Gary Cooper, High Noon

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor | Golden Globe (Drama) - Best Actor

Years ago, before Oscargasms came to fruition, I was haphazardly watching and reviewing various movies that piqued my interest. One of those films was Wings. For a picture that had very little surprises outside of Buddy Rogers' drunken hallucinogenic bubble episode, one moment that I can usually recall is that of Gary Cooper’s cameo at the half hour mark. We see Cooper waking up from a nap, hair perfectly coiffed, where in typical old-Hollywood fashion, he then smolders his way through his 2 or so minutes of screen time. Moments later, Cooper's character dies in a plane accident while practicing figure eights. While brief, he had about him a radiant energy in those moments that are effortless yet impactful. I ramble on about this because I find it ironic — and fitting — that my journey with Cooper should end at High Noon. For what Cooper delivers in the film is heavily silent, and there is a forcefulness in his presence I’d not felt since that very cameo in Wings.

Kirk Douglas, The Bad and the Beautiful

If there's one thing I've deduced from the few Kirk Douglas performances I've watched so far, it's that he's quite good at playing a dick. In quick succession, Douglas delivered a pompous boxer in Champion, a pompous reporter in Ace in the Hole, and a hard ass detective in Detective Story who's technically a good guy but kind of pompous in the sense that he's riddled with toxic masculinity. As they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it - and thus we're here to witness Douglas' third rendering of an ambitious tool who backstabs his way to the top, this time in the form of a Hollywood producer.

José Ferrer, Moulin Rouge

Bravado was what made José Ferrer's performance in Cyrano de Bergerac so compelling to me, but not a lick of it is to be found in Moulin Rouge. However, the body disfigurement - and therefore, Oscar-baity "grotesqueness," if you will - is still there, this time child-sized legs on a grown man instead of an aggressively large nose.

Best Picture: The Greatest Show on Earth

Cheers to Five Years

It's been FIVE years since I started this blog. It's amazing that I've kept it running for as long as I have without giving up (though I know that in the last year or so it has seemed as though I've given up on it quite a bit)!

The truth is: work has been eating my life, not in a good way. It's to the point where I want to cherish every minute of my free time by doing absolutely nothing. I know this isn't good. And it has been tricky - being cognizant of the fact that there are passions you want to pursue, passions that are being put in the back burner because you can't quite reconcile the energy to simply do it and get it done.

But, another truth: I've not given up on this blog yet. I may be putting out a severely low volume of posts by the month, but the fact of the matter is, I'm still here, still typing away when I can, still watching movies but not writing as fast as I should (The Greatest Show on Earth and Moulin Rouge are next in the queue), still passionate about film, still daydreaming about watching A Woman Under the Influence some day but frustrated that I can't act on it at this exact moment in time because I'm abiding by a goal and promise I made for myself five years ago. I think about films - past, present, future - every day. Even if I don't write every day - the love I have for the medium endures.

So I hope that you bear with me as I continue to get my shit together. And I hope that you continue to check-in, to read, to comment, to share your thoughts. That's what keeps me going!