Did the Academy have two Best Picture (well, Best Picture and Best Film) awards only in 1927? At first, I thought the excessive number of nominees against IHON was due to two categories, but the more I think about it, the more I seem to recall that they only had that split in the first year of awards.

Did the Academy have two Best Picture (well, Best Picture and Best Film) awards only in 1927?

It was an award for Outstanding Picture and one for Unique and Artistic Picture in 1927/28. I am not entirely certain of the distinction, and clearly, neither was the Academy, as the very next ceremony for 1928/29, they had dropped the Unique and Artistic Picture category. Both categories were given to the studio responsible for the movie in question, much as Best Picture is given to the producing team today. That's a relic of the old studio system, and in fact, by 1929/30, they had changed the name of the category to Oustanding Production, which (I believe) it remained until it got changed to Best Picture.

And further research says that the Oustanding Production category became the Oustanding Motion Picture Category in 1941, Best Motion Picture in 1944 (the same year they finally decided to limit the field to five noms), and finally Best Picture in 1962.

And it was 1951 when they finally started giving the award to the actual producers by name, rather than handing out the award to the parent studio.

Saw Munich. Very Spielbergian, which is both a plus and a minus. I agree with his politics, but wish he'd managed to make a more engaging narrative out of them.

[eta that I half take back the "very Spielbergian" statement. It's a manipulative film, yes, but instead of his usual tugging at heartstrings, it's tugging at intellectual dialogue. It's a fantastic conversation-starter, and I admire his intentions enormusly. I think he shows huge respect for the audience in making this film, and I appreciate that. But there are tendencies as a filmmaker that he can't overcome, and which make the film weaker and ultimately softer than it should be. But there's enough that's done well here that I was disappointed in it in a very real sense. I wanted it to be great.]

I've heard that about it too (not paying attention to right wing claptrap already trashing the film for other reasons).

I just finished watching House of Flying Daggers.

Am ded from the pretty.

not paying attention to right wing claptrap already trashing the film for other reasons

David Brooks is an incoherent lunatic who should be locked up and beaten with cluesticks.

In order to get what he got from the scene he got it from, you had to completely throw out not only the rest of the movie, but everything tone-related in the scene itself. (And it didn't hurt to be a crazed wingnut looking anywhere for excuses to publish more of his crazy wingnuttery.)

I just finished watching House of Flying Daggers.

Love that film. Lovelovelovelovelove.

Love that film. Lovelovelovelovelove.

Great story, great action sequences, and the cinematography....

I mean, the color composition of every shot is just jaw dropping to begin with, and then you turn around and add shots like the one after Jin and Mei finish making love, where the camera flies very low over them lying in the white grass of the field, Jin in his blue and Mei in her green, passes over them and a pulls away, revealing the hill in the background with its myriad red-orange autumn colors.

Guh.

The last scene, where the action gradually devolves from gloriously coreographed masterful swordplay into two guys just beating the crap out of each other, and the snow is swirling around? Fucking amazing, that scene. The way it just goes on.

So...is Munich introduced and epilogued with Eric Bana's character as an old man? Do the terrorists and the hit squad members carry walkie-talkies instead of guns?

Mostly kidding, but I totally get what you mean about "Spielbergian" being a plus and a minus.

So...is Munich introduced and epilogued with Eric Bana's character as an old man? Do the terrorists and the hit squad members carry walkie-talkies instead of guns?

Heh, no. There is no voiceover at all, thankfully. And plenty of guns.

Mostly, it's an inability to be as harsh on his heroes as the story he's telling would seem to require. He doesn't give it a happy ending by any means, and the characters do go through hell, but the little details reveal him to still be a big softy at heart. The story he's clearly trying to tell isn't quite the story he manages to show.