Movies: Reviews, The Oscars, and A Book

Catching up on Movie Stuff....

In a post I made a few days ago, I had alluded to the fact that I had seen none of the movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, and only one of the twenty nominated acting performances.  In an effort to not be totally ignorant while watching the Academy Awards show on Sunday night, Linda and I watched two of the Best Picture nominees over the weekend.  These are going to be Quicky Capsule Reviews.

The first was Marty Supreme.  Timothee Chalamet, who apparently has become a lightning rod for "unlikeability" among his peers in the movie business, was nominated, deservedly so, for Best Actor for his performance as Marty Mauser, a champion ping pong table tennis player in the early 1950's.  Supposedly loosely based on a real person (Marty Reisman), Marty Mauser was a hustler, a womanizer, perhaps a thief, and, while he was a champ at ping pong table tennis, he just was not a real nice guy, certainly not a character with whom you could sympathize.   In fact, many of the people in this movie, were pretty much unlikeable.  Chalamet plays the guy perfectly, and he shows his real acting chops in a scene at the very end of the movie when, maybe, he sees what a shit he has been and lets you think that maybe he will change how he is going to live his life.  Maybe.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

On the face of it, Sinners is not the kind of movie that appeals to me.  I mean, there are vampires in it!  However, the movie was nominated for sixteen Oscars, a record, everyone that we know who saw it simply raved about it, so we made it a point to see it, and after seeing it, all we could say was WOW.  Simply a great movie, one that stays with you long after you see it.  Michael B. Jordan plays a duel role as twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, who return to their home in the Mississippi delta - after being away for many years in Chicago, where they were involved in probably criminal activities -  to open their own juke joint.  In addition to booze and gambling, their joint is to feature authentic Mississippi Blues music.  Some strangers, white Irish folks, show up and want to be a part of the scene.  Smoke, or maybe it was Stack, resists, and these strangers then decide to make themselves a part of the scene anyway (this is where the vampires come in).

Yeah, yeah, vampires.  Ridiculous, you say, and normally I would agree with you, but the way screenwriter and director Ryan Coogler tells the story, he won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, you buy into it completely.  And the music! The blues music featured throughout the movie is simply terrific.  It is as much a character in the movie as any of the actors.

Jordan took home the Oscar for Best Actor, and I believe that it was well deserved. I also liked the fact that after the ceremony, Jordan took his Oscar statue and celebrated at an In-and-Out Burger restaurant in Los Angeles.  A Man of the People.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.  Oh, and when you see it, either in a theater or on your TV set, watch until the very end of all of the credits.

Then there was the movie that was the big winner of the night, One Battle After Another.  

I remember seeing a trailer for this way back last summer, and thinking, "hmm, not so sure about this one", but the critical acclaim and all those Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Paul Thomas Anderson, and Best Supporting Actor for Sean Penn) has put this on our "We Have To See It" list.  That will probably happen sometime this coming weekend.

I did read one post-Oscar comment that said, that while "One Battle..." is a good movie, it will not be the 2025 movie that everyone will still be talking about ten, fifteen, or twenty years from now.  The one that we'll all remember will be Sinners.

That Oscar won by Penn is the third one of his career.  He now joins the pantheon of  these actors who have won three Oscars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Frances McDormand, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Ingrid Bergman, and Walter Brennan (yes, Walter Brennan!)  Pretty good company for someone who will probably be most remembered for playing high school stoner Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times At Ridgemont High way back in 1982.

By the way, all of this actors listed above are still one behind Kathrine Hepburn, who won four Oscars in her career.

As for the Academy Awards show itself, it was no better or worse than all of the ones that preceded it.  It was too long, Conan O'Brien was pretty good as the host, the musical number from Sinners was tremendous, the In Memoriam tributes to Rob Reiner, Diane Keaton, and Robert Redford were great, it would have been better had we seen more of the nominated films and performances, and the award for the Most Ridiculous Dress of the Night went to Demi Moore.

Oh, and I promised you a book review, and I include it here because it its about the Movies.

As you can see from the subtitle of the book, it focuses on the rise of perhaps the three most prominent American film makers of the last fifty years, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg, oh, and throw in a healthy dash of both Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma, and you've got a book that movie lovers will thoroughly enjoy.  Here is my take on the "stars" of the book.  Spielberg comes across as the most normal and likeable, Lucas as odd, and Coppola as a total screwball in his we-have-to-do-this-my-way method of doing business.  All are brilliant, but all of them are, shall we say, different than you and me.

