1957 Oscar Viewing Project

One of the biggest regrets I had with finishing the blog was that I wasn't going to do one last season of ballots for the OVP.  The series that basically started this blog was going to get ignored, and while I cheated a bit by having the Halloween blogathon serve as a "placeholder" for the Oscar Viewing Project goodbye, that wasn't enough.  I'll be honest-October has been really challenging on a personal level (one of the main reasons that I'm ending the blog is because I had a wake up call about my personal life), but I have pushed myself in the past couple of days to finish the four remaining films I hadn't completed from 1957 so that they were done, and I can officially unveil the 27th completed season of the series (a truncated version, as I didn't have the bandwidth to write a full twenty articles, but at least I got something!).  For those who have enjoyed this (including me), I want you to know that I have started to transpose all of the previous OVP winners from past seasons onto my Letterboxd lists, and will continue to do the winners on there going forward, so if you want to continue to see what I'm picking (I'm ending the blog-the Oscar Viewing Project continues to see another day), you can find me here.  My brother is trying to help me figure out the best way to present the My Ballots (I didn't have time to finish that for 1957), but I promise as soon as he figures out a way to do this (he's better at such things than I am), I will continue posting those on Letterboxd as well.  But below, you will find the ranked from first-to-last choices for the 30th Academy Awards.

That's enough shop talk.  Now it's time to go back to an era of Sputnik & the Little Rock Nine, of Althea Gibson & Mamie Eisenhower.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

Picture

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai

2. Witness for the Prosecution

3. 12 Angry Men

4. Sayonara

5. Peyton Place

The Lowdown: The Bridge on the River Kwai has been a part of my life since I can't remember when-it was my grandfather's favorite movie, and one that played in the background (along with Patton and Tora! Tora! Tora!) on repeat after he had a stroke.  The only one of these movies that really approaches its grandeur is Witness for the Prosecution, which honestly is kind of a miracle and the best Christie adaptation I've ever seen.  12 Angry Men is very well-done, and a masterpiece but one that might (unfairly) have lost some luster it's been done so much since, and the other two are handsome-but-dull (Sayonara) or a total snooze (Peyton Place).

Director

1. David Lean (The Bridge on the River Kwai)

2. Billy Wilder (Witness for the Prosecution)

3. Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men)

4. Joshua Logan (Sayonara)

5. Mark Robson (Peyton Place)

The Lowdown: Even more than the Best Picture field (if you hadn't noticed, these are carbon copies of each other), David Lean takes the lead here.  Oscar Winner Sydney Pollack once said that a director's job is "less artist, more damage containment expert" and that might be what is drawing me to Lean to a degree.  He has the more challenging job, particularly given that Wilder & Lumet are largely staying in the same locations, and are bringing to life staged plays, but it's more than that.  Think of the ending of The Bridge on the River Kwai, having so many storylines come together with staggering precision-you only get that from thinking meticulously, even in a gigantic epic.

Actor

1. Alec Guinness (The Bridge on the River Kwai)

2. Charles Laughton (Witness for the Prosecution)

3. Anthony Franciosa (A Hatful of Rain)

4. Marlon Brando (Sayonara)

5. Anthony Quinn (Wild is the Wind)

The Lowdown: This is entirely down to the British actors (Guinness & Laughton).  Franciosa (who is in lead, Shelley Winters' memory be damned), gives a good performance but is in an underwritten movie, while Brando is a fabulous actor in a stuffed shirt sort of role.  Guinness gets my vote over Laughton primarily because he's playing so specifically to this character.  Laughton's role is appropriately loud-and-boisterous, he's typecast but in the best way possible.  Guinness isn't initially who I would guess in 1957 for this role (he was better known for comic work in movies before this), but that works to his advantage as Colonel Nicholson is a man obsessed, whose madness toward the end as he realizes what he's done is a crucial component to the entirety of Lean's epic.

Actress

1. Anna Magnani (Wild is the Wind)

2. Joanne Woodward (The Three Faces of Eve)

3. Deborah Kerr (Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison)

4. Elizabeth Taylor (Raintree County)

5. Lana Turner (Peyton Place)

The Lowdown: Here's where I'm going to confess something-I have never gotten the hype around Joanne Woodward's performance in The Three Faces of Eve.  I think part of why she got this award (and so many plaudits since) is because it was such a revolutionary idea onscreen-a woman playing three characters in one.  But it isn't as impressive as some of her peers were, and while Woodward is a good actress, this isn't her best work, and she's only as high as she is on this list because this is a weak field.  Magnani stands out more for me-she's a more obvious actor compared to the organic Woodward, but the way she plays this woman is so three-dimensional and felt.  I love it.  Kerr is lovely-but-not-stretched in Heaven Knows, while Taylor & Turner both have their best (sultriest) instinct muted in their dull pictures.

Supporting Actor

1. Sessue Hayakawa (The Bridge on the River Kwai)

2. Red Buttons (Sayonara)

3. Russ Tamblyn (Peyton Place)

4. Arthur Kennedy (Peyton Place)

5. Vittorio de Sica (A Farewell to Arms)

The Lowdown: Hayakawa, at one point a major leading star of the Silent Era, made a comeback with this role very late in his career, and it's easily the best of this quintet.  The way that his Colonel Saito creates a humanizing aspect to his villain is years ahead of what you'd normally expect from such a part, and stands up against what Guinness & Holden are doing.  Buttons' heartbreaking work is a worthy runner-up, and I like that Russ Tamblyn got a nomination here (he's my favorite part of Peyton Place), but Hayakawa is the best choice of the bunch.

Supporting Actress

1. Elsa Lanchester (Witness for the Prosecution)

2. Miyoshi Umeki (Sayonara)

3. Carolyn Jones (The Bachelor Party)

4. Hope Lange (Peyton Place)

5. Diane Varsi (Peyton Place)

The Lowdown: Man is this a rough one.  Given 3/5 of these are in movies that underwhelmed me already, and The Bachelor Party is just an odd picture, thank the lord for Elsa Lanchester.  Her doddering in Witness for the Prosecution is marvelous, and would've made a fine winner (I would've found room for her costar Una O'Connor, and will in my My Ballot).  The rest, though, are uninspired in a field that could've been great had they invested more in musicals in 1957.  Umeki's groundbreaking win isn't the worst thing to happen to this category (there's an understanding in her work that I liked), and seeing Carolyn Jones outside of the Addams mansion is a change of pace, but man...Lanchester is the only truly acceptable winner of the bunch.

