#postbellum

[guardianofthemultiverses]

Happy Holidays, from our families to yours. Wishing you a safe and happy holiday this year!

art, Sentinaltale, Greytale, Undersung (c) Me

All others belong to their respective Creators

[arerona]

Kele(Sans) and Akando(Papyrus) 

[fauvester]

dr bashir and his brood of postwar hatchlings…

[pinejay]

so many killer lines in this podcast my god i always forget. every sentence a work of art (for the first 3 seasons). i think hester wells is still my fav insane weird lesbian character ever

[tnott]

[ Postbellum Holiday ]

open to Draco

Theodora shifted her tray of pecan tarts from one arm to the other, resting it against her hip as she knocked on the front door of Malfoy Manor. A rucksack was slung over one shoulder, containing her toothbrush, her comb, several changes of clothes, and other necessities – as well as a gift for Draco, of course.

His invitation to stay had been a blessing. It would be nice not to spend the holiday alone, and their plans meant that when her mother’s sister owled her a few days later with the same offer, she’d had an excuse ready-made.

Christmas alone would be better than Christmas with Gwendolen.

Enough of that, she told herself, giving her head a small shake as though that would dislodge the dreary thoughts. She dredged up a smile, held the tray out in front of her, and waited for the door to open.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The Soviet Union was a crucial player in the development of climate science. Remember how Gosplan refused to give data to Kantorovich and other reformers, to stymie their simulations? Rather than battle the intransigent bureaucracy, many Soviet scientists went ahead and built massive models anyway, but instead of simulating the USSR’s economy, they modelled the planet’s biosphere and climate. In 1977, the Computer Centre in Novosibirsk launched a programme to build what is now called an Earth system model (ESM), an enormous computer simulation that emulates the physics and chemistry of the entire planet, predicting everything from weather and climate to air quality and environmental health. Completed in 1982, this ESM allowed scientists to safely intervene in political debates without provoking a backlash from elites. For example, the 1980s controversy over the possibility of a postbellum ‘nuclear winter’ was sparked by ESMs, thus forever changing the politics of atomic weapons.

Troy Vettese, Drew Pendergrass, Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics

[catgirlredux]

Manners and Mannerisms of the Chambered Ones, p.17, written 15 years after the end of the War of Rooms

When meeting a Chambered One, it is considered common courtesy to lower your eyes and avoid looking directly into its face. You see, when an individual first becomes a Chambered One (or when a Chambered One absorbs an individual, if you prefer) one of the first procedures they undergo is the removal of their eyes. In their words, this “allows them to become more finely attuned to the many aspects of the Chambers.” Once they and the Chambered Hull merge, its array of other senses is so complex that the organic component’s eyes become more of a hindrance than a tool. A Chambered One simply doesn’t need to “see” in human ways. So when you lower your eyes, it is a sign of respect and understanding, as well as an acknowledgment of the invisible webs connecting the two of you.

While nothing explicitly harmful has ever come of refusing to follow this protocol, it can cause a certain degree of offense. One story comes to mind of a meeting during the immediate postbellum of the War of Rooms, during which the (at the time) Duke of Balindor Greyson III was unaware of this custom and “strode towards the ambassador of the Chambered Ones with a wide smile, staring directly at its faceplates.” (Chalsom) If not for the timely intervention of their advisor and eventual successor, Sandra Daelo, it is entirely possible that the Chambered Habilitation Resolution would never have passed, and the Chambered Ones would to this day remain merely a secluded medicult in the eyes of the public.

[yngsuk]

Freedom seemed elusive when slavery was no longer its antagonist. Abolitionist discourse, expurgated of the terrifying details that scandalized and titillated Northern audiences, was little more than a colloquy on the degraded character of the enslaved and the unproductivity of slave labor. The anemic vision of freedom expounded by Northern industrialists and white abolitionists most often failed to exceed the minimal requirements for a disciplined and productive workforce. This rhetoric deployed in the context of Reconstruction insinuated the need for compulsion when inclination failed and condoned the use of coercion, if and when it aided in the transition to free labor. [...] The liberal proclivities of abolitionist discourse in the antebellum period had provided a powerful natural rights argument against the institution of slavery, but in the postbellum period, it yielded ambivalent effects—elitist and racist arguments about the privileges of citizenship, an inordinate concern with discipline and the cultivation of manhood, and contractual notions of free labor.

Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America

[raurusthirdeye]

A catastrophe looms, and a desperate plan is formed.

[door]

Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream, 1899

It is hard to guess what Homer had in mind when painting The Gulf Stream. We want to see pathos in this representation of the [vulnerable] fisherman, and we wonder about his fate. It is an image that is freighted with suspense, the outcome forever uncertain. “You can tell [the] ladies,” Homer wrote contemptuously, “that the unfortunate negro who now is so dazed & parboiled, will be rescued & returned to his friends and home, & ever after live happily.”

