Cinemascope

Isn't Day-Lewis notoriously reclusive? I mean, it'd be great if he said he would do it, of course.

I take it you mean you bought it from a private seller through amazon.com?

And just for what it's worth I really wanted to enjoy Pocketful of Miracles but the memory of Capra's earlier Lady for a Day kept coming up... I still prefer his first take on the story.

*double post*

I'd go with -- Gilda The Fastest Gun Alive The Teahouse of the August Moon The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Superman

Have you seen the X-Files movies?

Well at least I don't go around pretending I'm something I'm not (unlike you).

I like him better in supporting roles, like Four Weddings and a Funeral.

She really looks old in that last photo

I wish Memory of Justice was either released on video or played more often on television. Especially in these war-happy times.

Well that's just it. It doesn't follow any logic... sometimes really good performances can get lost in the shuffle. Sometimes it's just being nominated for a realy good performance, but with someone else who stands out even more. Or it could be popularity -- only the Academy voters know for sure. That's why it doesn't make sense to assume there is a positive correlation between talent and getting an Oscar... and why many of us have fun with it but don't take it very seriously.

And you post this without so much as a *spoiler* warning? Some people may still not have watched all of the shows...

Gee whiz SueSue, is there anything about which you don't agree with 001?

Well, I imagine they don't watch the program unless either they're thick-skinned or frankly don't really care much about who gets or doesn't get it. I like Glenn Ford a lot but I'm not sure he "deserved" the Oscar more than those who got it... again, because it isn't necessarily a true measure of talent, but it also includes popularity and other factors.

oh, that's sweet! I hope she enjoys it

I feel we're about to get inundated with McClerie photos

mongo, You wouldn't happen to know if the 1944 Brazil has ever been shown on TCM?

Yes, I would feel the same way in his shoes. That silly golden thing is a bit overrated. Nice for those that got one (or more) but a lot of Hollywood legends are still, well, legendary even if they never won one.

"... and don't forget the magic words...." :0

MissG, you took the words right out of my mouth! Oh and while we're at it why not add Captains of the Clouds and Dive Bomber.

Well, sure, he couldn't dance in his next movie with a broken leg!

Not when hit with a saccharine overdose!

And this month's "Captain Obvious" award goes to.......

In so many cases, stardom may be fleeting, but true talent is not. There are quite a few talented performers who, for whatever personal reason(s) chose not to work non-stop until they kicked the bucket. They were under no obligation to entertain us to our heart's content, we should at least be grateful that we saw some of their work.

