Oscar Film Journal: Lion (2016)

Welcome to another entry in the vaunted Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!  When I started this project five years ago I'd seen 214 Best Pic nominees, and since that time I've viewed an additional 150.  Pretty cool, huh?

We're headed back to the mid-teens for one of the less-talked about Best Picture nominees of 2016, one that I kept putting off for whatever reason, the Garth Davis-helmed biographical drama Lion, starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman.  Based on actual events, Lion is the tale of a boy named Saroo from a tiny village in India, who in 1986 got separated from his family when he fell asleep on an empty train one night, waking up hundreds of miles away in a different region of the country with an entirely different language.  After months of living on the streets he was brought to the police by a concerned citizen and placed in an overcrowded orphanage, and ultimately adopted by an Australian couple.  Twenty years later as an adult, Saroo is on his way to a promising career in the hotel business, but finds himself suddenly obsessed with reconnecting with the life he'd left behind.  The problem is he never learned his mother's full name, nor the correct name of his village, and the train stop he remembers is one of hundreds in the region.

98th Academy Awards Preview & Predictions

Well it's that time again.  Man, seems like we just did this, hard to believe the Oscars are already upon us again.  This is the eleventh time Mr. Drinan and I go head-to-head in predicting the ceremony.  Let's get to it!

Glad to see Conan O'Brien is back to host again, he did a great job last year, particularly in his opening musical number "I Won't Waste Time."  Cracked me up.  Conan is one of the kings of stupid humor and I'm totally here for it.  

There are some fine films on the docket to win some gold, a few of them pretty important ones given the current state of affairs in this dump.  The world, particularly America, needs movies that make a statement perhaps more than it ever has.  So it's good to see some of these films get the recognition they deserve.  Oh, and to everyone whining about the winners making political statements in their acceptance speech?  Waaaaah.  The only reason you're crying about this is because they aren't making statements you agree with, and you know it.  Art is quite often political and it has the power to change the world.  Either come along for the ride or don't, but don't bitch about it.

Sinners has made Oscar history with a staggering SIXTEEN nominations, breaking All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land's shared record of fourteen.  Quite an historic feat, particularly for a horror film.  The last horror movie the Academy took such notice of was The Exorcist.

I cannot thank the Academy enough for passing over Avatar: Fire and Ash so I don't have to watch it.  Jeezus H. Christ, those movies are fucking boring.

We also have a brand new category this year in Best Casting.  Good to see those folks finally acknowledged.  Years ago I had friends tell me I should've been a casting director when I predicted Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne and Edward Norton as Bruce Banner.  Apparently I have a gift for casting characters named Bruce.

Anyway, let's get to the picks..... 

Best Picture

Bugonia

F1

Frankenstein

Hamnet

Marty Supreme

One Battle After Another

The Secret Agent

Sentimental Value

Sinners

Train Dreams

Justin: I'm in pretty good shape going into this, having seen seven of the ten.  Hamnet is now on Peacock so I'm hoping to catch that before Sunday.  Marty Supreme will be on HBO Max but not until May it looks like, and I have no idea when The Secret Agent will be free to stream.  Anyway this looks to be another case of the Academy actually agreeing with me on what the best film of the year is, as all signs point to Paul Thomas Anderson's fourth (by my count) masterwork, One Battle After Another taking home the big one.  This film is fantastic and a much needed kick in the ass to our current status quo.  It's on HBO Max so go watch it if you haven't.

Pick: One Battle After Another

Mike: THE DRAMA STARTS EARLY FOLKS! One Battle After Another has certainly been the popular pick for this award ever since it was released, and for good reason. It’s a great film; dramatic yet hilarious, tense and ridiculous, emotional yet politically sharp. The movie has steamrolled all the pre-cursor award shows and is set up with one of the most historically impressive award winning resumes going into the Academy Awards. HOWEVER! Sinners possesses a small data point that makes this award intriguing. It won the SAG Ensemble award, ACE Award, and is probably going to win the WGA Original Screenplay. No film has had those three awards and lost the Best Picture category, with the lone exception being CODA. I loved both movies, but I felt as if I had seen films like One Battle After Another before. Sinners? I felt as if I had never seen that kind of movie before. It’s splitting hairs at this point but I have to follow my heart on this one.