Kerry James Marshall, Gulf Stream, 2003

Stacy Lynn Waddell, The Gulf Stream (after Winslow Homer), 2013

Kara Walker, “The Ship” (detail, Fons Americanus), 2019

Today, Homer’s apparent indifference to the fate of the fisherman caught in the currents has engendered the opposite: We look past the shark-filled wave to the boat, and see the sailor. Regardless of what Homer thought or didn’t think about his subject, men like this sailor lived, fished, and died along the Gulf Stream in a postbellum society that still enshrined racialized peonage and poverty. After slavery was abolished in British-controlled Nassau in 1834, Southern Florida became a destination for many Bahamians. By the time Homer began painting The Gulf Stream, for example, Miami, incorporated in 1896, had the second-largest African American population in the United States, the majority of [whom] had recently arrived from the Caribbean. In this “Magic City,” they found work in construction, stone-carving, farming, fruit-picking, dredging, and laboring along Henry Flagler’s newly built Florida East Coast Railroad connecting Miami to the Florida Keys, completed by the time the Met purchased Homer’s work. One-third of Miami’s voters were Black, but this was changing as Southern Democrats assumed control of legislative politics and imposed Jim Crow laws on a formerly enfranchised, politically active population. Such collective social histories are submerged in Homer’s aloof depiction of one man’s perilous encounter with nature.

- Ted Barrow, “Shark Tale: Resurfacing Winslow Homer’s Most Elusive Painting”

[blueiight]

Do you happen to know a good book about black americans in France before WWI? Around the Belle Epoque?

i cant think off the top of my head anything specific but i like these sources taking a look at the belle epoque [sections pulled under readmore] ..if anyone has specifically what this person’s looking for id love to see

In the northern quarter of the Bois de Boulogne in February 1891, not far from the bridle paths where the fashionable women rode à l’amazone, an Englishman called John H. Hood positioned thirty-eight men and women from the Kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa in an animal enclosure in the zoological gardens. “Ethnographic exhibitions” were guaranteed money in the pot—crowds were always up a third, more francs clattering through the cash registers. Since one showman brought fourteen “Nubians” as foils to his wild animals in 1877, there had been Samis, Kalmuks, Araucanians, Somalis, Ashantis, and Senegalese. Their appearance was organized by the French government to pique the public’s interest in colonial expansion. The Society for Anthropology came to measure skulls and complain, in 1881, that they were not permitted to examine the genitals of the Tierra del Fuegians. In January 1891, the Nouveau Cirque’s pantomime was La Cravache (“The Whip”), featuring Chocolat [the stage name of Rafael Padilla, an Afro-Cuban man born into slavery turned famous performer in France during the Belle Epoque] as a servant arrested by a policeman who thinks he is a Somali escaped from the zoological gardens. That year, the zoo offered punters the female Dahomey soldiers, or N’Nonmiton, whom they called Amazons. “These famous warrioresses, strange and legendary, who appear to us like a fantastical vision,” enthused the pamphlet that accompanied the show, “in I know not what troubling vapors of an African mirage, are here, under our eyes, with their picturesque uniforms, their deadly weapons, their dance and their war games, their savage and valiant demeanor.” The N’Nonmiton wore long striped skirts and strings of beads that crisscrossed their torsos, and duly waved scimitars and muskets in drill, while the Parisians watched from outside the enclosure. The previous October, France had defeated Dahomey in a first colonial war. (from the second link)

This period saw the blossoming of print cultures in Africa and the African diaspora, particularly Anglophone areas, which ‘saw an explosion of writing and print, produced and circulated not only by the highly educated and publicly visible figures that dominate political histories of Africa but also by non-elites or obscure aspirants to elite status’, as the work of Karin Barber has outlined. These figures included ‘waged laborers, clerks, village headmasters, traders, and artisans’ who ‘read, wrote, and hoarded texts of many kinds’; ‘[l]ocal, small-scale print production became a part of social life’. What we observe here are not simply ‘isolated examples of the uses of literacy scattered across the continent but the history of a remarkably consistent and widespread efflorescence – a social phenomenon happening all over colonial Anglophone Africa at the same time and with comparable features’ (Barber 2006: 1–3). This flourishing of print cultures was not isolated to the continent. Following Reconstruction in the US there was an explosion in African American literacy and newspaper production: between 1865 and 1900, over 1,200 black newspapers were established (Marable 1991: 8). African American illiteracy rapidly dropped from seventy per cent in 1880 to 30.4 per cent in 1910 (Detweiler 1922: 6). During the early twentieth century, a largely bourgeois postbellum African American press gave way to an increasingly radical mass-circulation media. ‘Never before had so many African Americans purchased and read newspapers produced by and devoted to the interests of their race’, observes a study of this press. ‘Never before had the printed word had as much impact on the everyday lives of middle- and lower-class Blacks’ (Digby-Junger 1998: 263–4). The implications of this efflorescence of print for political affinity – as with the other movements of the period – are far more complex than the ‘nationalism’ allowed for in Benedict Anderson's original formulation. (from the first link)