Original Screenplay

1. Funny Face

2. The Tin Star

3. I Vitelloni

4. Designing Woman

5. Man of a Thousand Faces

The Lowdown: It's weird, given the weak point of most of Fred Astaire's films is a cobbled together by scotch tape plot, that I'm giving his film this statue.  In a perfect world, you'd probably see a few of the Foreign Language Film nominees included in this lineup, but the only subtitled film of this bunch is Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni, where the screenplay is one of the weakest parts in an otherwise really attractive movie.  Funny Face is well-structured, and if you get past the fact that the 30-year age difference should be more of a plot point (let's be real, though, Fred Astaire & Audrey Hepburn are such ageless figures it's hard to think of them as anything more than ephemeral tricks-of-the-light), the only movie that comes close is The Tin Star, a well-structured morality tale that's admittedly a bit predictable and guided by strong work from Henry Fonda & Anthony Perkins.

Adapted Screenplay

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai

2. 12 Angry Men

3. Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison

4. Sayonara

5. Peyton Place

The Lowdown: The real battle here is between The Bridge on the River Kwai and 12 Angry Men, both impeccable screenplays.  12 Angry Men it's sometimes hard for me to tell if I should dock points for it clearly being a filmed play or if that works onscreen.  Since I can never quite tell, I'm going to go with Bridge, which has a stronger end game, and also manages to tell a lot of subplots without losing focus (harder than it sounds).  Kudos to Heaven Knows in third, particularly in the way that it handles the complicated (for 1957) romantic angles of the story that otherwise could've been abandoned by a different writer.

Foreign Language Film

1. Nights of Cabiria (Italy)

2. Gates of Paris (France)

3. The Devil Strikes at Night (Germany)

4. Nine Lives (Norway)

5. Mother India (India)

The Lowdown: In the early years of this category, you'd get masterpieces from renowned filmmakers like Fellini, which makes it really hard to judge in some ways because how do you compete with something like Nights of Cabiria, one of the all-time great pictures and featuring a beautiful performance from Giuletta Massini?  It's a pity, though, as there's some treasure trove films here too.  Gates of Paris is a wonderfully dark French crime film (with a romantic subplot that'll rip your heart out), while The Devil Strikes at Night gives you a really strong look at the rise of fascism from a film noir perspective. The only one of the bunch I couldn't get into was the unfathomably long Mother India, a well-regarded Bollywood picture that was at least two hours too long.

Score

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai

2. An Affair to Remember

3. Raintree County

4. Boy on a Dolphin

5. Perri

The Lowdown: Any of the Top 3 here would be a worthy prize (Boy on the Dolphin feels like it got nominated based on the composer, and Perri ranks as one of the sillier films to ever be cited for an Academy Award since it's just a children's nature documentary about a squirrel).  Even with the most famous cut of the score being a non-original piece (the "Colonel Bogey's March" is not original to the picture), I think that Bridge does the most with its music, and it will get my nod.  Either Affair or Raintree would make good choices, though, both of them lush & filled with a lot of romance (I'm still finalizing my My Ballot Awards, as I mentioned above, but as of this writing all three of these films would make my nominees).

Original Song

1. "Wild is the Wind" (Wild is the Wind)

2. "All the Way," (The Joker is Wild)

3. "An Affair to Remember," (An Affair to Remember)

4. "Tammy," (Tammy and the Bachelor)

5. "April Love," (April Love)

The Lowdown: A genuinely terrific group of songs-there's not a bad one in the bunch, and in many cases, we're getting some big-deal singers' signature tunes.  The Top 3, in particular, is pretty immovable, and my pick of "Wild is the Wind" might be a little cheat given my favorite version of the song is by Nina Simone (not, as sung in the movie, by Johnny Mathis, though Mathis is also marvelous).  It's such a creepy love ballad.  Sinatra's classic "All the Way" and Marni Nixon belting out the standard "An Affair to Remember" (through Deborah Kerr) are totally acceptable answers here too, though.

Sound

1. Pal Joey

2. Witness for the Prosecution

3. Sayonara

4. Les Girls

5. Gunfight at the OK Corral

The Lowdown: I will be honest-every single one of these films will be getting replaced when I do my My Ballot.  That's not to say there isn't good stuff happening (Pal Joey has some solid musical numbers and the dialogue is crisp, Witness has the great final courtroom scene & Marlene singing), but nothing here stands out in a big way.  The shootout in Gunfight, for example, is a disappointment (the best part of it is the Frankie Lane title song), and Les Girls is a great movie, but not one that has a lot of super memorable musical numbers (it works better on its plot).  The Bridge on the River Kwai is clearly missing.

Art Direction

1. Les Girls

2. Funny Face

3. Raintree County

4. Sayonara

5. Pal Joey

The Lowdown: Gorgeous sets abound here, but in particular for the Top 2 (in another year Raintree County's elaborate and epic southern looks would be a serious contender for the win, here it has to settle for the bronze).  I'm going to go with Les Girls for the statue because it plays more with the beautiful looks of Paris than Funny Face does, and the sets have a bit more color and personality, but honestly they're both so good this is splitting hairs.

Cinematography

1. Funny Face

2. An Affair to Remember

3. The Bridge on the River Kwai

4. Sayonara

5. Peyton Place

The Lowdown: This one comes down to the romances for me-this is the one area where I think Bridge is good but isn't necessarily breaking the bank except for the final sequence, and so I'd put this between Affair and Funny Face.  Funny Face probably benefits a bit from its plot-there film is literally about catching the exact right photo of Audrey Hepburn, and you get gorgeous scenes and fashion shots of her to accompany that.  I do like the intercontinental glamour and radiant CinemaScope beauty of An Affair to Remember, but if forced to pick, I'd end with Funny Face.

