World's Best Nature Films

World's best nature films (updated 1/03/13) *=new

• Baraka (Ron Fricke, 1992, doc.)*
• The Bear (L'ours, 1988)
• Flight of the Navigator
• Fly Away Home
• March of the Penguins (doc.)
• Never Cry Wolf (1983)
• Planet Earth (2007; mini-series, doc.)
• Touching the Void
• Walkabout (1971)
• White Fang
• Winged Migration (2001, doc.)

Dir: Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud, Michel Debats, 2001, France (10*) Perhaps the best feature length documentary film, seven years in the making The terrific Australian film Walkabout was the first dvd I ordered, and is just as much a romance film as anything else. When you watch it, write down the poem from end of the film. Doc of course refers to documentaries.

World's Best Romance Films

The world's best romance films, those without comedy Films in gold won Best Picture Oscars® (* = new additions)

• A Room With a View (also in Romantic Comedy)
• A Town Like Alice (mini-series)
• A Very Long Engagement [photo rt]
• The Age of Innocence
• An Education * [photo top]
• Atonement
• Bad Timing, a Sexual Obsession
• Brideshead Revisited (mini-series)
• Casablanca
• Children of a Lesser God
• The Crying Game
• Dangerous Liaisons
• Days of Heaven
• Doctor Zhivago
• Five Easy Pieces
• Hannah and Her Sisters (also Romantic Comedy)
• Heat and Dust
• House of Games
• Il Postino
• It's a Wonderful Life
• My Brilliant Career
• The Namesake *
• Now, Voyager *
• Out of Africa
• The Road Home
• Sense and Sensibility
• Sex, Lies and Videotape
• Shall We Dance? (Japan)
• Slumdog Millionaire
• Tess
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• Under the Sun * (Sweden)
• Wings of the Dove
• Women in Love
• Zelary * (Czech Republic) [photo rt]

I had to include the incomparable Brideshead Revisited here, even though it was a PBS / Masterpiece Theater for television, and about 8 hrs long (it also made Jeremy Irons a star). Laurence Olivier, who won an Emmy, was in both that and Love Among the Ruins. The Australian film Walkabout was the first DVD I ever ordered. Also Australian, A Town Like Alice was also a PBS mini-series, but only 4 hours.

Worlds Best Romantic Comedy Films

I decided to make this a genre since many romances were serious but just as many good ones are comedies, and because some comedies have no romance at all, plus it's a long list of really great films (updated: 3/12/10; * = new additions)

• A Room With a View
• Adam's Rib (bw)
• Alice
• Annie Hall (4 Oscars/5 noms.)
• As Good As It Gets (2 Oscars/7 noms.)
• Beautiful Girls
• Big
• Blast From the Past
• Breaking Away
• Cinema Paradiso
• Clueless *
• Defending Your Life
• Enemies, A Love Story
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Goodbye, Lenin! (Germany)*
• The Graduate
• Groundhog Day
• Hannah and Her Sisters (3 Oscars/7 noms.)
• Heaven Can Wait
• L.A. Story
• Lost in Translation
• Love Among the Ruins
• Manhattan
• Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment
• Much Ado About Nothing
• The Philadelphia Story (bw)
• Shakespeare in Love (7 Oscars and 13 nominations, surprisingly, director John Madden did not win, losing to Spielberg for Saving Private Ryan)
• Sideways
• Tootsie
• There's Something About Mary
• Wall-E *
• When Harry Met Sally

Runners-Up: 50 First Dates, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Bridget Jones' Diary, Emma, Finding Nemo, The Gay Divorcee (bw), A Life Less Ordinary, The Paper Chase. Many of these were nominated for Best Picture, which seldom goes to a comedy so the odds were stacked against them: A Room With a View, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Breaking Away, Bridget Jones's Diary, The Graduate, Hannah and Her Sisters, Lost in Translation, Sideways, Tootsie. Cinema Paradiso won over a dozen international awards, including an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Love Among the Ruins won several Emmys, and starred Katherine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier as two people who meet again in court decades after having a brief affair. Much Ado About Nothing, by Kenneth Branagh, is my favorite Shakespearean play put on film; the cast works even with Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves in it! Branagh believes you don't need a British accent for Shakespearean acting - what a striking concept. Woody Allen in his prime excelled at this type of film: Alice, Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Manhattan, The Purple Rose of Cairo. Since that era and his self-absorbed Bergman-esque period, my favorite of his was the recent Match Point, a crime-romance with Scarlet Johanssen.