[living400lbs]

From Medgar & Myrlie by Joy Reid:

"It was a bitter irony. Slaveholders had raped enslaved Black women so routinely that they invented new racial categories to characterize the resulting offspring: mulatto, quadroon, and octaroon—based on the percentage of “white” the person was. Many of these children were put up for sale regardless of being their “owner’s” child and were often the subject of confusion and wonder at how a “Negro” could look so white. Slavery in Mississippi and throughout the South had been characterized by forced breeding and relentless sexual violence. Yet the sons and grandsons of the men who built that system, and who fought to defend it during the Civil War, built their postbellum Southern culture around the constant fear that Black men were fixated on raping white women. And even though the South’s defeat at the war’s end failed to stop the raping of Black women, these sons and grandsons of enslavers invented a palliative for their fears: lynching."

[arerona]

Inktober 2023 Young Mysteryfell Papyrus Day 1 Inktober 2023 Fellswitch Chara Day 2 Inktober 2023 Sans Day 3 Inktober 2023 Derringer and Catster day 4 Inktober 2023 Akando Day 5 Inktober 2023 Galleon Day 6 Inktober 2023 Gerson Day 7 Inktober 2023 Grillby Day 8 Inktober 2023 Scarecrow Sans Day 9 Inktober 2023 The Fox Day 10 Inktober 2023 Papyru Day 11 Inktober 2023 Sassafras Day 12 Inktober 2023 Catster Day 13 Inktober 2023 Maryona Day 14 Inktober 2023 Mika Day 15 Inktober 2023 Muffet Day 16 Inktober 2023 Acacia Day 17 Inktober 2023 Enigma Day 18 Inktober 2023 Osiris Day 19 Inktober 2023 Rapscallion Day 20 Inktober 2023 Beniamin Day 21 Inktober 2023 T'Kara Day 22 Inktober 2023 Retribution Day 23

[greysfic]

Random Darkening Skies Setting Drabbles

The most commonly used counting of days in the current era is the Throne Calendar. As implied by the name, it originates with the city of Throne and Dragon-Emperor Imperus. As with most of Imperus' influence over the Known World, it's not enforced; Throne was simply the most stable political centre after the Bellum Draconum and so other polities adopted their calendar for ease of trade and diplomacy. It is divided into the Antebellum years, counting down to the war where Imperus was forced to slay Their eldest daughters, and Postbellum years, counting up following the conclusion of the war.

Trollhaven still keeps their own calendar based on the tides and ice sheets, flexible in a way which serves their way of life.

The City-Engine internally uses an atomic clock to define their calendar, rigid and not quite so precise as they insist.

Kroms uses a lunar calendar. Kaer, ever contrarian, uses a solar calendar derived in part from the Throne Calendar but with absolute refusal to fully adopt.

The Crantiré calendar is based around the lifecycles of the heart trees and the Worldcap.

[ao3feed-skystar]

by plsnskanks

Skyfire and Starscream settle into the calmness of postwar life, not without some hiccups.

Words: 2433, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 7 of Events/Exchanges/Gifts

Fandoms: Transformers - All Media Types

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: M/M

Characters: Jetfire | Skyfire (Transformers), Starscream (Transformers)

Relationships: Jetfire | Skyfire/Starscream (Transformers)

Additional Tags: abstracted mention of trauma, its not overt and not necessarily sexual, Gentle Sex, PTSD, Tenderness, slight angst, but a general sense things are getting better

[dweemeister]

2023 Movie Odyssey Awards

And now, the penultimate step to conclude the 20223 Movie Odyssey. The Movie Odyssey Awards honor the best in films that I saw for the first time last calendar year for me. Rewatches do not count. Other eligibility rules (such as whether or not a “TV movie” versus a “streaming movie” can count can be found here).

All of these films that were nominated or won (except for Worst Picture) are worth your time and are worth seeking. Even some of the most flawed films I saw this year managed a nomination somewhere - it helps there are ten nominees per category. And, as always, my Best Picture winners are my highest recommendations of the year.

There's also a new category this year! Another music category (some of you are already sighing, I know) in the form of Best Original Score Cue.

Best Pictures (I'm naming ten, I'm not distinguishing one above the other nine)

Anatomy of a Fall (2023, France)

The Color Purple (1985)

I Know Where I’m Going! (1945)

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

The Last Command (1928)

Oppenheimer (2023)

Past Lives (2023)

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

Tár (2022)

For the second straight year, I have set a record low for the number of feature films that I saw in a calendar year since when this blog began (2012). And on my failure to adhere to my objective on seeing more pre-1980 movies than those released 1980 and after, this Best Picture list skews far more modern than it usually does. This is also the first Movie Odyssey Award for Best Picture slate without a 10/10 rated film.

Six movies from the 2020s doubles the record (set last year, with three) of Best Picture winners that have come from the current decade.