Costume Design

1. Funny Face

2. Les Girls

3. Raintree County

4. An Affair to Remember

5. Pal Joey

The Lowdown: With costume design, sometimes you get contests where you were never going to win.  There are really good nominees in this category (for my money, the best lineup Oscar pulled together in 1957), and some are extraordinary.  That exquisite orange & white dress Deborah Kerr wears in An Affair to Remember, the plunging bodices sported by a never-more-beautiful Elizabeth Taylor in Raintree County, the monochromatic swimsuits & matching chapeaus of Les Girls...all grand.  But when Audrey Hepburn in a strapless scarlet dress & matching scarf walks down the steps of the Louvre in Funny Face...that's what makes movies, movies-it simply has to win.

Film Editing

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai

2. Witness for the Prosecution

3. Gunfight at the OK Corral

4. Pal Joey

5. Sayonara

The Lowdown: I feel like too many of these categories are Bridge on the River Kwai facing off against Witness for the Prosecution with the latter coming up short.  This is true here, even though it's close-Bridge sometimes sags in the middle (maybe its weakest aspect even if the beginning and end are so well-conceived), and you can't deny that Witness builds its tension masterfully.  Still, the ending of Bridge is just too good to ignore, and neither Marlene Dietrich or Dennis Hopper's very effective final scene in Gunfight at the OK Corral can really compete with it.

Special Effects

1. The Spirit of St. Louis

2. The Enemy Below

The Lowdown: Our only category with only two nominees in the bunch, this is a battle between two war pictures.  The Spirit of St. Louis is really impressive when you keep in mind this is a special effects category, and so therefore the plane stunt effects and trick flying should be part of your calculation.  It helps that Jimmy Stewart was a pilot in WWII and actually knows what he was doing.  The Enemy Below is both a lesser movie, and honestly has lesser effects by comparison (Lindbergh gets my win).  It's not bad-the water effects toward the end all are strong & believable in a world without CGI, but it's nothing you wouldn't see in a dozen other war films of the era.

OVP: Little Women (1949)

Film: Little Women (1949)

Stars: June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Margaret O'Brien, Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh, Rossano Brazzi, Mary Astor, Lucille Watson, C. Aubrey Smith

Director: Mervyn LeRoy

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Cinematography, Art Direction*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on June Allyson: click here to learn more about Ms. Allyson (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we missed June Allyson, because I was in the office all week & it was the Oscars (which as you can imagine, is quite the event around my house), so today you're going to get a double dip of Ms. Allyson, both films from 1949.  Circa 1949, you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger name in Hollywood than June Allyson.  Allyson's lack of an Oscar nomination relegates her to a category of actress that isn't super discussed today (we'll talk about this in a couple of weeks, but a few decisions late in her career also contributed to this decline in stature), but she was a big deal on the MGM lot, rivaling figures like Judy Garland or Joan Crawford (at a competing studio) as one of the most noteworthy actresses in Hollywood.  One of the biggest films she made at the time was the all-star rendition of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, one of four big-screen studio incarnations of the story, and arguably the one with the most buzz-worthy cast.  In a lineup that included Mary Astor, Peter Lawford, Janet Leigh, and Elizabeth Taylor, it was Allyson who got top billing & the leading role.

(Spoilers Ahead...though do you really need a spoiler alert for Little Women?) The movie is about the four March sisters: headstrong Jo (Allyson), dutiful Meg (Leigh), vain Amy (Taylor), and sweet Beth (O'Brien) who used to be rich, but now live in relative poverty (relative being the operative word here given their house is pretty swanky in this film) with their nurse mother (Astor), while their father is out away fighting for the Union in the Civil War.  The film unfolds with these four women trying to live their lives, at the center of it a love square between Jo, Amy, handsome-and-rich Laurie (Lawford), and handsome-and-studious Professor Bhaer (Brazzi).  Love, tragedy, and even death ensue (we all know that Beth dies), but it's a family drama with all of the trimmings...I could go into it more, but let's be honest, you've either seen one of the movies or read the book if you're on this blog.

I will own that I've never really gelled with this story.  Even the recent critically-acclaimed movie by Greta Gerwig I was just in the middle of (let me tell you-my 3-star review of that picture stands OUT compared to my friends on the platform).  But watching this, I get why Gerwig's film enchanted so many, as it takes a relatively formulaic story and gives it life, particularly through the performances from Timothee Chalamet & Florence Pugh.  The 1949 film has no such luck, giving us little invention, and as a result, playing all of the characters as flat.  Star power will get you a little bit (Elizabeth Taylor is delicious if nowhere near as good as Pugh, playing pretty Amy), but the rest is a struggle.  Jo March is a tricky heroine (she bucks convention, frequently makes somewhat cruel mistakes about people, and spends much of the film not knowing what she wants), and Allyson doesn't know how to land her.  The first and second halves of the film feel like separate Jo's entirely.

The movie won several Oscar nominations, and here I'm onboard.  The technicolor cinematography looks divine, with all of these beautiful actresses framed perfectly in snow-covered houses and richly-detailed libraries.  The art direction in generally is also strong-I get why this, with these houses that actually have personality, won the statue.  I'm surprised, honestly, that it didn't get in for costuming too, which is fun (particularly Elizabeth Taylor's gown in the film's final scene) and lovely.  But there's not enough life in this film to make any of these lush decorations truly sing.

