The Oscar Quest: Best Actor – 1971
I love 1971. As a whole. Not so much this category. I’ll get to that in a second. But, for me, 1971 is really where the “70s,” as its imagined as a decade, really took hold in the Academy. 1967 is the year where most people saw a marked change in the industry, Bonnie and Clyde and all, but it never really came into the Academy until this year. Between 1967 and 1971, it was kind of like a fluorescent light flickering before it turned on. In the four years before 1971, only Midnight Cowboy felt like the kind of film that was an example of the “gritty” 70s. So that’s why I love this year.
The French Connection wins Best Picture and Best Director for William Friedkin (talked about here). I love the decisions. I think they were the best decisions they could have made. Then Best Actress was Jane Fonda for Klute, which is another great decision (it’s also a very 70s film). Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress were Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman, both from The Last Picture Show. I don’t particularly like either decision, but, as I said here, I do like the Cloris one because she’s awesome, even though I’d have voted for Ann-Margret in that category. But in all, this year is a very 70s year. And I love the 70s.
As for this particular category, it’s not that strong. And, I like it because Gene Hackman is an actor who should have an Academy Award, and he gave my favorite (and the most iconic) performance in the category. But, I feel as though if the category were stronger, he might not have won. But, fortunately, it isn’t, so it all worked out.
BEST ACTOR – 1971
And the nominees were…
Peter Finch, Sunday Bloody Sunday
Gene Hackman, The French Connection
Walter Matthau, Kotch
George C. Scott, The Hospital
Topol, Fiddler on the Roof (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actress – 1992
This is one of the weakest categories I’ve ever seen. And the whole fake “controversy” surrounding this is just a red herring. Honestly, if anyone other than Marisa Tomei won this category, it would have been forgotten long ago. Seriously, all of the other choices would have been boring as hell. I refuse to listen to anyone who says the category should have turned out differently, because that would be like saying, “We should have given Becket Best Picture in 1964 (over My Fair Lady, Dr. Strangelove and Mary Poppins).” You know? Why would anyone argue for a boring decision?
As for the rest of 1992 — Unforgiven wins Best Picture, Best Director for Clint Eastwood (talked about here) and Best Supporting Actor for Gene Hackman (talked about here). I love all of these decisions. Al Pacino (finally!) wins Best Actor for Scent of a Woman (talked about here) and Emma Thompson wins Best Actress for Howards End. Hate the film, love the woman, and this was the best year for her to win. And her competition sucked. I’d have voted differently in the category, but her winning is totally cool. So, in all, I really like 1992. All the decisions work for me.
Now, let’s deal with this piece of shit category…
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – 1992
And the nominees were…
Judy Davis, Husbands and Wives
Joan Plowright, Enchanted April
Vanessa Redgrave, Howards End
Miranda Richardson, Damage
Marisa Tomei, My Cousin Vinny (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actor – 1987
This is a category that’s so awesome that it makes the rest of the year seem better. At least, when you use this as the focal point. 1987 is a year where they got the men right, got the women wrong, and chose a pretty standard/boring (albeit understandable) choice for Best Picture and Best Director. That was The Last Emperor. A big, epic film, very well-made, very engaging, just — a boring choice. It just is. Like Gandhi. You know why it won Best Picture, it’s just a boring choice.
Bernardo Bertolucci winning Best Director for The Last Emperor (as I said here), is a solid choice. Very deserving director. So that’s cool. Goes with the territory. Best Actor was Michael Douglas for Wall Street (talked about here), which, it’s Gordon Gekko, it’s awesome. Obviously. Then Best Actress (talked about here) and Best Supporting Actress were Cher and Olympia Dukakis for Moonstruck. I don’t particularly like either decision. At all, really. Actress more so, just because — why Cher?
But, this category is awesome. It’s rare for a year to have Best Supporting Actor be its strongest category. But this really is the strongest category here. Five solid choices, four worth a vote. And only one clear winner.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – 1987
And the nominees were…
Albert Brooks, Broadcast News
Sean Connery, The Untouchables
Morgan Freeman, Street Smart
Vincent Gardenia, Moonstruck
Denzel Washington, Cry Freedom (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Actress – 1970
I chose my birthday as the day to present this category. It felt like the optimal day to do it. Because I consider this the single worst decision in the history of the Academy Awards. In any category. Ever. Bar none.
