The Academy Award nominations have been announced! The entertainment community and film fans around the world will turn their attention to the 98th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, March 15, to learn who will receive the highest honors in filmmaking.

Congratulations to all the 2026 Golden Globe Award winners! An honorary Golden Globe Award is also given annually for “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment” and is named after its first recipient – The Cecil B. DeMille Award.

The two-part Wicked movie series features two strong female leads: Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West for those of your who watched the 1939 version of the Wizard of Oz movie every year during your childhood) and Ariana Grande-Butera as Glinda, the Good Witch.

Throughout film history there have been daughters who have joined their movie-star mothers in the acting profession. We were reminded of this by the recent passing of actress Diane Ladd whose daughter, Laura Dern, also received acclaim in her acting career.

Diane Keaton, who won the Best Actress Oscar in 1978 for her work in Annie Hall, recently passed away. In this newsletter, we profile her as well as some other Oscar contenders from 1978.

You probably know – from all the media attention – that 2025 is the 50th anniversary of the blockbuster move Jaws. There were actually two blockbuster moves that year – the other being One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Both Jill and Barbara traveled to Europe this spring and Barbara spent a night on the train, the Orient Express. That, of course, evoked for us the Agatha Christie novel, Murder on the Orient Express, which was adapted into movie versions in 1974 and 2017.

In the spirit “April showers bring May flowers,” we focus in this month’s newsletter on three movies where flowers are prominent in the title: Cactus Flower, Flower Drum Song, and Driving Miss Daisy.