there. A former resident of England, Angela’s mother often held parties and get-togethers for British actors and actresses who had come to L.A. to make it big just like she had. It was at one of these little shindigs that she met an actor who introduced her to a casting director who ended up putting Angela in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Gaslight. Both performances earned her Oscar nominations, so Angela was a sought-after actress right from her debut in Hollywood. Since then she’s done everything from playing a singing baker who specializes in people pies (Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd) to voicing an animated tea pot (Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast. And there’s obviously her Murder She Wrote streak – 12 Emmy noms in as many years. The picture is from 1943′s Samson and Delilah, which starred Hedy Lamarr. She would have been 18 or 19 at the time.
These days, 98-year-old Gloria Stuart is best known for playing the older version of Rose in 1997′s Titanic, but she made her movie debut more than 60 years earlier. She graduated from Santa Monica High School in 1927 and immediately took up at the Pasadena Playhouse, where she was “discovered.” She was selected as a WAMPAS (Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers) Baby Star in 1932 along with Ginger Rogers. She played Flora Cranley opposite Claude Rains in The Invisible Man (and received top billing!) and was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild. By the end of the ’30s she had been in more than 40 films and was ready for a break; she took up oil painting and was good enough to book one-woman shows in galleries in New York. Gloria didn’t come back to the industry until the 1975 made-for-TV movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden – the one with Elizabeth Montgomery as Lizzie. It wasn’t until she played Rose in Titanic, though, that she really came back to light as an actress. She became the oldest person to ever be nominated for a non-honorary Oscar, but she lost out to Kim Basinger for L.A. Confidential. She’s still around today and is good friends with Olivia de Havilland – she, Oliva, Joan Fontaine, Shirley Temple, Maureen O’Hara, Deanna Durbin and Luise Rainer are the last of the big female stars from the ’30s.
We can’t forget the other surviving Golden Girl, Miss Blanche Devereaux herself. Rue hails from Healdton, Oklahoma, and headed to New York to make her name on Broadway after she graduated from the University of Tulsa in 1957. She starred in a couple of B movies during the ’60s but really gained notoriety as Caroline Johnson on Another World in 1970. She and Bea Arthur first teamed up in 1972 on Maude and was on the first few seasons of Mama’s Family with Betty White, the Girls were all familiar with one another by the time Golden Girls rolled around in 1985. She’s still quite active today, appearing in various Broadway roles and TV guest spots. And she’s still pretty!
Since the Oscars are tonight, I thought it would be fitting to do today’s Movie Trivia post on one of the most-celebrated films of all time. And if you don’t know what I mean, (I didn’t know this, ’til I started doing the research) you’ll see when you read the very first factoid.
Serious Eats has a suggested menu for Sunday night’s Oscar ceremonies that relies on the names of nominated movies and stars. Here’s a sample:
Frosted Flakes/Nixon
The Curious Case of Benjamin Mutton
Flan Torino
Hot Dog Millionaire
Revolutionary Rolls
Milk
The movie star puns include Marisa Tomei-to Soup, Mickey Pork, and Frank Lan-jello. There are quite a few more! Link -via Buzzfeed
The folks at iBored posted this about a month ago, but now that we’re getting closer to the Oscars I thought it might be interesting to see what you guys think.
Here’s my two cents: I thought Heath Ledger was awesome, and I don’t usually even like those movies. I really hated Batman Begins even though I love Christian Bale. Katie Holmes kinda ruined it for me. On second thought, maybe that’s why I liked The Dark Knight. I digress. Back to your thoughts – Is this poster a prediction of how the Oscars are going to go this year? Do you think it should be? Let us know in the comments. Either way, I think the poster is neat.