The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)

Film: The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)

Stars: Elizabeth Taylor, Van Johnson, Walter Pidgeon, Donna Reed, Eva Gabor, Roger Moore

Director: Richard Brooks

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Donna Reed: click here to learn more about Ms. Reed (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are going to conclude our month-long look at the career of Donna Reed with the twilight of her film career.  Reed would stop making theatrical movies by the mid-1950's, when she was essentially shooting bargain basement flicks for Columbia, and one could argue that today's movie The Last Time I Saw Paris was the last really high-budget movie she'd make, though the budget has less to do with her coming off of an Oscar win and more because she was starring opposite one of the biggest emerging stars of the era, Elizabeth Taylor.  Given that motion pictures were doing nothing for her, she decided to move to television, where her long history of big-screen projects and her Oscar win were enough to get her an eponymous TV series called The Donna Reed Show which would run for eight years on ABC.  Initially a flop (Reed was up against Milton Berle & the show was nearly cancelled in its first season), moving the series to Thursday nights earned the show a following, but it also accrued quite a bit of infamy.  We're going to talk about what happened to Reed's show, both during & after its run, in a second, but first I want to make sure we pay attention to the movie at-hand today, The Last Time I Saw Paris.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is told in retrospect, and it's got a lot of plot (based on a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald it also has a lot of booze & tragedy).  Essentially the gist of the movie is that we have Charles Willis (Johnson), a war correspondent who is accosted by a woman on the street that we learn is Helen (Taylor), a carefree younger sister of a woman who has also made Charles' acquaintance Marion (Reed).  Both sisters are obviously in love with Charles, but it's Helen that he prefers, her carefree spirit & more conventional attractiveness making her impossible to deny.  Charles & Marion are a terrible pairing, with the former an unsuccessful writer who is practical, the latter a free spirit who indulges in spending money she doesn't have.  Their lives are torn asunder when the barren oil fields that Charles got as a dowry from his equally cavalier father-in-law (Pidgeon) actually strike oil, making them momentarily rich.  The couple start to grow apart, with them both starting up affairs (with a young Eva Gabor & Roger Moore), hurting their relationship, and leading Charles to become an alcoholic.  One night, Helen tries to return in the rain to their house, but Charles, drunk, cannot get to the door, and so Helen goes to Marion's in the cold...and promptly dies from pneumonia.  Charles cannot forgive himself, and neither can Marion, who holds a grudge for him not choosing her initially, and for a while she keeps his daughter with Helen from her, but in the end they are reunited, trying to live their lives in the wake of Helen's death.

The movie should work but it doesn't.  There's a compelling story, and Taylor is fire here (she looks great).  But the story doesn't really know what to do with the main characters, who don't really have much chemistry with each other or with Gabor/Moore.  Honestly, I always struggle with Van Johnson when he's doing drama...my favorite role for him is the curmudgeon in Brigadoon, but I've never loved him in anything else.  Honestly, Donna Reed is really good here in a role that is vastly underwritten-her late-breaking adoration of Charles is only etched in her eyes, not in the script, and I spent most of the movie wanting to see things from her perspective.  After a month of Reed getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop, at least here she earns the star power she wasn't given in other movies we've profiled.

Reed, as I mentioned, moved to television after this.  The Donna Reed Show was the first major broadcast show in the United States to feature a mother as the most important character in a family sitcom, rather than the father or the children.  The show launched the singing careers of Shelley Fabares ("Johnny Angel") & Paul Petersen ("My Dad"), who played Reed's children.  The show, though, attracted criticism of feminists, who thought the show depicted Reed's character Donna Stone as a submissive housewife who wore ballgowns while washing windows; this would be mocked decades later in a Gilmore Girls episode where Rory would dress as Donna Reed on a date with her boyfriend Dean.  Reed did not take well to her character being criticized by the women's liberation movement of the 1970's, and engaged in public statements against women in film & TV of the era that we would now consider to be "slut shaming" referring to them as "kooky, amoral, & sick."  

Reed's politics were more complicated, though, than you'd think.  While she was a longtime Republican, which leans into much of what we associate with her today as being synonymous with her fictional Donna Stone character, I was surprised to find out in researching her this month that she went from endorsing Barry Goldwater in 1964 to supporting Eugene McCarthy in 1968, a shift driven entirely by her views on Vietnam, which she vehemently opposed.  Reed would rarely work after The Donna Reed Show (though she attempted a comeback in Dallas to replace Barbara bel Geddes that would ultimately result in Reed successfully suing CBS for breach-of-contract when bel Geddes changed her mind and returned to the show).  She died in 1986 at the age of 64 of pancreatic cancer.  Next month, for our last month focused on "Film-to-TV," we are going to talk about an actress who, unlike the eleven figures we profiled before this, was one of the biggest stars of the Classical Hollywood era, not needing to indulge in television as a way to cement her celebrity.  That she did anyway in the 1960's indicated just how important television had become, permanently linked to the Hollywood machinery.

Jane Eyre (1944)

Film: Jane Eyre (1944)
Stars: Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Margaret O'Brien, Peggy Ann Garner, John Sutton, Sara Allgood, Agnes Moorehead, Elizabeth Taylor
Director: Robert Stevenson
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine, had she made it just a few years longer would have turned 100 years old last week, and while I was too busy prepping for NaNoWriMo to do something on the actual day, I felt it was worth acknowledging her as an actress after such a centennial.  Fontaine, in my eyes, has always paled in respect to her sister, Joan being an actress who had a brief moment of major stardom (where she scooped up a trio of Oscar nominations), and then spent the rest of her career being perhaps more infamous for a feud than anything else.  But Fontaine was a fine actress, and as it was about to leave FilmStruck I decided to catch Jane Eyre for the first time, watching Fontaine's "plain" young governess fall madly in love with the complicated, tortured Edward Rochester, played most appropriately by Orson Welles.

(Spoilers Ahead...though seriously, you haven't read Jane Eyre?) It should be stated right up-front that Jane Eyre is one of my all-time favorite books.  I've read it a couple of times, and it's nearly impossible to put down.  Charlotte Bronte paints a tough, feminist icon in the form of her titular heroine, and it's really one of those stories like Great Expectations or Pride & Prejudice that is almost impossible to screw up, it's so compelling.  Still, though, I'd seen other versions that were remarkable (particularly the 2011 version with Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender), and was curious to see what one with such an expansive cast would achieve.

All-in-all, I didn't leave disappointed.  I won't recap the plot that much (it's such a famous story), but the movie takes great care in the earlier chapters to portray Jane as a young woman in a way that I don't think I've seen before onscreen.  Peggy Ann Garner, as the young Jane, is marvelous in this role.  She would the following year win an Honorary Oscar for her brilliant work in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but here she's nearly its equal, headstrong and defiant while very real.  It's rare to see someone steal scenes from Elizabeth Taylor (who plays her doomed childhood friend Helen), but Garner is truly excellent-it's a pity she never got to contend for a competitive Oscar in her career, as she more than earned a nomination.