Anatomy of a Fall, through its courtroom drama lens, remarks on unknowability of even the people we love most. Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple is melodrama (a word I'm using here in the neutral sense) of the first order, and tenderly told. The romance I Know Where I'm Going! is not often mentioned when it comes to Powell and Pressburger films (it seems like their first postbellum film despite being set during WWII), but I think scholarship is coming around on that (and I approve).

Martin Scorsese looks like he is getting a lot of short shrift from critics and the industry for Killers of the Flower Moon as another movie dominates 2023's headlines instead. But I thought his adaptation of David Grann's non-fiction book was the best release of 2023, a dramatic epic set on the Oklahoma prairie retelling a horrible saga that American history forgot. Director Josef von Sternberg and Emil Jannings may have had a tumultuous working relationship, but this visually striking silent film makes incredible use of blocking of extras and an arguably career-best performance by Jannings.

Taking much of Killers of the Flower Moon's thunder is Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, surely one of the movies to define 2023. Nolan's 181-minute biopic epic is arguably his most humanistic film yet (for a director not known for his humanism). On a far different scale, Celine Song's Past Lives was perhaps one of the best romantic dramas I've ever seen in a theater.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse made its predecessor look safe by comparison with its wild variety of styles. Points off for its necessarily heavy exposition and incomplete narrative (it is the first part of two), but its radical background changes, ever-changing color palette, and comprehensible action choreography put the MCU to shame.

Lastly, Tár was very much overshadowed by Everything Everywhere All At Once last year, perhaps unfairly so (it doesn't help that when people hear that the film is immersed in the world of classical music, they immediately lose interest). And The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was perhaps the film that shocked me the most all year, partly due to my expectations beforehand. Maggie Smith plays the title character in an atypical "teacher movie".

Best Comedy

American Fiction (2023)

Beauty’s Worth (1922)

Beverly of Graustark (1926)

Block-Heads (1938)

Fanfan la Tulipe (1952, France)

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)

Heathers (1988)

The Holdovers (2023)

My Year of Dicks (2022 short)

An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It (2021 short)

This comes down to which movie made me laugh the most. I don't think this was that great a year on the comedy end, but Alexander Payne's The Holdovers is destined to be a Christmas classic. A Christmas classic for the sadsacks among us.

I thought The Ghost and Mr. Chicken was going to be utterly terrible. I mean, look at that frigging title. I respect Don Knotts for his Andy Griffith Show work, but I have to be in the right mood. But boy, it was ideal October viewing when I didn't want to watch a straight horror movie. Attaboy, Luther!

Appearing from the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film slate last year are My Year of Dicks and An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It. If I was still doing the Movie Odyssey For-Fun Awards, those two would tie for "Best Title". Not even close. It helps that they both made me laugh a lot!

Best Musical

Barsaat (1949, India)

Carmen Jones (1954)

Êsse Mundo é Meu (This World is Mine) (1964, Brazil)

The Fabulous Senorita (1952)

Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962)

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)

Sparkle (1976)

Sun Valley Serenade (1941)

This is the Army (1943)

Trời Sáng Rồi, Ta Ngủ Đi Thôi (Good Morning and Good Night) (2019, Vietnam)

This category has always advantaged original musicals rather than stage adaptations. And the more songs, the better. Just edging out Barsaat and Sun Valley Serenade is Carmen Jones, an adaptation of Oscar Hammerstein II's adaptation of George Bizet's Carmen. Bizet's music remains; Hammerstein wrote the lyrics. Instead of Sevilla, we find ourselves in the American South and all-black cast starring Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge as Carmen, Pearl Bailey, Olga James, and Joe Adams. An important work, and one of the very few major studio Hollywood movies with an all-black cast. You'll have to get used to both Dandridge and Belafonte being dubbed (their voices not suitable to sing in an operatic style, so director Otto Preminger thought). however.

Sparkle could have won this had they adhered more to the late '50s/'60s Motown sound a lot more faithfully. And if, narratively, the movie was better.

Best Animated Feature

The Boy and the Heron (2023, Japan)

Ernest & Celestine: A Trip To Gibberitia (2022, France)

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021)

My Father’s Dragon (2022)

Nimona (2023)

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

The Sea Beast (2022)

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Suzume (2022, Japan)

ATSV wins this category, but Ernest & Celestine took my heart yet again. Do yourself a favor: please see both the 2012 original and the sequel. The former is one of the best animated features of the young century and though the latter is not as good as the original, it's still very much worth your time.

I was a little disappointed in The Boy and the Heron and, to be honest, I disliked Marcel the Shell and Nimona - an opinion that, if I said this any louder, would invoke the wrath of many on tumblr. Cartoon Saloon misses for the first time with My Father's Dragon. The hot streak had to end some time! Puss in Boots was the biggest surprise in terms of expectations versus how good the movie actually was.

