Wednesday, July 12, 2006

1984 in review

A Passage to India
Places in the Heart
A Soldier's Story
The Killing Fields
Amadeus

I called the 2006 crop of Best Picture nominees dreary. One interesting observation was that they had the worst combined box office of any set of movies since...1984. The comparison is interesting. At least three (maybe four) of these movies were probably seen as message movies with the fifth one being dismissed as being about classical music. Don't mean to suggest that high box office = great movie as that's obviously not true. But people really didn't want to run right out and see these movies. Should they have?
'Places' didn't do much for me. 'India' and 'Story' were both much better than I expected. 'Killing Fields' is powerful in much the same way that 'Shindler's List' is. And 'Amadeus' is a great movie. Easily deserved the Best Picture it won.
The best music from this set came from 'A Soldier's Story'. The music from 'Amadeus' is of course historically great music, but Mozart leaves me cold.

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