Angie G - My First Published Composition

This is my first published composition at TuneCore, now titled "Angie G (Eulogy)" (TuneCore removed the spaces and capital G, dunno why).. in the future, "available at an online store near you".. this was originally "Eulogy for my Mother", written on a Yamaha Digital Grand about a week after getting it, written for horns and strings. I ported it into the computer, used Cakewalk to change it to guitar and piano, then I renamed it for my singer friend, Angie, who liked it best of all my compositions. The album title should actually read Little Journeys, which is my homemade CD of my first five compositions (in order of creation): 1.Awakening 2.Sky 3.Eulogy 4.Angie G 5.Gone These were all written in three weeks (the first one, Awakening, in just three hours after getting the synth), then I spent about four months getting the proper MIDI to USB cable, porting them into Cakewalk, then exporting them as MP3 and WAV files. That took longer than writing the music originally! Everyone, including Yamaha, was out of the connecting cables (the keyboards are for sale literally everywhere, why does no one carry the computer interface cable?) - I had to wait for one from the factory in Malaysia.. (Doh!) [Shameless self-promotion here! "Jack of all trades, master of none" comes to mind - Jose]

Kathryn Bigelow Wins Director's Guild Award for Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow [AP photo above], ex-wife of director James Cameron, won the Director's Guild of America's best director award for The Hurt Locker. The winner has won the Academy Award all but six times since 1948. Bigelow is the first woman to win the award. Previously, only Lena Wertmuller (Seven Beauties) and Barbra Streisand (The Prince of Tides) have been female Oscar® nominees for directing. Louie Psychohos won for documentary directing for The Cove. Ross Katz won the award for tv miniseries or movie for Taking Chance. Here is the official site for the Directors Guild of America The six exceptions of DGA winners not winning the Academy Award are:

• 1968: Anthony Harvey won the DGA Award for The Lion in Winter while Carol Reed took home the Oscar® for Oliver!
• 1972: Francis Ford Coppola received the DGA's nod for The Godfather while the Academy selected Bob Fosse for Cabaret.
• 1985: Steven Spielberg received his first DGA Award for The Color Purple while the Oscar® went to Sydney Pollack for Out of Africa.
• 1995: Ron Howard was chosen by the DGA for his direction of Apollo 13 while Academy voters selected Mel Gibson for Braveheart.
• 2000: Ang Lee won the DGA Award for his direction of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon while Steven Soderbergh won the Academy Award for Traffic.
• 2002: Rob Marshall won the DGA Award for Chicago at the 55th Annual DGA Awards while Roman Polanski received the Academy Award for The Pianist.

Jean Simmons (1929-2010)

Jan 31, 1929 - Jan 22, 2010 Jean Simmons was born in England, and was once touted as the "British Elizabeth Taylor". She made her big film break at 17 as the ravishing and arrogant young Estella in David Lean's version of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (1946). She was then cast as an exotic dancer by Michael Powell in Black Narcissus (1947). She came to the U.S. after Howard Hughes bought her film contract from Arthur Rank. Though nominated twice (Hamlet, The Happy Ending) she never won an Oscar®, but did win Golden Globe awards for Guys and Dolls, and a special award for "Most Versatile Actress". She became known for a mischievious smile as if harboring a devilish thought. My favorite roles of hers were as Sister Sharon in the searing indictment of evangelism, Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry, in which she was directed by future husband Richard Brooks and starred opposite Burt Lancaster in his Oscar®-winning title role; and in her Oscar®-nominated role as a melancholy housewife opposite John Forsythe in The Happy Ending, an ironic title. Her 96th and last film was in 2009, in the British film Shadows in the Sun. She died in Santa Monica, Ca, at the age of 80. Here is her obituary from UK's The Guardian Notable Films: Great Expectations (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), Hamlet (1948), Blue Lagoon (1949), Androcles and the Lion (1952), The Robe (1953), Desiree (1954), Guys and Dolls (1955), The Big Country (1958), Elmer Gantry (1960), Spartacus (1960), Life at the Top (1965), The Happy Ending (1969), Valley of the Dolls (1981, tv), North and South (1985, tv). She played Miss Habersham in a tv miniseries version of Great Expectations in 1989. Here is her complete filmography at IMDB