The Big Screen

Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony is shaping up to be one of the most dramatic in years with tight races in many of the major categories. This week, we conclude our Oscars preview series by picking some winners and thinking through how the show will work without a host.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” has earned more than $800 million worldwide, making it the highest grossing rock biopic of all time. And along the way, it’s racked up five Academy Award nominations, including best picture. This week, we continue our Oscars preview series by talking with a rock critic about how the film captures the essence of Queen.

The movie “Green Book” is nominated for five Oscars, including best picture, best actor (Viggo Mortensen) and best supporting actor (Mahershala Ali). This week, we talk about the film and the green book from which the movie gets its name with the curator of the Dallas Civil Rights Museum (who also happens to have once lived in a house listed in the book).

In “The Favourite,” a pair of attendants in the Court of Queen Anne battle it out for the monarch’s attention. The film is nominated for 10 Academy Awards, and this week we continue our Oscars preview series by looking at how it depicts life in 18th Century England. Our guest is Kathleen Wellman, Dedman Family Distinguished Professor of History at SMU.

“If Beale Street Could Talk” earned three Oscar nominations earlier this week. Barry Jenkins was one of the honorees for his adaptation of James Baldwin's novel, and this week, we launch our annual Academy Awards preview series by talking about the story from book to screen with Baldwin expert Kenton Rambsy, assistant professor of African American Literature & Digital Humanities at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Next week, the Denton Black Film Festival will show more than 60 films centered on the lives of African Americans. One of those films is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year: "Imitation of Life," the Douglas Sirk movie that earned two Oscar nominations in 1959. Joining us for a conversation about that film and the rest of the schedule are Linda Eaddy, director of film programming, and Walid Khaldi, who serves as the festival's historian.

Over the next four days, 22 North Texas film festivals are coming together to produce one mega festival to rule them all. It’s called Best of Fests, and features films that played at festivals over the last year.

The 1960s produced “The Graduate,” “Psycho,” “Bonnie and Clyde” and many other classics. This week, we talk with SMU film professor Rick Worland about how these films are often overshadowed by the decade that followed - and about how they continue to influence the films we see today. His new book is called "Searching for New Frontiers: Hollywood Films in the 1960s"(Wiley-Blackwell).

It's hard to find a consensus No. 1 movie of 2018. The Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association (of which The Big Screen is a part) picked "A Star Is Born." The Big Screen went with "You Were Never Really Here" (Chris) and "The Favourite" (Stephen). And everything from "Roma" to "If Beale Street Could Talk" to "Black Panther" has topped other lists. So with that, here's our picks. Check out Dallas Morning News culture critic Chris Vognar's top movies of 2018. And find Stephen Becker's here.

“Roma,” the new film from Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón, takes its title from the Mexico City neighborhood in which it is set. It’s a part of town Alfredo Corchado knows well as the Mexico correspondent for The Dallas Morning News. This week he joins us for a conversation about how the film captures a slice of Mexican life.