The romance between Fontaine and Welles is very good.  I'd say that Fontaine sometimes under-emotes, but there's something lost in her eyes and her mannerisms, the way that she clings to relevance through Adele (O'Brien), and how she manages to be both defiant and wear the weight of the world on her shoulders that I found quite captivating.  Welles as Rochester may be typecasting, but he's such a good actor it's hard to argue with such a decision.  His Rochester has occasional charm, but is brooded in his undying passion for Jane and the secrets he quite literally keeps in the attic.  The movie doesn't shy away from the novel's gothic exterior, and while so much of its genius comes from Charlotte Bronte (the script adds little that isn't there on the page), that's a minor quibble for such a grand translation.  Honestly-this may well be my favorite interpretation of the book, and considering how often this has made it to the big-screen, that's saying something.

Those were my thoughts-how about yours?  What version of Bronte's masterpiece do you think is the best big-screen adaptation?  What do you think is the best work of Joan Fontaine's career?  And why don't more film historians talk about the excellent childhood performances of Peggy Ann Garner?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

John's Favorite Shows #2: The Simpsons

In case you're new to the blog, I'm doing a countdown of my favorite television shows and their best episodes.  If you’ve missed any of them, check out the links at the bottom of this post for all of the past roundups.

Wait, what?  I read this blog regularly and I have never seen anything about a TV Show episode countdown-how could this be?!?  If you're asking that first, thanks for reading regularly and second, yeah, that's on me, not on you.  Last year I started a series of the best episodes of all-time of my favorite series, but got stuck when I hit #2 (they are some of the most-trafficked posts in the history of the site and some of my favorites, so if you haven't read them yet please click the links at the bottom of the page, and remember the date they were published if you're grousing about the fifth season missing for Game of Thrones).  It's hard not to be daunted when picking the best episodes of the television series The Simpsons, though.  574 episodes and counting, so many of them absolute brilliance, and yes, as a true fan I have seen literally every episode.  I actually started watching the show in the mid-90's when my parents had banned me from watching the show-my brother had the same idea, and we were both sneaking around watching it on different televisions when we both laughed at the same spot, thus blowing both of our covers (after that, in a far more environmentally-friendly way we perused clandestinely on the same television).

Creating a Top 10 list for it, though, was a challenge not just because of the daunting task ahead, but also because with dozens and dozens of well-rounded side characters, it's hard not to look chummy and a bit like you aren't spreading the wealth.  My favorite characters on the show are Lisa, Sideshow Bob, and Mr. Burns, and I could easily just fill up a Top 10 with those three characters as the central figures and be happy, but that would leave out Marge, Homer, Bart, Moe, Edna, and all of the other Springfield-ers that fill Matt Groening's magical world.  As a result, I tried to spread the wealth a bit, but you can judge in the comments if I did what I intended.  Since you've already waited long enough, I won't make you stave off any further.  Here are my Top 10 Simpsons episodes:

10. "Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in 'The Curse of the Flying Hellfish'" (#7.22)

Possibly the prettiest episode of the series (the animation is flawless), this is also one of the greatest stand-alone style episodes, where Abe, dismissed by his grandson for being an old coot, realizes that he is one of the last surviving members of the Flying Hellfish, and has a tontine with Mr. Burns involving some priceless World War II artifacts (in true Simpsons attention to detail, the paintings depicted are actually lost WWII art).  The episode features Mr. Burns at his most diabolical, including hiring a bumbling assassin to off Grampa and consistently tries to murder he and Bart.  The episode is unique not only because it's one of the few where Homer, Marge, and Lisa don't factor in at all (this is clearly a Bart-centered episode), but also because it's so action-packed, essentially serving as a stirring adventure movie more than your average Simpsons installment.

9. "Sideshow Bob Roberts" (#6.5)

"The dead have risen-and they're voting Republican!"  So proclaims Bart in arguably my favorite line in the entire series.  This is one of the best Sideshow Bob installments in the series, a wonderful parody of the entire political system, with Bob being released from prison and promptly runs for political office against the inept Mayor Quimby.  Bob wins the election, but it turns out he was pulling a Mayor Daley-style election-style, having dead citizens of Springfield out voting for him to ensure his victory.  The political junkie in me is overjoyed by all of the detail in this episode, from Birch Barlow's blowhard impression of Rush Limbaugh to the Waylon Smithers Deep Throat aspect to the final courtroom speech from Bob.  Best of all may be Kelsey Grammar actually being a charming, confident conservative in real-life, finding a strong corollary between art and life.

8. "Treehouse of Horror V" (#6.6)

I'm just now realizing these episodes were back-to-back-awesome.  You can't do a Simpsons rundown without at least one Treehouse of Horror, where all pandemonium is thrown into the carefully structured universe of Springfield, and this is certainly the best one.  When the clever Soylent Green-parody is easily the worst of the bunch, you know you're in for a treat. You also have the brilliant "Time and Punishment," where Homer throws us into a series of visually-popping realities ranging from a world where Bart and Lisa are giants to Ned Flanders as a cruel dictator (considering he's also the devil, it's sort of a cold rag the producers throw on religious zealots in the series).  Best of all you have Homer doing his best Jack Torrance in "The Shinning," with a dead ghost Moe and a soon-to-be-axed Willie filling out the supporting cast.  I cannot stop laughing during the episode's best sight gag, where Homer continually chops into doors saying not just "Here's Johnny," but also taglines for The Late Show and (successfully) with 60 Minutes.  It's smart comedy at its brainiest.

7. "Lisa's Substitute," (#2.19)

Lisa Simpson is a tragic figure in a lot of ways.  A young woman with sparkling ideals, stuck in a house that frequently dismisses her as a kook or someone that is "outside the norm," she needed a role model, and that comes in the form of substitute teacher Mr. Bergstrom.  While both Marge and Homer have had near affairs or cheated on the family, no one did it in the emotionally-starved way that Lisa did, as she finds a newfound hope in a role model who celebrates her individuality.  The episode's best moments may not just involve Dustin Hoffman's wonderful guest spot (he was billed under the pseudonym Sam Etic), but the way Lisa blasts Homer for being callous and how Marge a-characteristically stands against her husband stating, "no little girl can be happy unless she has faith in her daddy."  In one of those rare moments in the series where Homer isn't just given a free pass, he actually apologizes, finds some solace in Lisa, and she forgives him.  It's a beautiful moment in perhaps the series most poignant relationship (Homer and his completely opposite daughter Lisa), and one that decades later is still fondly recalled by fans of the show, including yours truly.

