A lot of people rolled their eyes with F1 received a nomination for Best Picture.
Those people have obviously never known the need for speed.
Today’s scene that I love is from F1 and it’s all about speed, strategy, and sacrifice.
Category Archives: Film
4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Joseph Kosinski Edition
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, TSL wishes a happy birthday to director Joseph Kosinski! It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Joseph Kosinski Films
Tron: Legacy (2010, dir by Joseph Kosinski, DP: Claudio Miranda)
Only The Brave (2017, dir by Joseph Kosinski, DP: Claudio Miranda)
Top Gun: Maverick (2022, dir by Joseph Kosinski, DP: Claudio Miranda)
F1 (2025, dir by Joseph Kosinki, DP: Claudio Miranda)
Flat Top (1952, directed by Lesley Selander)
During the Korean War, Navy Commander Dan Collier (Sterling Hayden) reminisces about World War II. In 1944, he was newly assigned to the USS Princeton and dealing with a collection of hotshot pilots who had no idea about the realities of war. His executive officer, Joe Rogers (Richard Carlson), was everyone’s friend. Collier, however, had to be their commander. At first, everyone in that ship resented Collier and his emphasis on discipline. But eventually, the men came to learn that war wasn’t a game.
There’s little about the plot of Flat Top that will take anyone by surprise. Of course, the stern and by-the-book Dan Collier is proven to be correct when it comes to the proper way to fight a war. This film was made during the Korean War so there was no way it was going to suggest that the Navy could be incorrect about anything. The film was produced by tiny Monogram Pictures, who actually found enough money to film in Cinecolor. Monogram also got permission to shoot on an actual carrier, which brought some authenticity to the proceedings. The film makes heavy use of stock footage. A lot of the footage will be familiar from the countless number of World War II documentaries that have been put together over the years but it’s still seamlessly combined with the footage of the actors sitting in the cockpits of their planes. It’s probably not a coincidence that the movie features the characters fighting in support of Douglas MacArthur’s return to the Philippines. When this film went into production, Truman had just ended his hopes for reelection by removing MacArthur from command in Korea.
The cast is uniformly good and it’s full of familiar faces. William Schallert, Todd Karnes, James Best, and Phyllis Coates all appear in supporting roles. Sterling Hayden is believably gruff and no-nonsense as Dan Collier. Thanks to them and the actual combat footage, Flat Top is watchable albeit predictable.
Live Tweet Alert: Join #ScarySocial for The Amityville Horror!
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 9 pm et, Deanna Dawn will be hosting #ScarySocial! The movie? The Amityville Horror!
If you want to join us this Saturday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
The film is available on Prime!
Scenes That I Love: Mark Gregory in 1990: The Bronx Warriors
Today would have been the 62nd birthday of actor Mark Gregory, who will always be remembered for playing Trash in 1990: The Bronx Warriors and Escape From The Bronx.
In this scene from 1990: The Bronx Warriors, we’re reminded that everyone loves Trash.
4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Lone Scherfig Edition
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, TSL wishes a happy birthday to Danish director Lone Scherfig! It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Lone Scherfig Films
An Education (2009, dir by Lone Scherfig, DP: John de Borman)
One Day (2011, dir by Lone Scherfig, DP: Benoît Delhomme)
The Riot Club (2014, dir by Lone Scherfig, DP: Sebastian Blenkov)
Their Finest (2016, dir by Lone Scherfig, DP: Sebastian Blenkov)
In A Class Of His Own (1999, directed by Robert Munic)
At an Oregon high school, Rich Donato (Lou Diamond Phillips) is the most popular adult on campus. He defies the school’s no music rule by dancing in the cafeteria. He keeps discipline in the hallways and he counsels the school’s most troubled students. He’s the adult that all the students come to for advice. He’s the adult who everyone looks to as being a life coach. However, Rich is not a teacher or a guidance counselor. Instead, he’s just a custodian and handyman. Rich is smart but he never graduated high school. He doesn’t even have a G.E.D.
That becomes a problem when the school board announces that all employees of the district are now required to have, at the very least, a GED. If Rich can’t take and pass the GED test in 30 days, Rich will lose his job. Rich fails the test the first time he takes it but wife and the students at the school come together to try to help him pass. Along the way, the special education teacher (Joan Chen) diagnoses Rich as having both ADD and dyslexia, helping to explain why Rich always had trouble in school. Even though their parents say that Rich is just a janitor and not worth the trouble, the school’s students never stop believing in him.