The book is chockfull of stories about some of the greatest movies of our times: The Godfather, Jaws, Star Wars, American Graffiti, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver, Raiders of The Lost Ark, and Raging BulI among others. I really enjoyed the book.

Three and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.

Fifty Year Old Movies

The Motion Picture Academy Awards will be presented this coming weekend.  This is a topic that I usually write about in great length, but I have not done so at all his year due to the fact that I have seen only one nominated performance for 2025, Best Actress Nominee Kate Hudson for Song Sung Blue, although Linda and I do plan on watching Sinners before Sunday's awards ceremony.

So, I am going to take a look at the movies today in a different light, and talk about some of the movies that will be turning fifty years old in 2026.  In a world where Google exists, it is easy enough to find such films by Googling, say, "best movies of 1976".  In fact, you can find all kinds of such lists, and it is hard to say that any one of them is definitive.  However, all of them include these movies:

All the President's Men

Alan Pakula directed this story of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as they dug in and reported on the Watergate break in that eventually led to the resignation of the President of the United States.

Taxi Driver

Martin Scorsese directed and Robert De Niro starred in this story of New York City taxi driver Travis Bickle.  It is a grim portrait of a a troubled  - to say the least - person. It also stars Cybill Shepherd and a very young Jodi Foster.  It is disturbing, but unforgettable.

Network

An inside look at a television network and how it operates its news division.  Peter Finch (he won an Oscar for this), Faye Dunaway, and William Holden star.  The movie is, sadly, still amazingly relevant today.

Rocky

This story of an underdog tomato-can of a boxer who gets a chance to fight for the heavyweight championship is considered by many to be the greatest sports movie ever made.  It won the Best Picture Oscar that year, and it launched the career of Sylvester Stallone.  As one write up I saw today said, the many, many sequels to this may have dulled the luster of the original, which is a shame, because it really is a terrific movie.  (Purely Personal Opinion:  In retrospect, the Oscar should have gone to All The President's Men.)

The Shootist

The story of a legendary Old West gunfighter who has been stricken with cancer and now seeks to see how to end his days with a "minimum of pain and maximum of dignity". The movie stars John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard, and James Stewart.  It is remembered today because it was Wayne's last movie.  The fact that Wayne himself was battling the cancer to which he was eventually succumb, adds to overall tone of the movie, making it almost autobiographical.

In no particular order, here are some other notable movies that are also turning 50 this year, all of them worth watching:

• Murder by Death - Screenplay by Neil Simon makes this one worth watching
• Marathon Man - Great thriller starring Dustin Hoffman and Lauren Olivier
• Silver Streak - Great comedy starring Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, and Jill Clayburgh. Some comedies don't hold up after fifty years; this one does.
• The Bad News Bears - Walter Matthau coaches a team of misfit Little Leaguers whose best player is a girl played by Tatum O'Neal, who won and Oscar for her performance.
• Family Plot - Should be watched if for no other reason than it was Alfred Hitchcock's last movie.
• The Front - Woody Allen stars in this movie drama (he neither wrote not directed it) about the Hollywood Blacklist Era.
• A Star Is Born - The one with Barbra and Kris Kristofferson.

These are all movies that I have seen, and I think that I will make a point of watching all of them at some point during this fiftieth anniversary year of their release.  I can highly recommend all of them to you.  In researching material for this post I saw two movies on every list that I had not seen, and I am going to make it a point to see them too.

• The Outlaw Josey Wales - A western directed by and starring Clint Eastwood.
• Assault on Precinct 13 - A thriller set in contemporary Los Angeles directed by John Carpenter

And just to show that not everything was groovy back then, 1976 also saw the first remake of the 1933 classic King Kong.  This movie was universally panned by critics.  The miracle of this one was that the careers of Charles Grodin, Jeff Bridges, and Jessica Lange (in her very first movie role) did not go down the drain along with it.

Book Review - "The Correspondent" by Virginia Evans

February has been a brutal month.  The northeastern part of the country, including Pittsburgh, has been hit with frigid temperatures and way above normal amounts of snowfall, the leadership of our federal government continues to take us deeper and deeper into the proverbial shitter, and here in The Grandstand, I have made eight posts this month and seven of them have been Absent Friends posts extolling the lives of nine significant people that we have lost this month. 

So, in what may well be my final post of the month, let me offer you a bright spot with a Four Star reading recommendation.

