All Movie Talk, Episode 17

Show contents, with start times:

• Year In Review: 2006 (0:23)
  • Oscar 2006 Nominations Note (1:03)
  • Oscar 2005 Controversy (1:55)
  • A Year In Transition (5:33)
  • Disney and Pixar (20:53)
  • Summer Movies (26:36)
  • Snakes On a Plane (33:54)
  • Fall Movies (37:05)
  • Necrology (41:08)
• Sequel/Remake Round-Up: 2007 (50:00)
• Closing: Preview of Next Week (60:13)

Show Notes:

• Oscar 2006 Nominations Note
  
  The nominations were announced today. We'll have more on this in next week's show.
  
  
• Oscar 2005 Controversy
  
  When Crash beat out Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture, it caused considerable controversy. Some felt that Crash was a horrible movie, while others felt that Brokeback was denied because of homophobia among the Academy (Annie Proulx, who wrote the story the movie was based on, complained about the experience in an article for The Guardian).
  
  
• A Year In Transition
  
  This was the year that Blu Ray and HD-DVD hit the market, offering the latest format war for consumers. Bubble became one of the first movies to be released on DVD just a few days after it was (barely) released into theaters. Apple and Amazon got into the movie download business. What's it all mean? We don't know exactly, but it doesn't seem like anyone does.
  
  
• Disney and Pixar
  
  On Jan. 24, Disney announced it was buying Pixar. This put some key Pixar people in management positions at Disney, and it is our hope that Pixar will be able to maintain its strong creative output while also helping to get Disney back on track.
  
  
• Summer Movies
  
  Superman Returned, the X-Men did their thing, and the Brett Ratner film was perceived to be more succesful than Bryan Singer's.
  
  
• Snakes On a Plane
  
  We quoted imaginary dialogue from it for more than a year before it came out, but who actually went to see Snakes on a Plane? Whether it's an example of how to screw up marketing buzz by holding something back for too long or just an example of people not being all that interested in watching Samuel L. Jackson fight snakes, the movie didn't really light up the record books the way some thought it might.
  
  
• Fall Movies
  
  We've discussed fall movies heavily in our Oscar Watch segments (and in our Oscar blog entries; we've also reviewed several of them).
  
  Of particular interest was the surprise success of Borat, a movie based on an obscure TV show. The other really interesting story is the release of Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, two movies released within months of each other, that cover the same war.
  
  
• Necrology
  
  We lost a lot of greats this year, including:
  
  
  • The director Robert Altman, the man behind movies such as MASH (1970) and The Player (1992).
  • Don Knotts, the actor famous for The Andy Griffith Show.
  • Actress Shelley Winters, a two-time Oscar winner.
  • Actor Peter Boyle.
  • Chris Penn, an actor and younger brother of Sean Penn.
  • Jack Warden, another great character actor whose name you may not know but whose face you probably would.
  • Maureen Stapleton, an Oscar winner and a great character actress.
  • Steve Irwin, known better as The Crocodile Hunter.
  • James Brown, the hardest working man in show business.