Made for television, In A Class Of His Own is based on a true story. It takes a typical “inspiring” approach to the material, which means there’s nothing surprising about this movie. Everyone likes Rich, even the principal (Tom McBeath) who wishes that Rich would stop dancing in the cafeteria. Luckily, Lou Diamond Phillips is likable as Rich and his performance suggests that he truly cared about the film’s message. And it’s a good message! If you have a dream, don’t give up. And don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Q&A (1990, directed by Sidney Lumet)
Al Reilly (Timothy Hutton) is the son of a New York cop and a former cop himself. Having put himself through law school, Reilly is now an assistant district attorney. When Reilly is assigned the case of Mike Brennan (Nick Nolte), a popular detective who claims to have killed a Puerto Rican drug dealer in self-defense, everyone assumes that Al will come down on the side of Brennan. Instead, Al discovers that Brennan is corrupt and that the shooting is connected to a drug lord named Bobby Texador (Armand Assante). Bobby just happens to be married to Nancy (Jenny Lumet), who is Al’s ex-girlfriend.
Nobody was better at capturing the hustle and the gritty language of New York City politics than Sidney Lumet and some of the best scenes in Q&A are the ones where characters like Al, Brennan, and even Bobby are just hanging out and being the New Yorkers that they are. The dialogue in those scenes crackle with cynicism, as everyone knows better than to trust anything that anyone says. Coming after Serpico and The Prince of the City, this was Lumet’s third film to focus on corruption in the NYPD. It was a world that Lumet obviously knew well and he brings the eye for detail that a story like this needs to hold our attention.
Unfortunately, the plot of Q&A is often too dependent on melodrama and coincidence. Asking us to believe that Bobby would just happen to be married to Al’s ex is asking a lot. As opposed to the documentary feel of Serpico and especially The Prince of the City, Q&A feels like an extended episode of a cop show, with little of the moral ambiguity that Lumet brought to his best films. Q&A is good but its never as good as it could have been.
As an actress Jenny Lumet doesn’t really have the depth necessary to make Nancy a believable character. (Francis Ford Coppola wasn’t the only director to miscast his daughter in 1990.) But the rest of the cast is uniformly excellent, with Luis Guzman, Fyvush Finkel, Lee Richardson, Paul Calderon, Charles S. Dutton, and Patrick O’Neal all turning in good supporting performances. Of the leads, Hutton is often overshadowed by the more flamboyant performances of Nolte and Assante but, overall, he does a good job of anchoring the film’s story. Nolte is excellent in the role of Mike Brennan. It’s just too bad that the film eventually turns him into a standard movie villain.
Sidney Lumet would return to theme of New York political corruption with the underrated Night Falls On Manhattan.
Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Nominee: The Killing Fields (dir by Roland Joffe)
1984’s The Killing Fields opens in 1973. While America is distracted by the growing Watergate scandal and the final battles of the Vietnam War, the nation of Cambodia descends into chaos. Civil War has broken out between the Cambodian National Army and the Khmer Rouge, a savage communist group led by Pol Pot. In its desire to return Cambodia to “year zero,” the Khmer Rouge targets anyone who is considered to be too educated or too urban.
Sent to cover the war, journalist Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterston) meets up with his translator, Dith Pran (played, in an Oscar-winning performance, by Haing S. Ngor). For two years, Schanberg covers the war in Cambodia, taking pictures of bombed out cities, dead Cambodians, and the bullying teenagers who seem to make up the majority of the Khmer Rouge’s membership. The Khmer Rouge’s leadership may claim to be creating an equal society but it’s hard not to notice that they act like gangsters, posing with their cigarettes and making a great show over deciding who will live and who will die. In 1975, when it becomes apparent that the Khmer Rouge have won the war, the press and the diplomats all prepare to evacuate. Sydney and his colleagues are able to return to their home countries. Dith Prain’s family escape but Dith Pran himself is left behind in Cambodia where, disguising himself as a disabled beggar, he witnesses the horrors of the Khmer Rouge’s Year Zero.
