Shea Cinema: The Best Picture Project Shea Cinema

In our fifth regular film review of the season, we cover director John Ford's Arrowsmith, adapted from Sinclair Lewis's Pulitzer Prize winning novel. No, this is not the origin story of a 20th Century rock band, but it is the story of a young doctor who is determined to follow the scientific method no matter the cost. The story also has some unsettling implications for us now in the 21st century, as it grapples with an outbreak of plague and the uncertainty of using an untested vaccine. The f...

Welcome to our Season 5 Premiere! Sara and Dad cover the 5th Academy Awards ceremony (honoring the best in films - screened in Los Angeles - between August 1, 1931 and July 31, 1932). We discuss (again) the context of these films being made during the pre-code era, and what the implications are for filmmaking moving forward. This season ups the ante with eight nominees instead of five, and we consider the possibilities of doing some more bonus episodes (movies that were not nomina...

In our first film review for the season, we cover The Smiling Lieutenant, another Ernst Lubitsch musical comedy. Starring Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert, and newcomer Miriam Hopkins, this jaunty, suggestive film focuses on a love triangle between a lieutenant, his violin virtuoso girlfriend, and a naïve princess. There is lots of innuendo, lots of sexual banter, and ridiculous songs comparing sex to jazz and, yes, breakfast foods.We cover several months on our history timeline, top song...

Here is our second film review for the season! Frank Borzage, who won Best Director at the first Academy Awards for Seventh Heaven, is back, with ANOTHER win for Best Director of this film, Bad Girl. Newcomer James Dunn dominates the screen in this Academy Award-winning adaptation of the novel of the same name. That's right, this pre-code gem won two out of three nominations, losing out only on Outstanding Production. We try to figure out why. Give a listen as we dive into sexual harassment, ...

THIS IS OUR FORTIETH EPISODE!!This third film review of the season covers Five Star Final, starring Edward G. Robinson in a non-gangster role. This tale of yellow journalism gone horribly wrong showcases the horrifying consequences when a newspaper decides to resurrect a long-forgotten murder case, and then does the unthinkable in order to make it happen. This screenplay has several literary allusions, and a stellar cast. Of course we have our history timeline, top song of the day,...