As for the rest of the year, it’s pretty well covered on the blog. Patton wins Best Picture, Best Director for Franklin Schaffner and Best Actor for George C. Scott (talked about here). I love the Best Actor decision and the Best Director decision, and while I’d have gone another way on Best Picture, it’s still a pretty solid and understandable choice. Then, Best Supporting Actor was John Mills for Ryan’s Daughter, which, as I said here, I consider to be the second-worst decision ever in the Best Supporting Actor category. Then Best Supporting Actress was Helen Hayes for Airport, which, as I said here, I like very much as a decision, mostly because of Helen Hayes’s legend status and the weakness of the category.
None of that, however, changes the awfulness that is this category. This is truly the worst decision of all time in any category.
BEST ACTRESS – 1970
And the nominees were…
Jane Alexander, The Great White Hope
Glenda Jackson, Women in Love
Ali MacGraw, Love Story
Sarah Miles, Ryan’s Daughter
Carrie Snodgress, Diary of a Mad Housewife (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Actor – 1951
I like 1951. I don’t agree with the Best Picture or Best Director choice, but as a whole, I like this year. An American in Paris is a good film, but not one that should be winning Best Picture. There are better musicals to choose from during this period, specifically Singin’ in the Rain and The Band Wagon. I don’t get the preoccupation with choosing a musical over an American classic like A Streetcar Named Desire. I don’t really have too much of a problem with it though. Streetcar pretty much swept all the other categories, so, it sort of balances out. What’s strange is that they gave Best Director to George Stevens for A Place in the Sun. George Stevens is a great director, but as I said here, you have John Huston, Elia Kazan, William Wyler and Vincente Minnelli up as well this year. Okay, Huston has one, Kazan has one and Wyler has two. But why not Minnelli? His movie won Best Picture! (See what I mean? Some decisions are just baffling and inconsistent.)
The rest of this year, though, is pretty straightforward. A Streetcar Named Desire sweeps almost everything. It wins Best Actress for Vivien Leigh, Best Supporting Actor for Karl Malden and Best Supporting Actress for Kim Hunter. All perfect decisions and very deserving actors. So, in all, three really strong decisions, one I don’t like but can accept, one terrible one, and then what remains the most fascinating decision of this year — this category.
Here you have Marlon Brando, who gives one of the most defining performances of his career (alongside the other two he won for, The Godfather and On the Waterfront), and Humphrey Bogart, a living legend who rightfully should have won an Oscar for Casablanca (somehow Paul Lukas wins for a performance that shouldn’t even be nominated, let alone win, there). What makes the category so interesting is that Streetcar won all the other acting awards, and here you have this category, which looks like it should be the biggest shoo-in of all. I mean, Brando — Stanley Kowalski — no contest, right? One of the most powerful performances in the history of cinema. And yet — Humphrey Bogart. And, especially now, after the fact — we know Brando wins two more. So what seems like a very cut-and-dry category becomes infinitely more complex and layered. I really like this category.
BEST ACTOR – 1951
And the nominees were…
Humphrey Bogart, The African Queen
Marlon Brando, A Streetcar Named Desire
Montgomery Clift, A Place in the Sun
Arthur Kennedy, Bright Victory
Frederic March, Death of a Salesman (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Director – 1979
I am so disappointed in 1979. And a lot of it has to do with this category. Kramer vs. Kramer is a film I love dearly, but it should not have won Best Picture this year. Apocalypse Now and All That Jazz were far superior films. However, I could have lived with Kramer winning Best Picture had it not also won this category, which is the last Oscar it should have won. Just watching the films, you can see how far and away better Coppola’s and Fosse’s efforts were. Had the Academy recognized that, I could have lived with them thinking Kramer vs. Kramer was the better film. But they didn’t. Which is why 1979 will always be a sore spot for me. (Among another category…)
As for the rest of the year, Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep win Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, respectively, for Kramer vs. Kramer, and Sally Field wins Best Actress for Norma Rae (which I talked about here). These decisions I agree with wholeheartedly. They were incredible, and the best decisions in their respective categories. Best Supporting Actor, however, is a decision I consider to be the worst of all time in its category, and possibly even the second worst single Oscar decision of all time. Melvyn Douglas wins for Being There, beating Robert Duvall, for Apocalypse Now. Which performance do you remember? I rest my case. That decision is really the nail in the coffin for me, and it’s why, no matter how hard I try, 1979 upsets me. Half the decisions are great, and the other half are bad beyond words (or questionable at best). It pains me.