This novel currently sits in the #1 spot on the New York Times best sellers list.  It was brought to my attention by my pal Dan last year.  He read it on a neighbor's recommendation and said it was the best book that he had read last year.  Linda bought it for herself, but before she could read it, I picked it up myself and, as the cliche goes, I could not put it down.

The novel tells the story of Sybil Stone Van Antwerp, a retired attorney, divorced, a mother and a grandmother, who lives in Annapolis, MD and spends her days reading, tending to her gardens, and writing letters.  Old fashioned, handwritten letters and notes to her children, her brother, her sister-in-law, to just about anyone in her life, including customer service representatives of companies with whom she deals.  And there is one letter that Sybil writes throughout the book that she never finishes and never gets sent.  What is that all about?

The novel is written purely in the form of the correspondence both sent and received by Sybil over the course of ten years, 2012-2022.  It is certainly a different way to tell a story, but through this, we learn all about Sybil's life, about her parents, siblings, marriage, children and in-laws.  We also learn about one particular court case in which she was involved that is now coming back to her in a disturbing way.  Also, about a Christmas gift that her brother gave her that ends up having a remarkable affect on her life in these years covered by the book.

As I said, the whole structure of the novel and the story that it told was fascinating to me, and I polished it off in just a couple of sittings.  I highly recommend it.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

In reading more about the book after I finished it was interesting as well.  "The Correspondent" is Virginia Evans' first published novel.   It received little pre-publication hype or promotion from the publisher.  It was not a book club selection by Oprah, Reese, or Jenna.  It seems that this became a hit in an organic and old fashioned way.  Someone bought it and read it, and told two other people about it.  Those people told two more and so on and BOOM!! A best seller was born.

Virginia Evans and her best seller

To Absent Friends - Jesse Jackson

 

Last week death claimed one of the towering figures of the American Civil Rights Movement, and indeed, a dominant figure in American culture since the 1960's, when the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson died at the age of 84.

Far be it from to enumerate Jackson's contributions to both the Civil Rights Movement in particular or to American society in general.  I will only say that I admired him, and that his death takes away another bit of America's conscience when it is most sorely needed here in 2026.

I will also remember Jackson as one of the greatest orators of our time.

How about this for inspiration when he told a crowd that everyone can be Somebody.

And could any minister, priest, or rabbi deliver as moving a eulogy and moving as was Jackson's eulogy for Jackie Robinson?

And to show that he never took himself too seriously, listen to him here on Saturday Night Live when, in a tribute to Dr. Suess, he read Green Eggs and Ham in pure Jesse Jackson style.

RIP Jesse Jackson

"I am.....somebody!"

Jackson (L) with Martin Luther King in Memphis 

moments before King's assassination

1968

To Absent Friends - Bill Mazeroski

 

Maz

1936 -2026

Bill Mazeroski died two days ago at the the age of 89.  He authored the single most dramatic and important sports moment in Pittsburgh sports history with his 1960 World Series Game 7 walk off home run that defeated the mighty New York Yankees. If you were alive and a sports fan in Pittsburgh back then, it is a moment that you will never forget, so why do I lead this post with a picture, albeit a posed one, of Maz taking a throw at second base instead of THIS picture?

Well, I do so because Bill Mazeroski is probably the single greatest defensive player, certainly the greatest defensive second baseman, that baseball has ever known. If you were lucky enough to have been a Pirates fan through the 1960's, as I was, and you got to watch Bill Mazeroski play second base day-after-day, year-after-year, as I did, then you know, you simply just KNOW, that there was no one better in the field than Maz was at second base.

He won eight Gold Gloves, led the league in put outs five times, assists nine times, and double plays eight times. His 1,706 double plays is still the all-time record for second basemen in history.  He was selected to ten all-star teams.  His batting stats are certainly not noteworthy.  He was a career .260 hitter with an OPS of .667. Pro-rated over 162 games, he averaged 10 HR and 64 RBI, which is probably why he often batted eighth in the batting order.  Still, he DID hit that Game 7 walk-off HR (he also homered in Game 1 of that Series), and that made him immortal, and for the person who just looks at stats, the temptation became to dismiss him as just another player who was lucky to have lightning strike him at one opportune time in his career. Like I said, though, if you SAW Maz play over the course of his career, you don't need any fancy advanced SABRmetrics to know that he was a Hall of Fame player on his defensive merits alone, and 29 years after he played his last game, the Veterans Committee of the Hall of Fame bestowed upon him the honor that he deserved.