Pick: Sinners

Oscar Film Journal: The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

And we're back with another Oscar Film Journal entry, here at Enuffa.com!

Strap in for a trip to the 1940s, specifically the first year of that decade, for a look at John Ford's acclaimed adaptation of John Steinbeck's Pulitzer-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath.  Starring Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell and John Carradine, TGOW is the story of a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers who lose their farm to mechanization and are forced to relocate to California to find work.  Like the novel, this film is rife with sociopolitical commentary and takes a staunch pro-worker stance, depicting as its antagonists uncaring landowners, brutal deputized police, and a system that chews up and spits out the little guy.  Some classics never age.

We begin the story with Tom Joad (Fonda), one of the family's adult sons, who's just been released from prison on parole after accidentally killing a man in a bar fight.  He hitchhikes home to find his farmhouse deserted, and a neighbor informs him the wealthy landowners have run everyone off their farms to make way for new, more efficient machinery.  Tom finds the rest of his family nearby at his uncle's house, but that house is also set to be bulldozed the next day.  The family loads up their dilapidated jalopy and heads west to California, having received a handbill advertising hundreds of available farming jobs.  Of course they soon learn that thousands of those handbills were distributed, and jobs in California are now just as scarce as in Oklahoma.  

The History of WWE WrestleMania: III

The one edition that's totally critic-proof....

Pontiac Silverdome - 3/29/87

Now we're talkin'.  WrestleMania III was, and possibly still is, the biggest wrestling supercard of all time.  Arguably no single wrestling match has carried the sheer magnitude or mainstream appeal of Hogan vs. Andre.  There's a consensus among wrestling fans who grew up with this show: When it comes to WrestleMania III, star ratings need not apply.

Let's be honest, Hogan vs. Andre is a terrible, terrible match from an in-ring standpoint.  Had that been Dan Spivey vs. Big John Studd performing the exact same match, it would've been booed like X-Pac and ranked high on the all-time DUD list.  But somehow the mediocre Hogan and the damn near immobile Andre captured the imagination of everyone on that night, and delivered the best and most memorable awful match in history which climaxed with The Bodyslam Heard 'Round the World.

On the other end of the workrate spectrum lay the #2 draw of the night, Randy Savage vs. Ricky Steamboat.  What can I say that hasn't been said already?  It's an all-time classic; a near-perfect match that has stood the test of time and then some. 'Mania 3 is remembered just as much for this match as for Hogan-Andre, and it became the prototype for the WWF-style five-star match.  Sadly Steamboat's planned long-term Intercontinental Title run was derailed when he asked for a reduced schedule to focus on his newborn son, and this would be his last great WWF match.

Goddamn this match is 17 kinds of awesome.

The History of WWE WrestleMania: 2

For the first and only time, WrestleMania emanates from multiple venues....

Nassau Coliseum/Rosemont Horizon/L.A. Sports Arena - 4/7/86

'Mania 2 was possibly the strangest of them all.  It took place from three different locations on a Monday(!) night.  The multi-venue format was clearly in response to Jim Crockett's Starrcade '85 being broadcast from two venues a few months earlier.  Three is bigger than two I guess, so Vince opted for a live one-hour card from three different time zones.  Unfortunately this made for a rather uneven show, and worse, the commentary suffered as the A-crew was split up and paired with B-level commentators and/or celebrities who knew nothing about the product.

Each hour of the show featured a main event match, preceded by three undercard matches (some of which were oddly truncated to the point that their inclusion at all is rather baffling).

The Nassau portion of the show was easily the weakest, headlined by a worked boxing match between Piper and Mr. T.  There is little in the sports-entertainment business that is less exciting to me than pretend boxing.  It simply doesn't work, especially when neither participant is particularly good at it.  Neither of them looked like legitimate fighters and the match was little more than a barrage of pulled punches.  An actual wrestling match could have been much more entertaining.

Wow, this stunk...

