Jeneé Osterheldt Recommends the Classics
Posted on January 29, 2008 at 12:41 pm
The Kansas City Star’s Jeneé Osterheldt has a great column with the solution for television fans suffering from writers’ strike doldrums: go to Turner Classic Movies and enjoy the classics. When Martin Scorsese met with the Museum of the Moving Image film critics group last year, he told us he keeps TCM going much of the time he is in his office, often calling in the staff to see a great shot or scene. And this is the best time of year on TCM, when they salute the Oscars with a fabulous array of classics featuring films honored with nominations, not just for acting and directing but for costume design, screenplay, and score. Osterheldt has a terrific list of recommended classics, not just, to quote that most quotable of movies, “the usual suspects.” And she quotes my dad, Newton Minow, who called television a vast wasteland, as a reminder that even without the strike, it can be a challenge to find something worth watching. Let’s hope the strike is settled soon. But in the meantime, Osterheldt reminds us that we’ll always have Paris, I mean we’ll always have TCM, Netflix, and Amazon. (more…)
Yes, most critics love to read what our colleagues think about movies. And so I spend time just about every day on the wonderful 
Last night, my husband and I attended our first-ever red carpet event, the Critics Choice Awards, which were broadcast on VH1. It was a lot of fun, especially the end, when all of the critics went up on stage to present the best picture award (to “No Country for Old Men”), so I could look down from the stage and see everyone from Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to Dixie Carter (who complimented my dress) and Hall Holbook, to Nikki Blonsky (best young actress), Queen Latifah, and Elijah Kelly from “Hairspray” to Don Cheadle (who graciously accepted the first-ever Joel Siegal award for achievement in both film and humanitarian efforts, presented to him by George Clooney). The talk of the evening was the cancellation of rival awards show the Golden Globes, due to the writers’ strike. The best line of the evening was when presenter Steve Zahn said he wished the writers would come back to work and the critics would go on strike. The funniest acceptance speech was from Casey Affleck, who wasn’t even accepting his own award, but one for his co-star, Amy Ryan. He pretended he was editing out her jokes about him as he read the speech he prepared.