This week I’m counting down my top ten movies of 2018, two at a time. I started yesterday with these two titles:
10. First Reformed
9. Black Panther
Picking things up at #8…
Tag Archives: Crazy Rich Asians
Song of the Day #3,724: ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ – Kina Grannis
My family went to see Crazy Rich Asians for a second time, and I was just as smitten if not more so. This truly is the finest romantic comedy I’ve seen in a long, long time.
Last week I wrote about the film’s use of a Mandarin version of the Coldplay song ‘Yellow’ in a pivotal sequence. The performer is Katharine Ho, an early loser on The Voice who had left the music business before being tapped for this breakthrough movie’s soundtrack.
Song of the Day #3,713: ‘Yellow’ – Katharine Ho
I haven’t had a chance to chime in on the astronomically stupid decision by the Motion Picture Academy to introduce a “Best Popular Film” Oscar to the Academy Awards lineup. How about you just broaden your definition of what constitutes excellence and allow that a movie people actually enjoy can also be award-worthy?
And don’t get me started on what I suspect was the genesis of this idea — lack of trust in the membership to give Black Panther a legit Best Picture nomination. As the astute film journalist Mark Harris put it on Twitter, “It truly is something that in the year Black Panther, a movie made just about entirely by and with black people, grosses $700 million, the Academy’s reaction is, ‘We need to invent something separate…but equal.'”