Best Documentary

Fire of Love (2022)

For Tomorrow (2023, Canada)

In Living Memory (2022 short)

Pianoforte (2023, Poland)

Refuge After War (2023)

The Stroll (2023)

Seen as part of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. An HBO documentary, The Stroll is made by two transgender directors telling the story of the sex workers strolling around New York City's Meatpacking District in the 1980s and '90s, many of whom were transgender. I'm usually not a fan of documentaries where the directors are also subjects/have close ties to the material, but The Stroll is one of those rare exceptions. Beautifully told.

The classical music lover in me also deeply enjoyed Pianoforte, which follows a handful of young contestants (I think there's an age limit) at the XVIII International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 2021. One girl I recall said something akin to "I wish to play beautifully and with personality, but I also don't want to make a mistake!" Sorry miss, you've gotta do both! Also, I wonder how many of them hate Chopin's guts after competing in something like that.

Best Non-English Language Film

Anatomy of a Fall, France

Barsaat, India

Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia, France

Êsse Mundo é Meu (This World is Mine), Brazil

Fanfan la Tulipe, France

Fellini Satyricon (1969), Italy

Godzilla Minus One (2023), Japan

The Quiet Girl (2022), Ireland

Shayda (2023), Australia

Suzume, Japan

A relatively weak year in this category, and way too many films in here than there should be from this decade. But I'll highlight here Êsse Mundo é Meu, which I saw last February at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in LA (I would go more often if I didn't live so far). The film, an exemplar of Cinema Novo (taking inspiration from the French New Wave and Italian neorealism, a rejection of Brazilian popular musical and comedies at the time. The print was in bad shape, and the Museum had to recreate the English subtitles by themselves. But it was a wonderful film, and, unfortunately, it is rarely screened outside of Brazil. I highly doubt I'll see the likes of it again.

I'm still not sure what to make of Fellini's fantastical period, which took off after Juliet of the Spirits (1965, Italy).

Best Silent Film

Alice’s Wonderland (1923 short)

Beauty’s Worth

Beverly of Graustark

Clash of the Wolves (1925)

The Last Command

The Oath of the Sword (1914 short)

Something Good – Negro Kiss (1898 short)

With thanks to the San Diego Asian Film Festival for their screening of The Oath of the Sword, the oldest-surviving (that we know of) film made entirely by an Asian American film company and starring a nearly all-Asian cast.

I need to see more silent films next year.

Personal Favorite Film (TIE)

Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023)

Barbie (2023)

Don’t Bother to Knock (1952)

Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia

Gentleman Jim (1942)

Godzilla Minus One

Ice Merchants (2022 short, Portugal)

The Strawberry Blonde (1941)

Sun Valley Serenade

Wee Willie Winkie (1937)

Godzilla Minus One was the best experience I had in a theater this last year, especially as a fan of Toho's kaiju films.

You can watch Ice Merchants, the highest-rated short film I've seen in years, here. And of course, the Academy disagreed with me.

Best Director

Guillermo del Toro, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Federico Fellini, Fellini Satyricon

Todd Field, Tár

Ronald Neame, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, I Know Where I’m Going!

Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon

Celine Song, Past Lives

Steven Spielberg, The Color Purple

Josef von Sternberg, The Last Command

Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall

This is not the best film from Powell and Pressburger, but I Know Where I'm Going! is a fascinating, quickly-shot film that I maintain is underrated in their filmography. You know it was an underwhelming year for me, when I'm not really feeling any of these ten for Best Director. But it had to be awarded to someone.

Best Acting Ensemble

Angels (2023, Vietnam)

The Color Purple

Don’t Bother to Knock

Heathers

The Holdovers

Killers of the Flower Moon

Oppenheimer

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The Sea Wolf (1941)

Women Talking (2022)

Whoopi Goldberg, Margaret Avery, Danny Glover, Adolph Caesar, Rae Dawn Chong,Oprah Winfrey, Desreta Jackson, Willard Pugh, Akosua Busia, Laurence Fishburne, Howard Starr... everyone, take a bow. Some career-defining performances in there, enough to evoke tears out of me multiple times. The Color Purple an obvious choice for me here.

If you were to have me pick runners-ups? Probably The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Killers of the Flower Moon.

Best Actor

Humphrey Bogart, Black Legion (1937)

James Cagney, The Strawberry Blonde

Albert Finney, Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Brendan Fraser, The Whale (2022)

Hiệp Trần Nghĩa, The Accidental Getaway Driver (2023)

Emil Jannings, The Last Command

Roger Livesey, I Know Where I’m Going!

Bill Nighy, Living (2022)

Vincent Price, Witchfinder General (1968)

Edward G. Robinson, The Sea Wolf

I watched a lot of Vincent Price late in 2023. The Las Vegas Story (1952), House of Wax (1953), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971). Witchfinder General, also known in the U.S. as The Conquerer Worm, was the role I was least familiar with. And oh my goodness is he excellent here. Price plays Matthew Hopkins, a 17th century English witch hunter, and this is perhaps Price's least sympathetic villain that I have seen. The direction might not be all that great, but give Price a non-campy, sadistic role and he will deliver.