6. "A Streetcar Named Marge," (#4.2)

I promise not to make this entire list about Homer-shaming, but if Lisa got her day against her father's oafishness in Number 7, then "A Streetcar Named Marge" gave his wife a moment of pride over Homer's callousness.  Marge is playing Blanche DuBois in a local production of A Streetcar Named Desire, but Homer is acting with indifference toward her artistic and creative side, and she fuels her anger at him to drive her performance.  The show is wonderful not just because it allows Marge to have a personality outside of being just a wife and mother, but also because it shows the weird dynamic in their relationship has to be stretched on occasion, as Homer is too unkind to Marge too often, and she reaches a breaking point.  This alone would qualify it for the list, but we also have one of the series' great B-plots with Maggie at an Ayn Rand School for Tots, where she parodies The Great Escape to get back at her teacher for taking away her pacifier.  So memorable was this story that it became the source of The Longest Daycare, which scored The Simpsons their first Oscar nomination.

5. "Bart Sells His Soul," (#7.4)

Occasionally in the 1970's, the era of sitcoms that Matt Groening would have grown up with, episodes would try to encapsulate something more important, something uncomfortable for the audience.  It was a moving experience, principally because it showed that our beloved comedic characters whom we would go to for warmth and familiarity could have their lives interrupted by a crisis.  This is probably the closest The Simpsons ever got to that, with Bart selling his soul to Milhouse without realizing its worth.  In the end he gets it back from the always kind Lisa, but in the meantime he goes on a spiritual journey, feeling lost and alone. This episode has been taught in religion classes about the nature of the soul and spirituality, and is surely the darkest moment in the history of the series.  It also proclaims that Bart is familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda, a passion I wouldn't have expected from him.

4. "Mr. Plow," (#4.9)

If ever there was a season of television that the Emmys should be ashamed for not letting be nominated for Best Comedy Series, it is the fourth season of The Simpsons.  Basically every episode from the season is considered a classic, perhaps none more iconically than Mr. Plow, Homer's snow-plowing business that creates him much success, and garners him the most familiar ditty of the series (just try not to sing it right now).  The episode features an intense rivalry with Barney, who essentially pushes Homer out of business with Linda Ronstadt somehow in tow, and has wonderful touches from Homer doing an impression of an old woman (Forbidden Widow's Peak) to God himself ruining both of their businesses at the end of the episode.  All-in-all, it might be a cliche to put it on a list of the greatest episodes, but like "Time Enough at Last" and "The One Where Everyone Finds Out," "Mr. Plow is undeniable.

3. "Lisa's First Word," (#4.10)

Once again we have back-to-back episodes, but unlike "Mr. Plow," this one is iconic for the ridiculously beautiful ending to the episode.  The characters, while trying to get Maggie to speak, stumble instead into a story about Lisa's first word.  We were still close enough to beginning of the series to get away with a story of the children being in the actual 1980's, rather than later gags where flashbacks couldn't rely on pop culture, and so you get wonderful sight gags of Homer singing Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun."  The episode's ending is what sets it apart, though, as the producers got Oscar-winning actress Elizabeth Taylor, one of the biggest stars to grace the series, to be the voice of Maggie Simpson, having her first word be "daddy."  It's a beautiful little moment that Taylor reportedly did dozens of takes to get exactly right, but it's perfect that the silent Simpson get such a gargantuan titan of acting to be her vocalist.

2. "Marge vs. the Monorail (#4.12)

For the record, the eleventh episode (since we went three out of four here) of "Homer's Triple Bypass" was also quite wonderful and poetic, but if I have to pick a favorite episode from the best season of the series, it would assuredly be "Marge vs. the Monorail," a wonderful parody of The Music Man which involves Marge trying to solve the city's infrastructure problem with the millions that Mr. Burns has been forced to spend as a result of EPA violations.  However, Marge is overruled by a huckster named Lyle Lanley, who convinces the city that they need a monorail to improve transit.  He shortchanges them on supplies and eventually they build a monorail (with Homer as conductor, naturally) that is clearly destined for doom.  The entire episode is classic, with a lovely cameo from Leonard Nimoy and the classic "Monorail Song" at the episode's center.  All-in-all, a great showcase for both Julie Kavner and the late, great Phil Hartman.

1. "Cape Feare," (#5.2)

How do you pick a best episode of a series that has run for 26 seasons?  Well, you start with an episode that would result in iconography for the series (that score!), you mix in a plot so impressively full that you don't need a B-story, and then you mix in references from everyone from Gilbert & Sullivan to Linda Lavin.  Honestly-this is pretty much a perfect 22 minutes of television, with Kelsey Grammar wonderfully-playing his role as Sideshow Bob, creating the model for pretty much every later endeavor he undertakes, while the entire Simpsons clan gets consistent humor and sight gags.  Parodying the similarly-named Robert de Niro picture of two years earlier, this shows exactly what I love about The Simpsons: it's biting, wry, and not afraid to keep the humor sophisticated, even amidst the occasional belch.

And there you have it-my list of the Top 10 episodes.  I swear you won't have to wait as long for Number One on this list as you did for Number Two, but in the meantime, let's discuss-did I make the right call for the Matt Groening series (I'm a little disappointed I didn't pick any of the episodes past Season 7, as there's still a lot of great stuff there, even if this list sort of backs up the "Simpsons classic years" argument)?  If not, the comments are there for the typing!

For more of my favorites: Girls, Pushing Daisies, How I Met Your Mother, Game of Thrones, The Office, Ally McBeal, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, South Park, Mad Men, The Twilight Zone, Friends, Gilmore Girls

AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, Part 1

So, with the recent death of Lauren Bacall, the American Film Institute's list of living "greatest actors" just got one person shorter.  Created in 1999, and for only actors who made their film debuts after 1950 (or had already passed away at the time), the list at the time was already pretty short on still-living members (only nine including the men), but is now down to three, and just one of those in females.

