Alright, while I'm waiting for my pick to come up, I'm going to post the write-ups for my last two picks. I don't know if I could have chosen two movies that are further apart from each other in most every way. I think the only thing they have in common is that they're set in New York City...
"I believe... I believe... It's silly, but I believe."
First up, my 11th round pick, in the
Pre-60s category, 1947's heartwarming, holiday classic,
Miracle on 34th Street.
Maureen O'Hara (as Doris Walker) and John Payne (as Fred Gailey) may have received top billing on the poster, but the heart and soul of the movie are a 9 year-old (pre-West Side Story, pre-Rebel Without a Cause, pre-falling off a boat and drowning under mysterious circumstances) Natalie Wood as Susan Walker, a young girl who has been raised by her single mother (an oddity in itself in a late 1940s movie) to be a very serious and straightforward person, with no time for fairy tales and "silly games", and Edmund Gwenn in an Oscar winning performance as Kris Kringle, a "nice old man with a white beard", who may or may not be Santa Claus.
There aren't a lot of clips on YouTube, but this is one of the strangest (and longest) trailers I've ever seen (I didn't even know that the term "Groovey" was in use already in 1947)...
Despite being the quintessential Christmas movie, 20th Century Fox actually originally released the film in May, which probably explains the fact that the trailer really avoids mentioning Christmas.
One of the things I love about this movie is that it never tries to convince us that Kris is actually the real Santa Claus. In fact, even to the end, no one really believes that he is anything more than a nice old man with a beard who can speak Dutch ("I can speak French. It doesn't make me Joan of Arc").
Miracle on 34th Street is one of the four or five Christmas movies that you should watch at least once every holiday season. Plus, if you ever find yourself in Manhattan, standing across the street from the main entrance to Macy's and you're not sure what street you're on, you'll know (which actually happened to me in June).
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"I'm walkin' here!"
Now, my 12th Round pick, in the
Best Picture category, the only "X-Rated" film to ever win the Best Picture Oscar,
Midnight Cowboy.
Jon Voight plays Joe Buck, a Texas dishwasher who moves to New York City to become a "stud" for wealthy women, and Dustin Hoffman as Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, a streetwise New York conman who initially takes advantage of Buck's naivety, but eventually becomes his friend and business partner.
Life for Joe and Ratso is never easy, and the movie is definitely not a heartwarming family film. As was mentioned earlier by Displaced Flames fan, this film has an amazing soundtrack, including Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin'".
I can't find a trailer, but here's the opening scene...
United Artists studio initially released the film with a voluntary "X" rating, but after its Oscar win, it was re-submitted to the MPAA, and received the more-appropriate "R" rating, so that it could receive a wider re-release into theatres that refused to show "X" rated films and be allowed to advertise in newspapers that refused to promote "X" rated films.
This was Voight's breakout role, and Hoffman's incredible departure from the character he played in The Graduate, just two years earlier.
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Now, look at the time...I guess I can make my next pick...