Cagney is vastly underappreciated in The Strawberry Blonde, Humphrey Bogart is surprisingly gullible in Black Legion, and Bill Nighy breaks hearts in Living (a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru).

Best Actress (TIE)

Lucille Ball, Lured (1947)

Cate Blanchett, Tár

Marion Davies, Beverly of Graustark

Dorothy Dandridge, Carmen Jones

Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon

Whoopi Goldberg, The Color Purple

Olivia de Havilland, The Strawberry Blonde

Greta Lee, Past Lives

Marilyn Monroe, Don’t Bother to Knock

Maggie Smith, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

I... couldn't make a choice. So I made two choices. Whoopi is extraordinary in her breakthrough role. Her physical acting helps us intuit the changing fortunes and self-belief of her character, and never resorting to histrionics as some actresses might. A beautifully nuanced performance.

A little less nuanced is Maggie Smith as Ms. Brodie. Easily one of the most memorable teacher movies I have seen, and it is Smith - giving her all to one of the a most complicated character - who makes it work perfectly.

Runners-up? Blanchett, Davies, Dandridge, and Gladstone. This category was fantastic this year.

Best Supporting Actor

Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction (2023)

Elisha Cook Jr., Don’t Bother to Knock

Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon

Danny Glover, The Color Purple

Milo Machado-Graner, Anatomy of a Fall

Dustin Nguyen, The Accidental Getaway Driver

George Sanders, Lured

Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers

Christian Slater, Heathers

Teo Yoo, Past Lives

George Sanders? A romantic interest in a noir? What? Well he is here, a departure (perhaps) from his debonair villainous roles. You can always depend on Sanders to deliver. Also considered De Niro here.

Best Supporting Actress

Margaret Avery, The Color Purple

Pearl Bailey, Carmen Jones

Ingrid Bergman, Murder on the Orient Express

Joan Blackman, The Great Impostor (1961)

Hong Chau, The Whale

Sherry Cola, Shortcomings (2023)

Pamela Franklin, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Rita Hayworth, The Strawberry Blonde

Oprah Winfrey, The Color Purple

Selina Zahednia, Shayda

Seen at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, virtually. Shayda is an Australian movie in which Iranian mother Shayda (Zahra Amir Ebrahimi) seeks refuge in an Australian women's shelter during Nowruz, Persian New Year. Selina Zahednia plays the daughter, Mona, and gives one of the best and most believable child performances of the young century.

Avery, Franklin, and Oprah Winfrey would have been next up.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Cord Jefferson, American Fiction

Menno Meyjes, The Color Purple

Daniel Taradash and Charlotte Armstrong, Don’t Bother to Knock

Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon

Kazuo Ishiguro, Living

Leo Rosten, Lured

Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

Jay Presson Allen, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Robert Rossen, The Sea Wolf

Sarah Polley, Women Talking

Complain about the 3-hour runtime all you want. I just don't see how anything could've been cut; in fact, I think Roth and Scorsese could've added more context. What pushes them over the top here was their commitment - however flawed - to take the focus away from what was originally a more white savior-y approach to its current form. An extremely risky ending acknowledges more than it lets on.

Best Original Screenplay

Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, Anatomy of a Fall

Abem Finkel and William Wister Haines, Black Legion

Daniel Waters, Heathers

David Hemingson, The Holdovers

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, I Know Where I’m Going!

Celine Song, Past Lives

Garry Michael White, Scarecrow (1973)

Noora Niasari, Shayda

Makoto Shinkai Suzume

Todd Field, Tár

To descirbe the plot: Manchester native Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) departs for the Scottish Hebrides in order to marry a wealthy industrialist she has never met. While awaiting the Scottish fog to clear, she meets a Royal Navy officer (Roger Livesey), who is happy to show her the sights and introduce her to the locals, whose humble lives are as far away from the war as could be possible.

Paramount Pictures (who didn't distribute the film) used this film's screenplay to their writer as an example of what a "perfect screenplay" looked like. Okay, it isn't perfect. But it's really damn good.

Best Cinematography

Dương Lê, Angels

Allen Daviau, The Color Purple

Êsse Mundo é Meu (This World is Mine)

Giuseppe Rotunno, Fellini Satyricon

Erwin Hillier, I Know Where I’m Going!

Rodrigo Prieto, Killers of the Flower Moon

Bert Glennon, The Last Command

Dewey Wrigley, My Friend Flicka (1943)

James Wong Howe, The Strawberry Blonde

Florian Hoffmeister, Tár

Best Film Editing

Nick Houy, Barbie

Jack Killifer, Gentleman Jim

John Seabourne, Sr., I Know Where I’m Going!

Thelma Schoonmaker, Killers of the Flower Moon

Michelle Tesoro, Maestro (2023)

Eddie Hamilton, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Jennifer Lame, Oppenheimer

Norman Savage, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Mike Andrews, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Monika Willi, Tár

Best Adaptation or Musical Score

Irving Berlin, This is the Army

David Buttolph, Cyril J. Mockridge, and Emil Newman, Sun Valley Serenade

Herschel Burke Gilbert, Carmen Jones

Alexandre Desplat, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Joseph L. Lilley, Girls! Girls! Girls!

