More Mary, Oscars and the Burt-a-Thon

One of these days the Siren will blog about something and find out that John McElwee hasn't already covered it. Wonderful piece here on Mary Astor. Operator_99 also had two rare, lovely pictures of Astor. And James Wolcott jumps into the fray to say that while there is no excuse for Mary's perm in The Maltese Falcon, the rest of her was perfect.

It's Oscar weekend, and the Siren will of course be watching the show, at the grand Brooklyn abode of two fellow film bloggers. Her enjoyment will not be lessened by the fact that she hasn't seen any of the Best Picture nominees. Nope, not one. Bad, yes, very bad, but you see, The Woman in the Window was re-released, and there was this Max Ophuls series at BAM, and...well, anyway. The Siren assures her readers that 2008 will find her keeping up more with this modern stuff. Friends like Girish and Filmbrain tell her some of the youngsters nowadays are quite talented.

If you want a roundup from someone who got out of the house in 2007, Dennis Cozzalio has an excellent post that gathers up all the reading on the awards that you could possibly want. If it's live-blogging you want, Oscar obsessive Nathaniel R is the perfect choice. And don't forget to track the Supporting Actress race with Stinky Lulu.

The balloting for Goatdog's Oscar contest has, alas, closed but he's also blogging away about his Oscar obsessions, and has his own maverick prediction for what will win on Sunday. The Siren didn't vote in the contest but perhaps she should have. Oscar-winning has this weird disconnect from actual films, and not seeing anything might actually give you enough objectivity to predict the strange ways the voting turns.

Over at Newcritics, Robert Stein looks at Lindsay aping Marilyn and says enough, already, with photographing tinsel and trying to tell us it's gold. The Siren empathizes in a big way (although his personal connection no doubt makes it that much worse). Marilyn gets it worse than anybody, poor soul, as the Siren once noted here. But there are others, too, and all of them give her the shrieking blue fantods. Stop, please, just stop it. Find your own glamor and leave our memories alone.

Finally, are you keeping up with Larry Aydlette's Burt-a-Thon, in which we get 30 days of Burt Reynolds? Larry went through two incarnations, as That Little Round-Headed Boy and the Shamus, before finally revealing himself as the uncommonly knowledgeable entertainment editor of The Palm Beach Post. This series is the best thing he has done yet, and that is no small praise. Reynolds has become a way for Larry to re-examine, resurrect and otherwise rectify the critical literature on a whole section of 70s cinema, what one part of the public was adoring while the highbrows watched the Easy Riders and Raging Bulls. It does what all good blogging should do--gives you a perspective you aren't getting from the mainstream. The Siren has been eating it up. Start here and work your way back, or start here and work forward, it's a must either way.