BEST DIRECTOR – 1979
And the nominees were…
Robert Benton, Kramer vs. Kramer
Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now
Bob Fosse, All That Jazz
Edouard Molinaro, La Cage aux Folles
Peter Yates, Breaking Away (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actress – 1996
I cringe when I see 1996. The English Patient is such a terrible movie to have won Best Picture. Fargo was so much better. Anthony Minghella winning Best Director for it, though, (talked about here) is understandable. Usually with one comes the other. But it still doesn’t make it a good decision.
Best Actor was Geoffrey Rush for Shine, which, as I said here, is a decision I consider one of the worst of all time. Not because of the actor, because of the performance. Read the article if you want to find out why. Then Best Actress was Frances McDormand for Fargo, which I love as a decision (as I said here), even though it wasn’t the best performance in the category (it was my favorite, though). And Best Supporting Actor was Cuba Gooding Jr. for Jerry Maguire, which is just troublesome. I talked about it here, but basically, William H. Macy should have won for Fargo, yet Cuba Gooding is so likable in the movie, it swayed a lot of people to vote for him (even I did in when I wrote up the article!), and then after the fact we all realized, “Yeah…we should have given it to Bill Macy. That was dumb.”
So that’s 1996. Bad Best Picture and Best Director choice, terrible Best Actor choice, great Best Actress choice, but one that’s shaky because there was a better (or two) performance in the category, and a Best Supporting Actor choice that feels okay, but then you realize it probably shouldn’t have won. Then, there’s this category. It’s by far the weakest of the bunch (though that’s always been the case, historically), but they did made the right decision. Most people assumed Lauren Bacall was the odds-on favorite here (because she’s Lauren Bacall), but no one takes into account just how much an Oscar-winning performance actually requires a halfway decent film in order to be taken seriously.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – 1996
And the nominees were…
Joan Allen, The Crucible
Lauren Bacall, The Mirror Has Two Faces
Juliette Binoche, The English Patient
Barbara Hershey, The Portrait of a Lady
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Secrets & Lies (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actress – 1971
Strong year, 1971. Especially in terms of who won. Check this out. First, Best Actor — Gene Hackman, for The French Connection. Classic character, great performance, not totally win-worthy, but the category isn’t all that strong, so it makes sense. Then, Jane Fonda wins her first Best Actress Oscar for Klute. Definitely the best decision in that category, and she as an actress definitely deserved it. And then this category — Cloris Leachman … I mean, it’s Cloris! Agree or disagree — it’s Cloris. And then Best Supporting Actor was Ben Johnson for The Last Picture Show, which is the one decision this year I really disagree with, mostly because I love Roy Scheider (and because Johnson didn’t do anything in the film).
Then you have The French Connection winning Best Picture and Best Director (which I talked about here), which I find to be amazing decisions because the film really signifies what the 70s were all about as a decade. Sure, people will say A Clockwork Orange should have won, but, me, I’ll take The French Connection any day. Kubrick belongs on his own level. But, that’s 1971. It might be considered weak compared to some other years from the 70s, but its actually very strong on its own.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – 1971
And the nominees were…
Ellen Burstyn, The Last Picture Show
Barbara Harris, Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?
Cloris Leachman, The Last Picture Show
Margaret Leighton, The Go-Between
Ann-Margret, Carnal Knowledge (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actress – 1960
Love me some 1960. That’s been the gist of all the articles I’ve written about it so far. The Apartment is one of my five favorite films of all time. I think it was one of the best Best Picture choices of all time. And I love Billy Wilder winning Best Director for it, though, as I said here, Hitchcock really should have won this for Psycho. It’s just a fact of life.
Then, Best Actor (which I talked about here) was Burt Lancaster for Elmer Gantry, which is just a wonderful decision, Best Actress was Elizabeth Taylor for BUtterfield 8, which, as I said here, was a tough situation, and has a reputation for being a terrible decision, and it is a terrible decision, but the Academy kind of had their hands tied here, so, I understand it. And Best Supporting Actor was Peter Ustinov for Spartacus, which is a great decision. Peter Ustinov is awesome.
