Pic of the Day: ♫ “There goes the baker with his tray like always / The same old bread and rolls to sell / Every morning just the same / Since the morning that we came / To this poor, provincial town / “Good morning, Belle” / “Morning, monsieur” / “Where are you off to?” / “The bookshop, I just finished the most wonderful story. About a beanstalk and an ogre and a-“ / “That’s nice. Marie, the baguettes, hurry up” / Look, there she goes, that girl is strange, no question / Dazed and distracted, can’t you tell? / Never part of any crowd / ‘Cause her head’s up on some cloud / No denying, she’s a funny girl, that Belle.” ♫ (35th anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “What did you think this thing was gonna be? A revolution by consensus where we all sat down and agreed over a cup of coffee?” (45th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “So you’re the guy with the case full of monsters, huh?” “News travels fast.” (10th Anniversary)
And the Nominees Are… (2025)
We have our heading.
He said, having seen way to many intro videos from the DVDs of his youth.
It’s a shame physical media is a thing of the past.
Anyway, we’ve got nominees. What an interesting outcome. Just straight up nominated stuff across the board. That’s one way to do it.
I haven’t really looked at things on a macro level yet. Just sort of looked at each individual category. So I’m curious how this is going to look to me now from the perspective of, “So okay… what’s going to win now?” Also very fascinated to come back to this in a week once we have all the precursors we didn’t have to see what would have changed had we known them ahead of time. (more…)
Pic of the Day: “What did he do?” “He was in the oil business.” “Wrong. I know exactly how Doc made his living, and the closest he ever came to the oil business was when he filled up at the friendly neighborhood gas station.” (50th Anniversary)
Oscars 2025: The B+ Nominations Ballot
’bout that time again. Gonna do the thing.
It tickles me to no end that the Academy looks to be doubling down on non-mainstream choices at the top. They did all this stuff to try to expand the field to get higher profile stuff in to placate those looking to watch the show for entertainment value and the voters are simply putting in more foreign films instead because the American studio system is committed to putting out garbage most of the time. So now there’s even less for the people who only watch a couple of movies a year and nothing out of the realm of the conventional. I love it. I love it the way Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw loves Black girls.
This also means that the deliberate expansion of the voting body the Academy began however many years ago has bore fruit in that people are legitimately picking the movies they liked best and aren’t just falling in line with what studio PR teams tell them are the best (and also reflects that a younger overall demographic is going to have broader tastes than the old guard). Some still will still always get through, but the notion that it is highly likely we’ll have a Best Picture list with multiple foreign nominees on it this year and not Avatar or Wicked absolutely thrills me.
Anyway, time to pick nominees. (more…)
Pic of the Day: “Okay, so you had a dream about this place. Tell me.” “Well, it’s the second one I’ve had, but they’re both the same. They start out that I’m in here, but it’s not day or night. It’s kind of half-night, you know? But it looks just like this… except for the light. And… I’m scared like I can’t tell you. Of all people, you’re standing right over there… by that counter. You’re in both dreams and you’re scared too. I get even more frightened when I see how afraid you are and then I realize what it is. There’s a man… in back of this place. He’s the one who’s doing it. I can see him through the wall. I can see his face. I hope that I never see that face, ever, outside of a dream.” (25th Anniversary)
Oscars 2025: My Nominations Ballot
Best Picture
Hamnet
It Was Just an Accident
Marty Supreme
Nouvelle Vague
One Battle After Another
The Phoenician Scheme
The Secret Agent
Sentimental Value
Sinners
Train Dreams (more…)
Pic of the Day: “I’m seeing something that was always hidden. I’m involved in a mystery. I’m in the middle – of a mystery. And it’s all secret.” (40th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “You can’t watch a girl hard enough to keep her good if she don’t want to be.” (95th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think we could do it.” “To tell you the truth, neither did I.” (65th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “So Hanna, is your mum and Dad still together?” “My mother is dead.” “Nice one, Dad.” “I’m sorry to hear that. I lost my mum when I was very young, so…” “It’s all right. It happened a long time ago.” “Hanna, what did your mum die of?” “Three bullets.” (15th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “What part of ‘I want the sausage and the bun dead, if you see them, come and get me. And if I found out that you didn’t come and get me, or if you couldn’t find them, I’ll fucking kill your ass’ did you not understand, Tequila?” “Uh, it’s a pretty confusing sentence, to be honest.” (10th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “Seems like we always spend the best part of our time just saying goodbye.” (75th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “A man’s heart aches seeing his young’uns face the world, knowing they got to get their insides tore out the way his was tore.” (80th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “Robin, listen to these riddles. Tell me if you interpret them as l do. One. What has yellow skin and writes?” “A ball-point banana!” “Right. Two. What people are always in a hurry?” “Rushing people? Russians!” “Right again. Now, what would you say they mean?” “Banana. Russian. I’ve got it! Someone Russian is going to slip on a banana peel and break their neck!” “Precisely, Robin!” (60th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “Your boss, Armansky, he tells me you only do jobs that interest you. So I suppose I should be flattered. You gonna sit down? He also says that you’re the one he goes to when the job is sensitive. That’s the word he used. Sensitive. I’m gonna use illegal. Because that’s what it was when you hacked into my computer. I’m not gonna do anything about that. I could, but I won’t. What I’m gonna do is tell you a story and if it entertains you maybe you’ll decide to help me research further. And if not, I’ll do the washing up and you’ll never see me again. Here, you should eat that.” “What kind of research?” “Lisbeth. Oh, can I call you Lisbeth? I want you to help me catch a killer of women.” (15th Anniversary)
B+ Movie Blog 