Tag: Gone with the Wind

6 Degrees: Notes from the Global Village

6 Degrees of Film
6 Degrees of Film

Friday Five: Notes from the Global Village: Recommended at the movies this week are:

*Star Wars
*Spotlight
*The Big Short
*Trumbo
*45 Years

Star wars logo

Star Wars is here! Star Wars:The Force Awakens has landed to mostly positive reviews and mass media in hyper-drive with the onslaught of the movie campaign. The best place to see reviews for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is in the 6 Degrees online magazine. Read the reviews from:

• Ebert.com
• Film comment.com
• Time Magazine
• The LA Times
• Associated Press (Pop culture appeal of Star Wars)

Mad max furiosa

*Fem Flicks: 2015 was a good year for Strong Women’s film roles. Mad Max: Fury Road and Suffragette were both excellent fem flicks for women of all ages to find strong role models. See link: “Is Hollywood finally a woman’s world too?- LA Times

**
Coming Soon: Here are some of the most anticipated films coming soon:

The Revenant

Batman v Superman-with Ben Affleck
The Hateful Eight-Tarantino’s Latest
The Revenant-Oscar buzz for DiCaprio
Ghostbusters all female cast Remake
Misconduct– starring Anthony Hopkins & Al Pacino

*The American Film Institute names top 10 movies for 2015:

Bridge of spies speilberg hanks

The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Carol
Inside Out
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
Room
Spotlight
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Straight Outta Compton

The National Film Registry has also come out with their picks for films to be preserved and entered into the registry. Here’s a partial list of films selected for the registry this year :

Bill Murray Ghostbusters

*Being There (1979)

• A Fool There was (1915)
• Ghostbusters (1984)
• Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)
• Humoresque (1920)
• Imitation of Life (1959)
• John Henry and the Inky-Poo (1946)
• LA Confidential (1997)
• The Mark of Zorro (1920)
• The Old Mill (1937)
• Our Daily Bread (1934)
• Seconds (1966)
• The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
• Sink or Swim (1990)
• The Story of Menstruation (1946)
• Top Gun (1986)
• Winchester ’73 (1950)

Gone with the wind
Box Office Winners: Star Wars has big numbers, but the # 1 highest grossing film is… Gone with the Wind released in 1939. The other movies on the list are:

The original Star Wars-1977
The Sound of Music-1965
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial-1982
Titanic-1997
The Ten Commandments– 1956
Jaws– 1975
Doctor Zhivago- 1965
The Exorcist-1973
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs-1937

*They’re back! Not only Awards season but “Best of” lists for 2015. If you missed these films at the movies, and would like to rent or stream a good film, here are those films found on most critics and audiences top 10 lists. They include Ex Machina, The Assassin, 45 Years, Clouds of Sils Maria, I’ll See You in My Dreams, Creed, Son of Saul, Carol, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, Sicario, & Brooklyn.

The idea of awards season and best of lists always tends to be suspect. Some years are better than others. The last two summers have seen long, dry spells where hardly any decent films were released. The best films seem to cluster in releases around the end of the year for some reason!

This year there were a few notable exceptions. The Martian and Bridge of Spies, Ex Machina and Mad Max: Fury Road all came out long before the mad holiday rush. It seems that almost all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room for film and film criticism with the anticipated release of Star Wars. (The Donald Trump of films!)

It’s a relief to have it out at last, so we can move on to more important things like…the top 10 lists and the Awards Season that extends for months on end. Then again, maybe Star Wars fever is not such a bad thing after all! See you at the movies-ML

The Highest Grossing Film of all time…adjusted for inflation is…

Gone with the wind

 

6 Degrees of Film recently listed the 100 highest grossing films of all time. But the highest grossing film, adjusted for inflation, would be Gone with the Wind.  Just to confuse the issue, the top grossing film of all time, as it stands today, is disputed. It was Titanic when we last reported on the numbers some months ago, although current lists name Avatar. But in the 60 years since Gone with the Wind was made, it held the record of biggest grossing box office film for the longest period of time.

The most successful US films of all time according to their box office receipts would be:

1. Gone with the Wind
2. Star Wars
3. The Sound of Music
4. ET The Extra-Terrestrial
5. The Ten Commandments
6. Titanic
7. Jaws
8. Doctor Zhivago
9. The Exorcist
10.  Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

At the time of its premiere, Gone with the Wind was a big deal. It had seen lots of publicity surrounding the making of the film. Director David O Selznick was the consummate showman, and the casting of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler were the equivalent of the modern casting of the beloved characters from Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. Everyone had an opinion, but Clark Gable was universally approved to play Rhett Butler.

The English actress cast as Scarlett, Vivien Leigh, was a relative newcomer to US audiences and her casting was considered controversial in its day. But the premiere and the subsequent release proved to be a universal success and the rest, as they say, is history.

There are some controversies swirling now about the Political Correctness, or In-Correctness, of some of the sequences and the stereotyped characters of the plantation slaves in the Old South. But compared to a film with true racist overtones like “The Birth of a Nation”, the pushback has been relatively mild for Gone with the Wind.

The film is beautifully shot and definitely worth seeing if you have never experienced it. Gone with the Wind is being shown this Sunday at Tampa Theatre as part of their Summer Film Series.