Curtis Mayfield, Sparkle

Jaikishan Dayabhai Panchal and Shankarsingh Raghuwanshi, Barsaat

Phạm Hải Âu, Trời Sáng Rồi, Ta Ngủ Đi Thôi (Good Morning and Good Night)

Heinz Roemheld, The Strawberry Blonde

Naoki Sato, Godzilla Minus One

This category awards film scores from musical movies or film scores that are taking a lot of pre-existing material and employing variations, but not enough to be considered a more original score. This category also tends to favor musicals, full stop.

And that's what we find here with Sun Valley Serenade taking its 4th and 8th place finishes in MOABOS for a solid, solid musical score.

Best Original Score

Richard Rodney Bennett, Murder on the Orient Express

Danny Elfman, Batman (1989)

Allan Gray, I Know Where I’m Going!

Maurice Jarre, The Island at the Top of the World (1974)

Quincy Jones, The Color Purple

Henry Mancini, The Great Impostor

Alfred Newman, My Friend Flicka

RADWIMPS and Kazuma Jinnouchi, Suzume

Dimitri Tiomkin, Land of the Pharaohs (1955)

John Williams, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Hans Zimmer, The Creator (2023)

The Ancient Egyptian language no longer exists in spoken form, as does any of that civilization's music. So what to do? Hire the one composer in Old Hollywood that you could fling into a historical cultural context so unlike his own and make it sound as genuine as he could get it (even if I'm sure no ancient Egyptian would understand the score too much). Dimitri Tiomkin came from a Russian Jewish family that lived in what is now Ukraine. He was a master of American Westerns and was also accomplished in films set in ancient Greece and Rome. He composes for Land of the Pharaohs one of the most musically interesting epic scores of the 1950s - I just wish there were better, cleaner, more modern recordings of this music!

Danny Elfman's score to Batman the runner-up here (that score played an important part in Batman: The Animated Series, and gave composer/conductor Shirley Walker a very important foothold in the film and television industry), but Richard Rodney Bennett, Quincy Jones, John Williams, and even Hans Zimmer (whom longtime readers will know I have a difficult relationship in terms of his post-Gladiator scores... but my gosh, he composes striking melodies again in The Creator!) are all worthy nominees here.

Best Original Score Cue

“Appel à la resistance”, Vincent Courtois, Ernest & Celestine: A Trip To Gibberitia

“The Building of the Tomb”, Dimitri Tiomkin, Land of the Pharaohs

“Cat Chase”, Kazuma Jinnouchi and RADWIMPS, Suzume

“Helena’s Theme”, John Williams, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

“Main Title”, Danny Elfman, Batman

“Main Title/Pharaoh’s Procession”, Dimitri Tiomkin, Land of the Pharaohs

“Nueva York Train Chase”, Daniel Pemberton, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

“Quantum Mechanics”, Ludwig Göransson, Oppenheimer

“Top Gun Anthem”, Harold Faltermeyer, Top Gun (1986)

“True Love”, Hans Zimmer, The Creator

Our newest category! Yes, a fourth music category. MOABOSC. Okay, let's not.

I've actually wanted to create this category for some time, but I never did so until now. A film score cue is simply any single track heard in a movie, as you may have guessed. No lyrics (that's a song). Must be an original composition.

And it's John Williams who picks the inaugural award up for "Helena's Theme". Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is not the greatest movie. But Williams, now at 91, can compose scores and cues that other composers would sell their souls to compose material half as good. "Helena's Theme" is the dominant new idea in Dial of Destiny. Helena, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, is Indy's goddaughter. And her motif, mainly expressed through strings, is a romantic line that harkens to Erich Wolfgang Korngold (a classical music composer who crossed over into films, set the sound for Warner Bros. swashbuckler movies from the 1930s-40s, and established many norms of film scoring still in place today). A tremendous piece from Williams.

Runners-up behind Williams? Elfman, Tiomkin (for the main titles), Pemberton, and Zimmer.

Best Original Song

“Chattanooga Choo Choo”, music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Mack Gordon, Sun Valley Serenade

“Ciao Papa”, music by Alexandre Desplat, lyrics by Roeban Katz and Guillermo del Toro, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

“Danger Zone”, music and lyrics by Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock, Top Gun

“Êsse Mundo é Meu (This World is Mine)”, music by Sérgio Ricardo, lyrics by Sérgio Ricardo and Ruy Guerra, Esse Mundo é Meu

“Hooked on Your Love”, music and lyrics by Curtis Mayfield, Sparkle

“I Know Why (And So Do You)”, music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Mack Gordon, Sun Valley Serenade

“I’m Just Ken”, music and lyrics by Mark Ronson and Andrw Wyatt, Barbie

“Miss Celie’s Blues (Sister)”, music by Quincy Jones and Rod Temperton, lyrics by Quincy Jones, Rod Temperton, and Lionel Richie, The Color Purple

“Qu-est-ce qu’on fait de l’amour? (What Do We Do with Love?)”, music and lyrics by Vincent Courtois, Ernest & Celestine: A Trip To Gibberitia

“Suzume”, music and lyrics by RADWIMPS, Suzume

Thanks to all of you who participated in MOABOS this year!