The Killing Fields is an accidental anti-communist film. Director Roland Joffe, produced David Puttnam, and screenwriter Bruce Robinson were all men in the left and, in the film, Sydney Schanberg puts the blame for the rise of the Khmer Rouge directly on the American bombing campaign of the early 70s. The film somehow has the audacity to end with John Lennon’s Imagine, a song that epitomized the worst excesses of the Khmer Rouge’s philosophy, playing over the end credits.
I’ll be the first to admit that the film probably does have a point about the bombing of Cambodia. The chaos that followed the bombing undoubtedly helped the Khmer Rouge to both organize and to bring in new recruits. In this film, the Khmer Rouge commanders love to show off their power because, as Cambodians, they had previously been made to feel that they had no control over their destinies. However, in the scenes with Dith Pran faces the horrors of the reeducation camps and discovers the fields full of skulls and other human remains, the viewer is reminded that it takes more than confusion to lead to this type of concentrated brutality. It takes a group of people brainwashed by a destructive ideology.
(How destructive was the Khmer Rouge’s Maoist philosophy? The Khmer Rouge’s plan was to return Cambodia to being an agricultural society, one where the State stood in for both family and religion. To do so, cities were razed. People who were considered to be intellectuals and free thinkers were tortured and executed. Doctors were murdered. Having bad eyesight was considered to be a sign of intelligence and, as such, people who wore glasses were specifically targeted. As Dith Pran says in the film, the Cambodians who survived were told that they no longer had families, friends, or beliefs. Now they were to only worry only about serving the organization, the Angkar.)
It’s the scenes of Dith Pran in Cambodia that drive home the powerful anti-communist message that the filmmakers were perhaps not aware that they were delivering. Haing S. Ngor was not a professional actor when he played Dith Pran. Instead, he was a gynecologist and an obstetrician who, after the Khmer Rouge came to power, pretended to be dumb to survive. Like Dith Pran, he was sent to a reeducation camp and he eventually escaped by making his way through the area that Dith Pran called “the Killing Fields.” Unlike Dith Pran, Ngor’s family did not survive. (After being sent to work on a rice farm, his wife died in childbirth.) In the film, when we see Dith Pran discovering the Killing Fields for the first time, we are witnessing Haing Ngor recreating the moment that he discovered them. The pain and the horror in his eyes is not only Dith Pran’s but also Haing Ngor’s and every other Cambodian who was forced to flee their country to escape the Khmer Rouge. The film may blame America for the rise of the Khmer Rouge but Ngor’s performance makes it clear that only the Khmer Rouge can be blamed for what happened after they came to power.
It’s a powerful film, though I do think I would be remiss not to mention that Al Rockoff, the photographer played by John Malkovich in the film, has been very critical of the way that the film depicts both Sydney Schanberg and a scene where the journalists attempt to make a phony passport for Dith Pran. Indeed, the scenes with Schanberg back in New York are considerably less compelling than the scenes of Dith Pran fighting to survive in Cambodia. When the film’s version of Rockoff accuses Schanberg of using Dith Pran’s tragedy to advance his own career, it’s hard not to agree with him.
The film was nominated for Best Picture of 1984 but lost to Amadeus. Dr. Ngor did win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, becoming the second non-professional (after Harold Russell for The Best Years of Our Lives) to do so. Ngor went on the appear in a handful of films before being murdered in 1996. Three members of a street gang were convicted of the murdering Ngor while attempted to rob him. (Ngor was shot when, after giving them his Rolex, he refused to surrender a locket that contained a picture of his late wife.) In 2009, Kang Kek lew, a Khmer Rouge official on trial for war crimes, claimed that Ngor’s murder was actually ordered by Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge.
The Killing Field was obviously meant to be primarily critical of American foreign policy but, intentionally or not, it has since proven itself to be one of the strongest anti-communist films ever made.
The Academy Has Changed The Rules
The Academy has announced their new rules for the 99th Oscars. There are a few important changes.
To me, the biggest one is that actors can now be nominated twice in the same category. In the past, a performer could only be nominated for one film per category. (Occasionally, you might have someone nominated for both the lead category and the supporting category and this led to more than few instances of category fraud, where a leading performance would suddenly be listed as a supporting performance so that someone could get two nominations.) On a practical level, this means that if Eric Roberts gives two great lead performances this year, he could end up competing against himself for Best Actor. Or, more realistically, he might take all five slots in the Best Supporting Actor category.
