The Apartment (1960) – Won 5 Oscars, Including Best Picture and Director
Billy Wilder’s The Apartment is my favorite Best Picture winner. The now iconic romantic comedy was considered risque in 1960 for its frank discussion of sex and adultery. It even ended up being a clear inspiration for Mad Men. What makes the film such a masterpiece is how every scene feels a stressed test for maximum impact. Not a single moment feels wasted. And while consistently funny and clever, it doesn’t lack dramatic substance. Shirley MacLaine (who’d go on to win Best Actress for 1983’s Terms of Endearment) gives a richly textured performance as Fran Kubliek, the girl every man in the office obsesses over, including our main character CC Baxter played by Jack Lemmon. You really couldn’t ask for a better Oscar winner.
A Star is Born (1954) – Nominated for 6 Oscars, Should’ve Won Best Actress
This entry is breaking the rules in that the film didn’t win any Oscars but that is almost as much as part of the film’s legacy than not. Judy Garland losing to Grace Kelly at the 27th Academy Awards is as Groucho Marx put it “the biggest robbery since Brunx.” Garland gives a performance that is at times uncomfortable in its naked, emotional honesty. Rarely do you see a bonafide Hollywood star lay it all on the table. A Star is Born is the greatest film about Hollywood and perhaps the darkest. It’s the closest the industry has to its own Greek Tragedy. And yet, the film does contain moments of pure joy.
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) – Won 3 Oscars, Including Best Cinematography
Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has become a bit of an Oscar darling. In 2018 he won Best Picture and Director for The Shape of Water and most recently won Best Animated Feature for Netflix’s Pinocchio. His breakout, in terms of Oscar, was 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth. Often described as a fairy tale for adults, it was nominated for 6 Academy Awards and famously lost Best Foreign Language Film (now called Best International Feature) to The Lives of Others from Germany. Pan’s Labyrinth is the kind of film that has the rare ability to really open someone’s eyes to the possibilities of cinema. Elegant and grotesque, del Toro is at the heights of his powers; delivering a story with themes of imagination, disobedience, and fascism. A modern classic in every sense of the word.
Rebecca (1940) – Won 2 Oscars, Including Best Picture
An argument could be made that Alfred Hitchcock is the most famous filmmaker in history; the only real rival being Steven Spielberg. His movies have defined cinema in such a way we’re still experiencing the ripple effects. But he never won an Oscar and his films only won six Oscars total. And my favorite Hitchcock film, Rebecca, snatched two of those Awards. Oozing with gothic atmosphere and mystery, the adaptation of the classic Daphne du Maurier novel is endlessly rewatchable for a variety of reasons. It contains iconic performances from Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine (who the next year would win her Oscar for another Hitchock film, Suspicion), and Judith Anderson (whose performance is delightfully Queer coded). And even over eighty years later, the plot is absolutely irresistible.
Get Out (2017) – Won Best Original Screenplay
It’s fair to say that Jordan Peele’s groundbreaking 2017 film Get Out is one of the best debut films ever. Rarely does a filmmaker come onto the scene with a distinct, and more impressive, fully formed voice. Even if you prefer his later two films, you look back at Get Out and it’s all there on display. Not only was the win for screenplay deserving, but it’s a rare win for the horror genre as they’re rarely recognized by the Academy Awards.
About the Academy Awards (Britannica Academic)
Where to Stream 2024's Best Picture Oscar Nominees (Wired)
Library Notes 2023 11 Fall by aasmithac
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is a book that is linked to my time at Austin College. It was my freshman year and I brought with me Library of America’s Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories which contained The Haunting of Hill House. When I started reading the book I simply didn’t want to stop. During a Zoom class, I muted the session just so I could finish reading. My mind was taken over. It was unlike anything I’d read before. Never had I seen an author be so in control of their world. I got the sense Jackson had a deeper understanding of her creation than any author before or after her.
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality” is possibly the greatest opening line ever. Hill House is a text that operates on multiple psychological dimensions. While the main character of Eleanor becomes an unreliable narrator, it’s one of the few books where the omniscient voice is unreliable as well. Her psyche infects the entire text creating the sensation that the book itself might also be haunted.
Jackson’s book is about the psychology of fear and how the overwhelming presence of it can activate one's sexuality, frustration, and true meaning. It is worth thousands upon thousands of words. It’s now my senior year and I’ve revisited the book a few times. Despite that I probably will never fully understand The Haunting of Hill House. It is a novel that can put fear into the reader while also making them want to come back to the rich characters and Earth shattering prose. One of the greatest horror novels of all time, if not the best.
Further Reading & Relevant Links
Shirley Jackson books at Abell Library
Watch The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix
Read or listen to Jackson's short story "The Lottery" as originally published in The New Yorker on June 18, 1948.
There are very few authors who have punctured the popular consciousness like Stephen King. If you haven’t read a King novel, you’ve most certainly seen an adaptation. Not unlike Cormac McCarthy or Charles Dickens, he’s an author who almost defies genre in that his style is a genre in of itself. There is a reason why his name is often evoked. His work represents an imagination that shows no boundaries.