Best Costume Design

Jacqueline Durran, Barbie

André-ani, Kathleen Kay, and Maude Marsh, Beverly of Graustark

Rosemary Odell,The Black Shield of Falworth (1954)

Aggie Guerard Rodgers, The Color Purple

Danilo Donati, Fellini Satyricon

Jacqueline West, Killers of the Flower Moon

Norma Moriceau, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

Tony Walton, Murder on the Orient Express

Joan Bridge and Elizabeth Haffenden, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Orry-Kelly, The Strawberry Blonde

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Paul Engelen and Colin Jamison, Batman

Uncredited, Beauty’s Worth

Ken Chase and Robert L. Stevenson, The Color Purple

Gordon Bau, House of Wax (1953)

Emile LaVigne and Ann Locker, Land of the Pharaohs

Elizabeth Ann Fardon, Helen Evans, Rosalind Da Silva, and Cheryl Newton, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Kazu Hiro, Sian Grigg, Duncan Jarman, Michael Mekash, and Kay Georgiou, Maestro

Stuart Freeborn, John O’Gorman, Charles E. Parker, and Ramon Gow, Murder on the Orient Express

Gordon Bau and Jean Burt Reilly, The Omega Man (1971)

Adrien Morot, Judy Chin, and Annemarie Bradley-Sherron, The Whale

I wonder how audiences though of the makeup in 3D back in the 1950s. Yes, House of Wax was filmed in 3D when it was a fad for the first time.

Best Production Design                                       

Sarah Greenwood, Barbie

Anton Furst and Peter Young, Batman

Uncredited, Fellini Satyricon

Ted Smith, Gentleman Jim

Curt Enderle and Guy Davis, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

John Paul Kelly, A Haunting in Venice (2023)

Jack Fisk, Killers of the Flower Moon

Hans Dreier, The Last Command

Jack Stephens, Murder on the Orient Express

Anton Grot, The Sea Wolf

Achievement in Visual Effects

Alice’s Wonderland

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

Barbie

Batman

The Creator

Godzilla Minus One

In Which We Serve (1942)

The Island at the Top of the World

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Oppenheimer

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

All of these films are winners. You can't make me judge the visual effects from a 2020s movie versus a '40s movie. Come on now.

Worst Picture

Barbarella (1968)

King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963, Japan)

Mười: Lời nguyền trở lại (Muoi: The Curse Returns) (2022, Vietnam)

Treasure Island (1973)

Wish (2023)

Because holy cow. What even was low-budget major studio animation in America in the 1970s?

Honorary Awards:

The Film Foundation, for their tireless devotion to the preservation and restoration of classic world cinema

Ben Model, for composing wonderful scores for silent films and helping to preserve the memory of the silent film experience

FILMS WITH MULTIPLE NOMINATIONS (excluding Worst Picture... 51) Thirteen: The Color Purple

Ten: Killers of the Flower Moon

Eight: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Seven: I Know Where I’m Going!, The Strawberry Blonde

Six: Barbie, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, The Last Command, Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Oppenheimer, Suzume, Tár

Five: Anatomy of a Fall, Batman, Don’t Bother to Knock, Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia, Fellini Satyricon, Past Lives, Sun Valley Serenade

Four: Beverly of Graustark, Êsse Mundo é Meu, Godzilla Minus One, Heathers, Land of the Pharaohs, The Sea Wolf

Three: American Fiction, Barsaat, Beauty’s Worth, The Creator, Gentleman Jim, Lured, Shayda, Sparkle, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Whale

Two: The Accidental Getaway Driver, Angels, Black Legion, Fanfan la Tulipe, Girls! Girls! Girls!, The Great Impostor, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, The Island at the Top of the World, Living, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Maestro, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, My Friend Flicka, This is the Army, Top Gun, Trời Sáng Rồi, Ta Ngủ Đi Thôi (Good Morning and Good Night), Women Talking

WINNERS (excluding honorary awards and Worst Picture; 32) 4 wins: The Color Purple

3 wins: I Know Where I’m Going!, Killers of the Flower Moon

2 wins: Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, Godzilla Minus One, The Last Command, Oppenheimer, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

1 win: All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), Batman, Carmen Jones, The Creator, Fellini Satyricon, The Holdovers, House of Wax, Ice Merchants, In Which We Serve, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, The Island at the Top of the World, Land of the Pharaohs, Lured, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Murder on the Orient Express, Past Lives, Shayda, The Stroll, Sun Valley Serenade, Tár, Top Gun: Maverick, Witchfinder General

86 films were nominated in 27 categories.