Nat'l Society of Film Critics Votes Nickel Boys Top PIc

Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson in Nickel Boys,
the National Society of
Film Critics' pick for Best Picture of 2024.
Credit: Amazon/MGM Studios

Once again, the National Society of Film Critics has broken from the pack of movie award-dispensing groups and chosen Nickel Boys, based on Colson Whitehead's 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, as the Best Picture of 2024. Anora is the choice of the Boston and Los Angeles film critics while The Brutalist was the favorite of the NY scribe and Wicked won at the National Board of Review. Marianne Jean-Bapiste and Michelle Austin who plays very different sisters in Hard Truths were voted Best Actress and Supporting Actress. Jean-Bapiste has won similar prizes from the NY and LA critics, taking the triple crown of major reviewers' award. Colman Domingo was named Best Actor for Sing Sing and Kieran Culkin continued his dominance of the Supporting Actor field, winning for A Real Pain for which Jesse Eisenberg won for Best Original Screenplay.

Jeopardy Contestants Don't Know Garbo

None of the Jeopardy contestants
could identify Greta Garbo.
What is happening to our culture?

On a recent episode of Jeopardy, the contestants were asked to identify the star of the film version of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie--with her picture. One guessed Marlene Dietrich, another Mae West. No one knew the correct answer: Greta Garbo. This sent shockwaves through the Internet and hundreds--presumably older people--posted their amazement on social media.  

How could anyone not know one of the most famous stars of Hollywood's Golden Age? It's part of a trend. More and more younger Jeopardy contestants seem to be totally ignorant of pop culture prior to 1980. Jeopardy contestants are supposed to be smart and knowledgable about arcane subjects such as Ancient History, Geography, and Literature.

The reason is this: I am 65. When I was growing up we only had 3 network TV channels, 1 PBS channel and 3 local UHF channels (17, 29 and 48 in Philadelphia). Those channels filled their extra time with old movies, sometimes on what was locally known as the Late, Late Show. So I grew up familiar with the stars of old Hollywood and reruns of shows from the 1950s and early 1960s. The younger generations of Jeopardy contestants grew up with an infinite choice of cable channels, with only TCM and AMC (when it first started) showing the old films. Their choices were so much broader, they weren't forced to try the old movies. When I taught high school, my students had the added variety of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, which offered very little classic film programming. (The only exception is Max, connected to TCM). The only old stars my students knew were Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. Garbo, Cary Grant, John Wayne, Elizabeth Taylor, even Lily Tomlin--Never heard of 'em. Many of the kids today don't even watch TV as we knew it. They look at clips on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram or they play endless video games on their phones.

I was shocked during an episode of The Amazing Race when two of the younger contestants said they'd never heard of Elizabeth Taylor. (The leg was in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and they had to find the villa where Taylor and her then-husband Richard Burton would always stay. The Burtons were not just famous movie stars when I was a kid, they were they most famous people on Earth. Strange how quickly our idols can be forgotten.) 

To be fair, outside of Taylor Swift and a few others, I don't know any of the pop/rap/country music hot names of today. Amazon Prime has started running Pop Culture Jeopardy hosted by Colin Jost and on average I only know half of the answers.

I think the younger people are missing so much by not watching these classic old films. 

Pop Culture Jeopardy

Book Review: Sense and Sensibility

(Borrowed from the Jackson Heights Library.) After viewing a recent Netflix adaptation of Persuasion, I got the hankering to return to Jane Austen and continue to read the 100 books that the BBC says I should before I die. I'm up to 40 or so. After reading Austen's first published work, I appreciated Emma Thompson's 1995 screenplay adaptation all the more. Thompson crafted cinematic scenes detailing conflict and action. The book is an entirely different experience with most of the action conveyed through verbose 19th century dialogue and narration. I had to go back and re-read several passages to straighten out the relations of step-siblings, cousins, mothers- and fathers-in-law, etc. One especially confusing element was that apparently in 1811 England, the term step-mother and mother-in-law were interchangeable. Given the number of second marriages in the book, it grew quite confusing as to who was related to who, who was married to who and who was whose son or daughter or only married to their mother or father. In any event, the complex courtships and disappointments of the Dashwood sisters were absorbing. Austen's theme of common sense at odds with overly emotional responses to life (or sensibility as it was termed then) is powerfully delivered as Elinor and Marianne deal with misfortune in strikingly different ways. A subtler and deeper novel than Pride and Prejudice.