Despite going to the same charter school with less than 100 kids per grade my whole life, I didn’t have a whole lot of friends. I knew plenty of people, but very few I’d consider a friend. I was sixteen years old when I read Stephen King’s It and in the same way readers wanted to visit Hogwarts after reading Harry Potter, I had a twisted desire to visit the town of Derry, Maine. Within that town laid a friend group I envied: the Losers Club. A group of preteens in the late 1950s who were always there for each other until they could no longer be. For being a 1200 page doorstop, I read It three or four times in high school and another time my freshman year (maybe it’s time for a reread?). I’ve rarely ever encountered characters that felt so real and in turn the Losers became my friends. They might be stagnant but they’ll always be there when I need them.
But It is also a deeply confrontational novel. King weaves a tale that is about the rot of America. The character of Pennywise, a shape-shifting clown, represents how evil is this cosmic entity that has infested the Earth, rearing its ugly head every 27 years. The novel combats the Leave it to Beaver narrative of the 1950s in shocking and grotesque ways: racism, abuse, and violence. King might not tackle all these themes perfectly, but even today It feels risky.
However, if you’re not into horror I’d recommend 2011’s 11/22/63. While still a massive book, this is a story rich with historical detail. We follow high school English teacher Jake Epping as he goes back in time to stop the assassination of JFK. The novel demonstrates one of King’s best abilities, having a new spin on a certain story. His gift for writing characters makes 11/22/63 unique in the realm of time travel stories. Never has the subject felt so real and intimate.
If you’re looking for something more manageable I’d recommend 1981’s Cujo. Written in the midst of King’s drug addiction, the novel is one of his most terrifying works: a saint Bernard retrieves rabies after getting bitten by a bat and terrorizes the residents of Castle Rock, Maine. What’s remarkable is how King is able to combine a domestic small town drama with a pulpy premise. He carefully sets up all the ways this situation can go wrong. I’ll warn you this is a very fatalistic book and ain’t for the faint of heart.
The final King book I’ll recommend is 1975’s Salems’ Lot. I read this around the same time as It which will forever make it special (both are the King books I’ve read the most). There is a vivid sense of community in the narrative. King never gets lost in his large casts of characters whose town soon gets overrun by vampires. The book oozes a gothic atmosphere and would highly encourage reading around Halloween time.
Library Notes 2023 04-05 April-May by aasmithac
Library Notes 2023 02 Feb by aasmithac
In 1919, Sherman residents Frank and Annie Wager donated their son’s book collection to Austin College. In 2022, I pulled one of those books off the shelf – still in the stacks over 100 years later – and discovered a bookplate inside the front cover detailing the donation. Curious, I went looking for information about the life of 1915 Austin College graduate Herbert Franklin Wager.
Flipping through the yearbooks from 1911-1915, his name and photo popped up numerous times – including a baby picture during his senior year! While at Austin College, Wager joined the Athenaeum Literary Society and the Young Men’s Christian Association, wrote and drew art for The Chromascope, and played on the football team. The class of 1915’s chosen motto was “Never let your studies interfere with your education,” and the Chromascope from these years documents both scholastic achievements and extracurricular fun. I made a guess based on the fact that Wager went on to Austin Theological Seminary after Austin College, and combed the Religious Studies section of Abell Library to ultimately find six more of his donated books. The search continues for whether more of his books remain in the collection.
I also turned to the newspaper archives on the Portal to Texas History to learn more. Wager was ordained in 1918, and several sermons he gave at the First Southern Presbyterian Church in Austin were published in the Austin American. Despite qualifying for exemption due to his clergy status, he enlisted, along with most of the 1915 Austin College class. He was serving as a sergeant in the hospital corps when he died at Camp Cody, New Mexico, just over a month after the Armistice of 11 November 1918 formally ended WWI. He was buried at West Hill Cemetery in Sherman after a ceremony conducted by Austin College President Thomas S. Clyce. Herbert Wager was one of twelve Austin College losses during World War I, and one of three lost to the 1918 influenza pandemic.
Wager’s legacy remained with the college in several ways despite his short life. Oak trees planted in memory of alumni who died in WWI still stand on campus to this day. Zelma Wager, his youngest sister, was among the first women to attend Austin College in the years following WWI. And of course, his parents kept his memory alive in the form of his books:
“The library of the Rev. Herbert F. Wager, one of the ten former Austin College men honored at last evening’s memorial service, has been given by his family to Austin College, it was announced by Dr. Clyce last evening. The library consists of about 300 volumes, and is a valuable addition to the college library.” (Sherman Daily Democrat, June 2, 1919).
Further Reading & Relevant Links
Archives of the Sherman Daily Democrat
Austin College Chromascope, 1899-1950
Abell Library Virtual Exhibit: Of Service and Sacrifice
Please visit the library to see Emily's curated display on Herbert Wager on the 1st floor!
Image Credits: (1) example bookplate dedication; (2) senior year Chromascope featuring Herbert's baby picture; (3) Herbert F. Wager bio; (4) Wager display, Abell 1st floor
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