The first third of the show was notable for the WrestleMania debuts of Randy Savage and Jake Roberts, neither of whom really got to show what they were capable of.  The opening match on this show was probably the most disappointing, as on paper Don Muraco vs. Paul Orndorff looks pretty good.  Sadly they were only given about 4 minutes and they went to a rushed double countout.  Savage's match was by default the best of the Nassau portion, but it was little more than a comedic spectacle as his opponent George "The Animal" Steele was so uncontrollable.

The History of WWE WrestleMania: I

Hello and welcome to this special Enuffa.com blog, The History of WrestleMania!  This series will discuss and dissect all 36 previous installments of the annual supercard and determine what I feel were the highlights and lowlights each year.

WrestleMania season is usually one of my favorite times of the year, and I always find myself reflecting back on the storied history of this great spectacle.  I think about some of my favorite 'Mania matches, what makes a great 'Mania card, and why some shows were so successful while others really don't deserve to fall under the WrestleMania banner.  For the record, I'm writing this piece completely from memory, which should give you some idea of how sad and twisted I am.

So without further prattling on, let's get to it.

Madison Square Garden - 3/31/85

This of course was the show that started it all.  The great McMahon gamble that paid off not in spades, but truckloads of money.  This was one of the first truly mainstream wrestling events on a national scale, and the hype allowed the WWF to break into the pop culture vernacular.

Surprisingly though, the inaugural 'Mania card more resembled a house show than a true supercard.  For one thing, having a tag team match as the main event rather than a WWF Title match seems like such an odd choice.  Hulk Hogan's ongoing feud with Roddy Piper was such a draw it seems like a singles match for the belt would be the natural main event.  However the WWF put that match on MTV that February as a way to hype 'Mania.  Clearly it worked, but it made for kind of a watered-down main event for the supercard.  Hogan/Mr. T vs. Piper/Orndorff was fine for what it was, but I hardly consider it a classic.

I always dug this poster for some reason.
These two guys together would beat Rocky Balboa's ass!

This match also began the trend of celebrities getting involved in big money matches as actual competitors.  It occurs to me that the match would've been greatly improved by swapping T out for Jimmy Snuka.  But I suppose seeing T wrestle was part of the draw.  Mr. T certainly looked like he could hang in the ring with the actual wrestlers but I've always felt that having celebs wrestle damages the business somewhat.  More on that later....

The show was also not very stacked for such a marquee event.  To be fair, the WWF's roster would expand considerably after this show (Savage and Jake would arrive, the Hart Foundation and the British Bulldogs would form).  Elsewhere on the card we had Andre the Giant vs. Big John Studd in a bodyslam challenge (again, this felt watered-down since it wasn't a traditional wrestling match but ended when one man bodyslammed the other) which aside from the spectacle was just two nearly immobile guys plodding through a short match.

The first 'Mania also inexplicably featured several glorified squashes.  Tito Santana vs. The Executioner opened the show and was roughly the kind of match you'd see on Wrestling Challenge.  King Kong Bundy vs. S.D. Jones and Ricky Steamboat vs. Matt Borne also fell into that category.  Hardly worthy of the biggest show of all-time (at that point anyway).

First match in WrestleMania history

Oscar Film Journal: Sentimental Value (2025)

Welcome back to the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!  Seven 2025 nominees down, three to go...

Today I'm looking at Joachim Trier's latest opus, Sentimental Value, a Norwegian family drama of strained parent-child relationships starring Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgard, and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as a father and his two adult daughters who become reacquainted after the death of the mother.  We learn via the film's engaging prologue that the parents spent a lot of time screaming at each other, severely damaging the older daughter Nora (Reinsve), who now has trouble getting close to anyone.  The father (Skarsgard) left, only occasionally reconnecting with his children over the following decades, and not very successfully.  

In the present, Nora is now an accomplished theater and television actress, her younger sister Agnes (Lilleaas) did some acting as a child, having starred in one of her father's acclaimed films, but has since left the business.  The father Gustav has enjoyed a long directorial career but hasn't made a feature in fifteen years and now wants to reclaim the family home (which technically on paper still belongs to him).  Not only that, he's written a new screenplay, the best of his career, and wants Nora to star in it.  But Nora rejects the olive branch, refusing to even read the script, and Gustav ends up instead casting famous American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), while also agreeing to several artistic compromises in order to get Netflix to finance the project.