AI actors are not eligible to be nominated. So, Val Kilmer will not be eligible for As Deep As The Grave.
AI-written screenplays are always not eligible to be nominated and I’m sure this rule will not lead to any shadowy whisper campaigns once awards season begins. (Hopefully, the sarcasm was noted.)
Best International Feature will no longer be awarded to the winner’s country of origin. Instead, it will be awarded to the film’s director. As well, films that win awards at a select group of international film festivals will be eligible for consideration as well. I imagine this decision was made to get around the politics of the various submission committees. No longer will a Palme d’Or winner be ineligible just because it was made by someone on the outs with their country’s current government.
Here are all the rule changes:
AWARDS RULES AND CAMPAIGN PROMOTIONAL REGULATIONS
APPROVED FOR 99TH OSCARS®
Additional Submission Key Dates Announced
LOS ANGELES, CA – The Academy’s Board of Governors has approved awards rules, inclusion standards and campaign promotional regulations for the 99th Academy Awards®.
For Academy Awards consideration, a feature film must have a qualifying theatrical release between January 1, 2026, and December 31, 2026.
Substantive awards rules changes include:
In the Acting category, actors may be nominated for multiple performances in the same category if those performances place in the top five votes, which aligns with achievements in other award categories.
Additionally, in the Acting category, only roles credited in the film’s legal billing and demonstrably performed by humans with their consent will be considered eligible.
In the Casting category, the number of statuettes awarded will increase from a maximum of two to a maximum of three statuettes.
In the Cinematography category, the preliminary voting round will produce a shortlist of 20 films rather than 10-20.
In the International Feature Film category, there are now two ways to submit a film for consideration. In addition to a film being submitted as an official selection by a country or region via the Academy-approved Selection Committees, a non-English language film can now be submitted for consideration by winning a qualifying award at an international film festival as specified in the International Feature Film Award Qualifying Festival List. Qualifying festivals for the 99th Oscars® are the Berlin International Film Festival (Golden Bear for Best Film), Busan International Film Festival (Busan Award – Best Film Award), Cannes Film Festival (Palme d’Or), Sundance Film Festival (World Cinema Grand Jury Prize), Toronto International Film Festival (Platform Award) and Venice International Film Festival (Golden Lion).
Additionally, in the International Feature Film category, the film will be credited as the nominee rather than the country or region, and the award will be accepted by the director on behalf of the film’s creative team. The director’s name will be listed on the statuette plaque after the film title and, if applicable, the country or region.
In the Makeup and Hairstyling category, Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Branch members must attend at least one of the two final branch meetings (roundtables) to be eligible to vote in the preliminary round.
In the Original Song category, the rules clarify a song’s eligibility when based on its placement in the end credits. For songs submitted as the first new music cue once the end credits begin, the video clip must include the last 15 seconds of the film before the credits begin.
In the Visual Effects category, all Academy members must view the three-minute Before and After reels from the Visual Effects Bake-Off to be eligible to vote in the final round.
In the Writing categories, the rules codify that screenplays must be human-authored to be eligible.
For Governors Awards recipients, a minimum of three disciplines must be represented in a given Awards year.
Under Eligibility (Rule Two) regarding Generative Artificial Intelligence, the Academy reserves the right to request more information about the nature of the use and human authorship.
Awards submission deadlines and additional key dates are as follows:
Thursday, August 13, 2026: First submission deadline for Animated Short Film, Documentary Feature Film, Documentary Short Film and Live Action Short Film categories
Thursday, September 17, 2026: First submission deadline for General Entry categories, Animated Feature Film, Best Picture and Representation and Inclusion Standards Entry (RAISE) form
Wednesday, September 30, 2026: Submission deadline for International Feature Film
Thursday, October 8, 2026: Final submission deadline for Animated Short Film, Documentary Short Film and Live Action Short Film categories
Wednesday, October 14, 2026: Submission deadline for Music (Original Song)
Thursday, October 15, 2026: Final submission deadline for Documentary Feature Film
Wednesday, November 4, 2026: Submission deadline for Music (Original Score)
Thursday, November 12, 2026: Final submission deadline for General Entry categories, Animated Feature Film, Best Picture and Representation and Inclusion Standards Entry (RAISE) form
January 8 – 10, 2027: Casting, Makeup and Hairstyling, Sound and Visual Effects voting events (bake-offs)
Through the Shattered Lens 