Sound of Music's 50th: Austrian Alps and Julie's Face

In honour of the 50th anniversary of the world premiere of The Sound of Music (and truer to the actual anniversary date than the swell but superfluous tribute belted by Lady Gaga at the Oscars), The Film Experience's Nathaniel Rogers has made the beloved musical the latest subject of his perennial "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series -- always an Oscar off-season treat!

While the last two months of Oscar blogging have sapped much of the life force from my typing fingers, I have strength enough for this. How could I pass it up? The film sits comfortably within my top 20 all time, and is arguably the most durable relic of a now extinct studio culture that used to churn out lavish musical adaptations with a regularity comparable to the production of superhero movies today (I was clearly born in the wrong decade... sigh).

Director of Photography Ted McCord received the final of three career Oscar nominations for this movie, and considering that said movie was a record-breaking, Best Picture winning smash hit boasting breathtaking Alpine scenery as its backdrop, some might find it surprising that he didn't win. Admittedly, it'd be tough for any Academy member not to vote for Freddie Young's jaw-dropping widescreen cinematography in Doctor Zhivago that year, but it isn't hard to imagine McCord's splendid mountainscapes running a respectable second.

The most famous of these high-altitude shots will be, for many, the defining image of not only the film, but of the entire musical genre;

The sight of Julie Andrews spinning around the hilltops -- and trying nobly to avoid being blown over by the downdraft of the helicopter blades -- as the camera pushes in from hundreds of yards away, has rightfully earned its place as the most ravishing entrance in the cinematic headcanon.

And yet as unforgettable as it is, I'm not quite sold on it as the "best" shot of the picture. After all, McCord spun real visual magic with his interiors as well...

Sunday Top Ten - Best Picture winners

Oscar season has been well underway for weeks at this point, and yet I confess and apologize that I've been rather lax on Oscar conversation in this space. Life has been hectic as of late. But while we still have a number of weeks to go before December reveals the really big hopefuls, I figured now is as good a time as any to dust of the corner of my brain that promotes awards discussion by dedicating an installment of Sunday Top Ten to the best of the Best – Best Pictures, that is.

This sort of list is different for everyone, but I'll bet one common theme is how difficult it is for everyone to narrow their list down to ten. Easy as it is to complain about Oscar's taste, they've picked a lot of damn good movies over the last 80-some-odd years. In my humble opinion, the cream of the crop are:

Sunday Top Ten - Challenging movie-related halloween costumes

Halloween is less than a month away, which means if you haven't already given some thought to your costume this year, you'd better get started! Sure, in a pinch you could always buy something last minute, but I would shake my finger at you for it. They've got no personality, those things. I'm something of a Halloween purist, and as such, I firmly believe that the only worthwhile costumes are homemade, usually requiring weeks of careful preparation and assembly to get just right.

I'm sure you can find all sorts of easy-to-make movie costumes around the Internet, but if you aren't afraid of a challenge, you might try tackling one of the more head-turning ensembles listed here (in no particular order).

Sunday Top Ten - Musicals from the 60s

As the studio system of decades prior started dissolving in the late 1950s, the Golden Age of the Hollywood musical, an era ruled by versatile song-and-dance men like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, came to end. By the mid 1970s, the screen musical was all but dead, but what of those tumultuous 1960s years? Despite a proclivity for grasping at already popular shows from Broadway, the death throes of the movie musical marked an interesting and oddly ripe transition period – one that adopted a newer style which would inform some of the 70s' more experimental musical flare.

These are my ten favourites.