Thought some of y'all might get a chuckle out of this.... click the link or just read on. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/02/DDGOAOD3BB1.DTL Death of a DVD player sings a siren song of consumption Mark Morford Friday, March 2, 2007 This much I remember clearly: "Howl's Moving Castle" is one truly astonishing, beautiful piece of anime filmmaking, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. The rest of this tale is, shall we say, a bit of a frightening blur. Here's how it went down: Miyazaki's finest was innocently playing on my aging Toshiba DVD player just the other night, when suddenly the device appeared to receive some sort of final instructions from the gods of throwaway technology and the disc began to skip, the little laser began to jump, and the machine hissed and spit and screamed and abruptly froze for good, committing some sort of gizmo suicide, leaving me staring at a blank screen just as the ending credits were beginning to roll. It was, I now realize, a sign. It was a moment of reckoning, the Thing That Changes Everything. And lo, it was expensive. I acted quickly. I did the right thing. Like any good American, I immediately went online to research reviews and prices of new DVD players -- which is, I now realize, a bit like saying I was looking into getting a nice rotary telephone for the den, because apparently they don't actually make DVD players anymore, not really, not if you know anything about recent advances in the silly overwhelming universe that is home theater A/V gizmology, which I sort of don't but like to think I do and which, not ironically, is almost exactly what being a columnist is all about. Shh. DVD players are, apparently, quite dead. What manufacturers make now are sleek, slim, upconverting DVD recorders that can also play MP3s and photo CDs and purify the air and make fresh pasta and accept memory cards from your digital camera because, well, doesn't everything? Even the most basic DVD models are now designed to upconvert (i.e., improve and enhance) low-resolution DVD signals to higher resolution, so "Casino Royale" will look much better on all those giant, flat-panel, high-def sets that just about everyone (except, apparently, me) is buying by the truckload, and, by the way, if you really must have something that merely plays DVDs (pshaw, peasant), you can easily drive your El Camino over to Wal-Mart and you and your mullet can stroll down the electronics aisle, where they practically throw a free DVD player at you just for breathing and walking upright at the same time. This is when I felt it. The excitement, the creepy consumerist thrill. I thought: "Hey, this might be fun!" I thought: "Gizmos, gizmos, gizmos!" I realized: "Oh holy hell, this cannot end well." Then, the rationalizations: "Why invest in a fancy new DVD recorder designed for HD sets when all I have is a meek, 27-inch, solid-state Toshiba stuck way back in 1998, a set that (I quickly glean, thank you, Internet) is going for about 100 bucks on Craigslist, with a remote control that looks like it was made by drunken elves, and suddenly it seems like something you'd find in an Arizona retirement home?" Followed by: "Is it not time to bite the financial bullet and haul in one of those huge, groin-tingling, flat-panel televisions that I don't really need, one that will take up half my living room and scare small animals and look about right when viewed from 15 feet away but can actually cause severe retinal damage even when it's turned off and you're in another city, asleep? I do believe it is." And just like that, I'm poring over the reviews of various alluring flat panels, gorging on juicy dumb gobs of home theater jargon, all about LCD versus plasma, HD-DVD versus Blu-ray, backlights and HDMI and 1080p and aspect ratios and an entire meaty-geeky stew of obnoxious, brain-scrambling terminology of a kind that, as it plows into your skull, you can veritably feel how it cruelly shoves out more vital information in your life. And, lo, it was tantalizing. I wish I could say it stopped there. Because this is when I noticed how these big, awkward, flat-panel slabs can easily weigh upward of 120 pounds and, hence, they simply don't fit comfortably into your normal shelving units or in your average living area, essentially mandating a serious reconfiguration of your entire living space. I stand up. I step into the living room. I look with fresh eyes at my entire innocent TV-audio setup, note how my old, lumbering television now looks tiny and lost and just a little sad. Suddenly, my beloved Costco industrial metal shelving unit screams out "college dorm," and the mad tangle of barely hidden wires whimpers "Radio Shack bacchanalia," and before I know it, the entire living room is mocking me for not paying sufficient attention to it this past, oh, decade. And boom, just like that, I'm locked into a drooling reverie/Dwell magazine fantasia involving a sweet new home theater setup and a roomful of sleek, sexy, modern furniture and maybe a nice leather lounge chair and a decent lamp and, hey, isn't it about time for a real rug? My brain swam. My credit card trembled. My personal demon of wanton consumerism laughed like Britney on meth, stabbing at my very soul like it was tenderizing veal. My DVD porn collection took one look at the prospect of that 40-inch Sony Bravia LCD and giggled. This was, I realized, getting out of control. Thankfully, just then, the voice of reason kicked in, straining for some balance. It reminded me that I don't really watch a lot of TV, nor am I a movie buff, and that my audio needs are already quite nicely met by an increasingly ludicrous iTunes collection. Hence, do I really need such ridiculous, expensive, macho, silly things, and, by the way, don't I want to save all that money for a down payment on a little condo of my own somewhere someday soon? And with that, the meltdown was complete. Because, really, why invest in a new DVD recorder when what I really need is a new HDTV costing 10 times as much, and why buy that when I can spend five times more and get a new living room to go along with it and, oh my God, why do that when I can head to the bank and take out a soul-curdling loan and dump 750K on a 900-square-foot hunk of cheaply built industrial loft condo in San Francisco where I would enjoy almost no greenery and no real neighborhood and the condo association wouldn't let me paint my door any color but beige and, by the way, I still wouldn't have the damnable DVD recorder or a sweet new HDTV so I could watch "Casino Royale" or maybe "Club Jenna's Casting Couch Part I" in peace? Ah, life. It just gets so damned complicated. Now, where were those flat-panel LCD reviews again? Mark Morford columns with inset links to related material can be found at sfgate.com/columnists/morford. Mark Morford's column appears Wednesdays and Fridays in Datebook and on sfgate.com. E-mail him at mmorford@sfgate.com.