The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actor – 1960
I love 1960. Mostly because The Apartment, one of my favorite films of all time (top five, even), wins Best Picture and Best Director for Billy Wilder (talked about here). I love both decisions, even though Hitchcock probably should have won Best Director for Psycho.
Best Actor this year was Burt Lancaster for Elmer Gantry (talked about here), which was a gerat decision (and was so well-deserved). Shirley Jones also won Best Supporting Actress for the film (talked about here), which was a good decision, even though I’d have gone another way. Best Actress was Elizabeth Taylor for BUtterfield 8 (talked about here), which we all recognize as a bad decision, but it’s not a terrible one, just because they did think Taylor might die and because Shirley MacLaine eventually did win an Oscar. In all, we have a strong year, with all decisions making sense, even if they weren’t necessarily the best decisions.
And then we have this category, which — there was no way any other decision was gonna happen.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – 1960
And the nominees were…
Peter Falk, Murder, Inc.
Jack Kruschen, The Apartment
Sal Mineo, Exodus
Peter Ustinov, Spartacus
Chill Wills, The Alamo (more…)
The Box Office Report – March 2-4
Last week, in Box Office…
I don’t even know what opened. Seriously. I have to go back and look. That’s a first.
Act of Valor — oh yeah — opened to a strong $24.5 million. Because America is dumb and fetishizes soldiers. I hear the film is nothing more than a concept and has no story to tell of whatsoever. That’s about what I expected. But good for them, I guess. They opened to double their production budget, so that’s nice. At least they didn’t spend much. (Could have at least tried to write a decent story, though.)
Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds opened to (wow) $15.6 million. That seems a bit low for Tyler Perry. But honestly, it doesn’t matter. He wins no matter what, so it’s fine. You know what you’re getting, he doesn’t spend much, he makes money. Doesn’t matter. (I do want to see if that theorem holds up, though. By the rule I invented, this film will finish with somewhere between $30-33 million. I’ll keep you posted how it does.)
Journey 2: Mysterious Island is showing remarkable life at the box office (or maybe it’s just another one of those kids things. Gnomeo and Juliet did the same exact thing last year), dropping only 32% and finishing with $13.4 million. It has just about made its budget back domestically. That’s nice. It was harmless. (more…)