Sports fans in the city of Pittsburgh have been fortunate over the years to have been able to  watch so many greatest-of-the-great players perform for the local teams - Clemente, Stargell, Bradshaw, Greene, Harris, Lemieux, and Crosby just to name a few - but I would have a hard time coming up with anyone who may have been more beloved than Bill Mazeroski.  That '60 Series winner was a big reason, but Maz was always so humble about it.  While I can't say that I ever had what could be called a conversation with him, I was in his company on several occasions over the years at charity golf outings, and he was just about the most unassuming guy you could imagine.  And he was always a presence in town at  any Pirates related event over the years.  I would guess  that a "Bill Mazeroski" autograph, like this one that I own 

can't be worth very much, because Maz had to have signed hundreds of thousands of them over the course of his life.

They built a statue of Bill Mazeroski outside of PNC Park not long after the Park was opened.  Of course, it depicts him circling the bases after that 1960 World Series home run.  I wish that the designers would have taken a different route when designing that statue.  It should be a statue of Maz turning double play, something like this:

And while researching photos for this post, I came across this great one.  It shows Maz at his position at second during the last game played at Forbes Field in June, 1970.   That section of the wall that has been stripped of the ivy with the "406" marker?  Yes, that is the part of the left field wall over which THAT home run traveled.

With Bill Mazeroski's passing, only two members of the 1960 World Champs remain, Bob Skinner and Vernon Law.  Maz was also a member of he Bucs' 1971 World Series winners, and now only ten of those players are still with us (see list at end of post).

RIP Bill Mazeroski.

	1971
Pitchers	Steve Blass
	Nelson Briles
	Dock Ellis
	Dave Guisti
	Bob Johnson
	Bruce Kison
	Bob Miller
	Bob Moose
	Bob Veale
	Luke Walker
Catchers	Manny Sanguillen
	Milt May
	Charlie Sands
Infielders	Gene Alley
	Dave Cash
	Jackie Hernandez
	Bill Mazeroski
	Jose Pagan
	Richie Hebner
	Bob Robertson
Outfielders	Roberto Clemente
	Gene Clines
	Vic Davalillo
	Al Oliver
	Willie Stargell
Manager	Danny Murtaugh
	Deceased	16
	Still With Us	10

To Absent Friends - Mike Wagner

 

Mike Wagner

1949-2026

One of the "Super Steelers" of the 1970's left us this week when safety Mike Wagner died at the age of 76.  Wagner was a safety on those four Super Bowl championship teams of the 1970's.  In a ten year career wherein he started all but three regular season games (116 of 119) and 14 post season games, Wagner was an integral part of the famed "Steel Curtain Defense" that dominated the decade of the 1970's.  He had 36 interceptions in his career and five post-season interceptions, including two more in Super Bowls against quarterbacks Fran Tarkenton and Roger Staubach.   Teammate Andy Russell said that he was probably the Steelers best safety ever.

He retired after the 1980 season, obtained his MBA from Pitt, and had a thirty-plus year career in the investment banking business.  He never left Pittsburgh, and was active in Steelers Alumni events and was always at team reunions. He was inducted into the Steelers Hall of Honor in 2021.

Steelers fans often refer to the "Super Steelers of the Seventies", and the definition of "Super Steelers" can pretty much be whatever you want it to be.  My own definition is that a "Super Steeler" is a player who earned four Super Bowl rings during that incredible six season span (1974-1979) where the team won four Super Bowls.  There were twenty-two of those guys, and seven of them, plus Head Coach Chuck Noll, are no longer with us.   I have included a list of those Super Steelers at the bottom of this post.

When one of those guys leaves us, it is worth noting.

RIP Mike Wagner.

Putting a lick on Roger Staubauch in th Super Bowl

Intercepting Staubach in Super Bowl X

Per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“Probably the reason why I liked that play so much is because it stuck in Staubach’s craw for over a decade,” Wagner said. “He was really flustered by that.”

“SUPER STEELERS”
Rocky Bleier
Mel Blount
Terry Bradshaw
Larry Brown
Sam Davis
Steve Furness
Joe Greene
L.C. Greenwood
Randy Grossman
Franco Harris
Jon Kolb
Jack Lambert
Gerry Mullins
Chuck Noll (HC)
Donnie Shell
John Stallworth
Lynn Swann
James Thomas
Loren Toews
Mike Wagner
Mike Webster
Dwight White
Hall of Fame