The real reason I love this year though is the films. The Apartment, Psycho, The Sundowners, Elmer Gantry, Spartacus, Peeping Tom, The Magnificent Seven, Inherit the Wind, La Dolce Vita, Breathless — there are some great films that came out this year. That’s why I love me some 1960.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – 1960
And the nominees were…
Glynis Johns, The Sundowners
Shirley Jones, Elmer Gantry
Shirley Knight, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
Janet Leigh, Psycho
Mary Ure, Sons and Lovers (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actor – 1998
This is a rough year for most people. It’s not just because Shakespeare in Love wins Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan. I don’t have a problem with that. Honestly, I don’t. Because, Steven Spielberg won Best Director for Ryan (as I talked about here), and I can live with the Best Picture choice as long as they made the proper Best Director choice to go along with it (which they didn’t do this past year). Gwyneth Paltrow also wins Best Actress for Shakespeare (which I talked about here), and Judi Dench wins Best Supporting Actress for the film as well (which is just awesome. Go Judi).
So, as it stands, we have a “weak” Best Picture choice, a weak Best Actress choice (sort of. It’s a weak overall choice. Based on the category, it’s kind of bad, but — well, just read my article for my full thoughts on the matter), a good, but not overly great Best Supporting Actress choice (though best in the category), and a perfect Best Director choice. That’s one, maybe two, out of four. And only one really strong one. The other three are questionable. Then, you have this category, which I’ll tell you right now — good from a historical perspective (James Coburn is awesome), terrible from a category perspective. Really terrible. And you have Best Actor, which was Roberto Benigni for Life is Beautiful. Which — that’s pretty much the nail in the coffin for 1998. This is one of those “let’s all just pretend this never happened” years.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – 1998
And the nominees were…
James Coburn, Affliction
Robert Duvall, A Civil Action
Ed Harris, The Truman Show
Geoffrey Rush, Shakespeare in Love
Billy Bob Thornton, A Simple Plan (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actor – 1993
1993. This recap will be quick. Schindler’s List. (See?) It wins Best Picture and Best Director for Steven Spielberg (which I talked about here). ‘Nuff Said. Then Tom Hanks wins Best Actor for Philadelphia, which, as I said here, I think is a terrible decision. Then Best Actor and Best Actress were Holly Hunter (which I agree with) and Anna Paquin (which I don’t agree with), respectively, for The Piano.
And then this category — it’s one of the most stacked Best Supporting Actor categories I have ever seen. It’s seriously incredible. And yet somehow, the Academy managed to pick the single worst performance they could have. Well, okay — second worst. Malkovich was probably the worst choice here (film-wise, not actor-wise). But, still — really? I love Tommy Lee Jones, I love The Fugitive, and I love his performance as Sam Gerard, but come the fuck on. Did you see what Ralph Fiennes, Leonardo DiCaprio and Pete Postlethwaite did this year? What the fuck?
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – 1993
And the nominees were…
Leonardo DiCaprio, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
Ralph Fiennes, Schindler’s List
Tommy Lee Jones, The Fugitive
John Malkovich, In the Line of Fire
Pete Postlethwaite, In the Name of the Father (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actor – 1990
Hate me some 1990 real good. Dances with Wolves is one of the worst films to ever win Best Picture. It’s seriously just not a very good film at all. Goodfellas should have destroyed this year. Kevin Costner beating Martin Scorsese for Best Director (as I talked about here), is just laughable.
Then, the rest of the year isn’t that great either. Jeremy Irons wins Best Actor for Reversal of Fortune in one of the weakest Best Actor categories of all time. It was really bad. Then Kathy Bates won Best Actress for Misery, which I like as a decision (as I said here), especially considering the category. Then Whoopi Goldberg wins Best Supporting Actress for Ghost (which I talked about here), which is kind of a backhanded Oscar, since she really should have won for The Color Purple in 1985, and that fact is the only reason she got this Oscar. (It’s backhanded because she plays a (literal) magical negro in the film. The Academy are such dicks sometimes.)
Then, there’s this category, which for me is cut and dry and taken care of pretty easily. And I like that I can say that about one category in this god forsaken year. This is like the Desert of the Real in The Matrix — you look around like, “What happened?” And this category is that awesome red chair Morpheus sits in. That was a great chair.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – 1990
And the nominees were…
Bruce Davison, Longtime Companion
Andy Garcia, The Godfather Part III
Graham Greene, Dances with Wolves
Al Pacino, Dick Tracy
Joe Pesci, Goodfellas (more…)
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