So in honor of this list, and Ms. Bacall, I thought it would be a cool idea to do a rundown of the actors on it, and my favorite of their performances.  This is partly both a public service and a personal bit of a shaming.  One of the sadder things that happened to me yesterday while discussing Ms. Bacall's passing was that I realized that most people I was talking to about her had never heard of her.  This is sad not only because modern cinema doesn't celebrate its past enough (cough, the Governors Awards, cough), but also because they are missing out on Ms. Bacall's work.  However, while I am certainly aware of all of the women on this list, I will admit heartily that I haven't extensively been watching most of their filmographies, and most of them have at least one major glaring miss from me in their filmography.  As a result, my Netflix queue (and hopefully yours) is going to be a lot fuller when all of this is done.  Let's start, and in anti-climactic list reading fashion, we're going to start at the top of the list instead of the bottom (they're all legends, why not mix it up as a result?).

1. Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003)

Oscar Nominations: 12, with four wins for Morning Glory, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter, and On Golden Pond
Probably Best Known Today For: Hepburn's warbling voice is oft-imitated, and I'm guessing that today she's best known for that rather than an actual film role.  If it is a film role, it's likely On Golden Pond, which was a HUGE success in 1981 (the second highest-grossing film of the year after Raiders-it beat Superman II, can you imagine that happening today?!?).
My Favorite Performance: This is a tough one, as Kate's one of the few actors on this list that I've seen a boatload of her movies.  I'd probably have to go with Bringing Up Baby over The Philadelphia Story, though (even though I like the latter film better) since Hepburn is just on all cylinders in that film (the jailhouse scene still leaves me in stitches).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: This is the part of the post where I reel out certain missing elements of my cinematic credentials.  I have seen eight of Hepburn's Best Actress-nominated performances, but probably the most famous that I'm missing is Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.  It's been considered quite dated and not as good by modern audiences, but there's no denying that it certainly has a pop culture cache, so I'll go with that one.

2. Bette Davis (1908-1989)

Oscar Nominations: 10 nominations, with two wins for Dangerous and Jezebel
Probably Best Known Today For: ...Having those Bette Davis eyes.  Kim Carnes immortalized Davis in a way few of her films ever could for Generation X, but cinematically she remains forever Margo Channing, fascinating her seatbelt for a bumpy night.
My Favorite Performance: I could be provocative and pick one of her other truly strong performances (Davis was the Meryl Streep of her day, for context), but you just cannot beat All About Eve.  The phrase "she was born to play that role" is a hackneyed cliche, but I'll be damned if it isn't true here.  Claudette Colbert was originally slated to play the part, but she had to back out due to an injury, and Bette Davis gloriously filled in.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I'm missing a few of her Oscar-nominated roles, the most glaring of which is probably Dark Victory, a performance that probably would have won her a third Oscar before even Walter Brennan got there were it not for some Civil War film where the main character has the same name as a color.

3. Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993)

Oscar Nominations: 5 nominations, winning competitively for Roman Holiday and eventually winning the Jean Thalberg Humanitarian Award.  Hepburn would also receive the EGOT, the only actress on this list to do so.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her incomparable style (she's still regularly featured in ads for fashion houses) and Breakfast at Tiffany's, one of those few classics that has transcended generations in terms of its cultural significance.
My Favorite Performance: Holly Golightly is a tough act to beat, and I'm not going to try.  Her work in Breakfast was complicated, airy, with just enough of a scent of melancholy to keep the film grounded in Truman Capote's original story.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have seen all but one of her Oscar nominated roles (I'm missing The Nun's Story), and I've actually seen most of her most significant non-nominated work (this is probably the most complete of all of the filmographies we're going to discuss today), so I'll go with that.

4. Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982)

Oscar Nominations: 7 nominations, winning three of them in one of the best track records in the history of the Oscars (she won for Gaslight, Anastasia, and Murder on the Orient Express
Probably Best Known Today For: Casablanca, one of the truly iconic classic films and one of those few films that is thrown around as an indisputable high point of the art form (in the same way War and Peace is for the novel).
My Favorite Performance: Casablanca is my favorite film, and she's my favorite performance in it, so you do the math here.  Bergman has long been one of my favorite actresses because she brought that quiet, introverted acting style that is so celebrated now to life much earlier in her career than most people did.  She's also, in my opinion, the most beautiful woman in all of classic cinema (give or take Rita Hayworth).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: This is one of the final actors before I start ducking my head for cover and wondering if I can call myself a movie fan, as I've seen most of Bergman's most significant work.  From a curiosity standpoint you cannot beat Bergman meets Bergman in Autumn Sonata, but I think the most important film I haven't seen from her is For Whom the Bell Tolls.

5. Greta Garbo (1905-1990)

Oscar Nominations: Garbo received three nominations in her career (though four...kind of; back in the day you could be nominated for more than one film), but never won a competitive Oscar.  She did receive an Honorary Oscar in 1954, though she didn't show up to receive it (it was mailed to her house).
Probably Best Known Today For: Wanting to be alone.  Garbo's films have largely gone by the wayside in the public consciousness, but she herself remains an iconic figure of reclusion and thespian mystery.
My Favorite Performance: I have seen none of Garbo's most iconic roles, so I will go with the one Oscar-nominated performance of hers I have seen, Romance.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Where to begin?  Probably with Camille, which is considered her greatest performance and got her her second Oscar nomination.  And considering she landed a nod in 1939, generally considered the greatest of all movie years, Ninotchka surely should also be mentioned.

6. Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962)

Oscar Nominations: One of the only actors on this entire list with no history with Oscar, Monroe never received a nomination or a win.  She did win a Golden Globe for Some Like It Hot, however.
Probably Best Known Today For: Never having left us.  No other actress on this list can remotely compare to Monroe in the ways that they have permeated modern pop culture.  She's still on billboards, in advertisements, and sold as poster art.  Andy Warhol helped, but pretty much every pop culture scribe has at some point gone to the Marilyn well for inspiration.  Most people would struggle to name one of her actual movies, but everyone knows HER.
My Favorite Performance: Of course it would be Some Like It Hot, which is one of the greatest screwball comedies ever made and Monroe is dynamite as Sugar Kane, the ukulele player.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Unlike most of the public, I've actually seen most of Monroe's most significant work.  Probably the biggest miss would be The Seven Year Itch, which contains her iconic white dress subway scene.

7. Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011)

Oscar Nominations: 5 nominations, including two competitive wins for Butterfield 8 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; like Audrey Hepburn, Taylor also won the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, getting her Oscar count up to three.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her many marriages.  Taylor was married eight times and was a tabloid sensation, most notably for her two marriages to Richard Burton.  Taylor also became hugely identified with AIDS research in the 1980's and is perhaps the celebrity best known for her advocacy for HIV-infected people.
My Favorite Performance: It's tough to top what she did as Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and I'm not going to try-that is a performance that has to be seen to be believed, and she heartily deserved her Oscar citation.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've actually seen most of Liz's most significant work, though I'm missing two big ones: National Velvet, her most iconic role as a child, and Cleopatra, the film that nearly bankrupt 20th Century FOX.

8. Judy Garland (1922-1969)

Oscar Nominations: 2 nominations for A Star is Born and Judgment at Nuremberg, though she lost for both.  Garland did pick up a Juvenile Award for The Wizard of Oz/Babes in Arms in 1939, though.
Probably Best Known Today For: The Wizard of Oz is a classic that every generation encounters on television, and Garland's Dorothy Gale is the heart of that story.  She's also the pinup for the "tragic child actor" story, as her work has long been overshadowed by her personal demons with drugs and booze.
My Favorite Performance: Definitely A Star is Born, which is really one of those brilliant art-imitating-life situations (Garland herself would become a tragically forgotten Hollywood star), and she just nails every aspect of this really superb movie (particularly that unforgettable intro in "The Man That Got Away").
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Garland has three truly iconic films, and I have viewed all of them (the other being Meet Me in St. Louis, for those keeping track at home), so I have to go with the B-work.  I could pick Nuremberg, but she's got such a small part in that so I'll instead pick one of the MGM classics, Easter Parade.

And we'll end there and make this a three-parter.  It's now time to confess-which of these women do you love and worship and which of these ladies do you have glaring misses in their filmography (or gulp, maybe haven't seen them in anything?).  Share in the comments!

Top 10 Greatest Oscar Dresses

For me, the Oscars are all about the movies and the performances and the celebration of the cinema.  That being said, I'm more than aware that for some people it's a giant fashion show that somehow gets bogged down by clip shows and shiny gold men.  For those people, this is for you.  I am not a fashionista, but from my remembrance (and from photos), I have given below my Top 10 favorite Oscar dresses (year listed is the year of the ceremony).

10. Halle Berry in Elie Saab (2002)

When you know there's a good chance you're about to get a very historic Oscar and you happen to have the body and face of Helen of Troy, going outside the box is a great idea.  Only Berry could pull off a sheer floral top with the burgundy skirt, but that's who wore it so it makes the list.

9. Grace Kelly in Edith Head (1955)

The black-and-white photos have never done this elegant, subtly mint green dress justice-just the faintest hint of color pops when offset by Kelly's alabaster skin and elbow-length white gloves.

8. Uma Thurman in Prada (1995)

Thuman has only ever received one Oscar nomination, and she sure made the most of it with a spectacularly gorgeous lavender Prada dress.  Her makeup and statuesque beauty highlight it, but the thing that pulls this together is the supremely luxurious shawl.  This is a woman who knows classic movie star glamour.

7. Elizabeth Taylor in Dior (1961)

Liz had just had one helluva a year with the death of her husband Mike Todd, then she ran off with Debbie Reynolds' husband Eddie Fisher and nearly died (you can see her tracheotomy scar in this photo).  The Oscar was certain to be hers, and she owned the red carpet in her Dior (in fact, Melina Mercouri, Deborah Kerr, and Shirley MacLaine all skipped the ceremony Taylor was such a frontrunner).

6. Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy (1954)

Hepburn basically invented great Oscar fashion (and made herself a fashion icon for all-time) when she won her trophy for Roman Holiday and sported classic white Givenchy (don't you love that she totally pulls off the belt?).

5. Nicole Kidman in Dior (1997)

Joan Rivers famously hated it ("here comes Nicole Kidman in the ugliest shade of green I've ever seen"), but I cannot get enough-hyper elegant, slightly exotic, and a color no one ever rocked before (or really has rocked so well since).  The top bead work reminds me of Berry's dress in the sense that only Kidman could pull it off, and she would remain a fashion icon for the upcoming sixteen years.

4. Cate Blanchett in Armani Prive (2007)

I honestly could put ten Cate Blanchett dresses on this list and just be fine with it.  Between she, Kidman, and the woman at number two on this list, that's pretty much my entire fashion lexicon.  If in doubt, I'll always list one of them as the best-dressed of the night.  Though she didn't win for Notes on a Scandal, Blanchett clearly demanded the red carpet and looked like a goddess in this chic metallic gown.

3. Susan Sarandon in Dolce & Gabbana (1996)

I'm aware that some of you may hate this dress, but I don't care.  I have always been obsessed with the confidence of this gown (along with the sunglasses).  Copper is a color that only some people can pull off, but Sarandon surely is one of them.  An actress at the height of her fame and power.

2. Kate Winslet in Ben de Lisi (2002)

Winslet always hits a home run, in my opinion.  I even loved her dress at the 1998 Oscars.  I have to admit, though, that I'm with the consensus-this gorgeous red Ben de Lisi dress is the clear winner.  Winslet, like many before her on this list, didn't win her Oscar that night but this was a clear victor.

1. Julia Roberts in Valentino (2001)

 I honestly wasn't sure where I'd go with the number one dress, but how could it not be this?  Perfectly blending modern Hollywood with its classical roots, Roberts found elegant, simple lines with this black and white gown that brilliantly highlighted not only her beauty, but the ultimate accessory: Oscar himself.

Those are my choices-how about you?  What is your favorite Oscar dress?