The Oscar Quest: Best Actor & Best Actress – 2005
Come Oscar night, these were two “no-brainer” wins, even though, in hindsight, they seem — well, one of them, anyway — like upsets. It’s strange how one’s allegiances can change based on time, other nominations, and lack of death.
Anyway, let’s check these out…
Best Actor – 2005
And the nominees were…
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Terrence Howard, Hustle & Flow
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line
David Strathairn, Good Night & Good Luck
Philip Seymour Hoffman — One of my favorite things to do when looking at awards — because I’m all about random patterns and useless data — is see, when each person wins, where their name fell within the alphabetical order of nominees. It’s like when they rank the winning percentages of the post positions in the Kentucky Derby. And they tell you that a certain post position has only won once, while another one has won the most times. Well, I haven’t done anything like that — yet — but I do find it interesting that his last name begins with H and he’s the first nominee alphabetically. I am curious though where he fits into the pantheon of alphabetized actors, and whether him being first helped or hurt his theoretical chances, and whether or not I could turn this into a thing, and use it to further predict awards races that are pretty much decided come Oscar night anyway. Yes, these are the things I think about. (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actor & Best Supporting Actress – 2005
Ah, 2005, the year of the controversy. Everything changed after this. Even the Academy had to lay low for a few years (5, to be exact) before returning to their babies. This year was like when Michael Corleone killed McCluskey and Sollozo and had to duck out to Sicily for a while. Personally — and we’ll get to this when I go over the categories — I agree with the sentiment, but not with the film. But, they definitely fucked up. It was a strange time in their lives. You know, they were drunk, and were feeling fat that day, and had just talked to their mother, and just weren’t ready to make the commitment. Anyway, let’s start from the support. Then we can get to the lead dogs and the big picture. Actually, this is kind of like second base. Take out the support towers, infiltrate the facility then get in, do your thing and get out. I totally just compared the Oscars to sex vis a vis the analogy of a spy mission. I also just used vis a vis. That’s a keeper.
Best Supporting Actor – 2005
And the nominees were…
George Clooney, Syriana
Matt Dillon, Crash
Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man
Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain
William Hurt, A History of Violence (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Picture & Best Director – 2004
If there were ever a corollary year for Best Picture to this one, in the last decade (because 1998 is obviously the best) 2004 is it. Obviously 1998 fits better, as the film that won is a big, lush period piece campaigned for hard by Harvey Weinstein that beat a film that was regarded at the time, and still is regarded, as a modern classic. The jury is still out on whether the film that got beat is a modern classic, so, that’s why I go with 2004. A film that plays right into the Academy’s sensibilities, using emotion to mask a general blandness, instead of brilliant filmmaking. That much can’t be denied. As it stands, the film that is going to lose Best Picture, despite being the critical and social (based more on the pun than the actuality. I really don’t know what the idiots like or don’t like) choice, will be great filmmaking losing to a film that’s meant to be “emotional” (which, it didn’t make me cry, which, I cry at Speed Racer — love that movie).
Makes no goddamn sense. But, the only thing that matters is personal opinion, and that’s theirs. Now I get to have mine.
Best Picture – 2004
And the nominees were…
The Aviator (Warner Bros., Miramax)
Finding Neverland (Miramax)
Million Dollar Baby (Warner Bros.)
Ray (Universal)
Sideways (Fox Searchlight) (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Actor & Best Actress – 2004
These two were pretty much a foregone conclusion. Everyone in the world knew that Jamie Foxx couldn’t lose. His Ray Charles was astounding, so he deserved this all the way. There really wasn’t anyone who could have beaten him. And in Actress, someone thought it was a good idea to make the race about Hilary vs. Annette Round Two instead of about the actress who was actually the most deserving in the race — so, that was pretty clear cut as well (Annette was not winning).
I really don’t have all too much to say here, since the Academy got one of them right, and one of them wrong. But the one they got wrong is one they’d normally get wrong, and it’s only made worse by the fact that she’s won one already and isn’t that good of an actress to have two.
Best Actor – 2004
And the nominees were…
Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda
Johnny Depp, Finding Neverland
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Aviator
Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby
Jamie Foxx, Ray (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actor & Best Supporting Actress- 2004
2004 was a weird year. In fact, it may be the closest approximation to 2010 that we have from the past decade. In 2004, a veteran beat an electric supporting performance by a younger man in Supporting (which may or may not happen later this month), a female so inhabited her character that people had no choice to vote for her over the young “up-and-comer” who was astounding in her film (which, Natalie Portman was a veteran by this point, having been acting for a decade, but to the Academy she was essentially an up-and-comer), and the Best Picture went to a film that was an “in-the-moment” film that no one even remembers 6 years out, despite the fact that a brilliant piece of filmmaking went completely overlooked.
I remember being back in 2004, being swept up, like the Academy, by Million Dollar Baby, thinking it was a great and emotional film. Now, I look back and think, “What the fuck was I thinking? The Aviator is a brilliant movie.” I remember even rooting for Eastwood over Scorsese that year just because Scorsese was the huge favorite to win. How stupid was I? Granted, I was only 16, but still, that was so stupid of me. Anyway, let’s get supportive.
Best Supporting Actor – 2004
And the nominees were…
Alan Alda, The Aviator
Thomas Haden Church, Sideways
Jamie Foxx, Collateral
Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby
Clive Owen, Closer (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Picture & Best Director – 2003
Was there really any surprise here?
Best Picture – 2003
And the nominees were…
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (New Line Cinema)
Lost in Translation (Focus Features)
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Fox, Miramax, Universal)
Mystic River (Warner Bros.)
Seabiscuit (Universal, DreamWorks)
Return of the King — Clearly worth it. The entire trilogy gets one big Oscar. That’s absolutely fine, because it is a brilliant piece(s) of filmmaking. Sure, the CG is dated, but it’s still a great feat that deserved some recognition. No one can really disagree with this one.
Lost in Translation — A great, great film, but not one anyone can vote for knowing Rings is also involved. It deserved the Screenplay win and all the good will people have toward it. It is a great movie, but never a Best Picture winner. This is exactly how it should have ended up. (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Actor & Best Actress – 2003
These were fun. The Best Actress race was over from the second they announced the nominees. But the Best Actor race was essentially between two people, even though people like myself were voting for the “never gonna happen” nominee.
Best Actor – 2003
And the nominees were…
Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Ben Kingsley, The House of Sand and Fog
Jude Law, Cold Mountain
Bill Murray, Lost in Translation
Sean Penn, Mystic River (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actor & Best Supporting Actress – 2003
Ah, 2003…the year where everything was obvious but the acting categories…and even those were pretty clear cut (and boring).
This was my first real “Oscar” year. I remember having people i was rooting for, even though going in, there were clear cut favorites that everyone expected to win. And pretty much all of them did, which made the whole ceremony pretty clear cut (much like I’m expecting this year’s ceremony to be).
In fact, looking at it, 3 out of the 4 acting wins were by veterans/overdue actors, and the fourth was — well, Charlize Theron.
Let’s just get into it, before I lament their decisions any further before I start talking about them.
Best Supporting Actor – 2003
And the nominees were…
Alec Baldwin, The Cooler
Benicio del Toro, 21 Grams
Djimon Hounsou, In America
Tim Robbins, Mystic River
Ken Watanabe, The Last Samurai (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Picture & Best Director – 2002
2002 was a pretty good year for American film. I know that’s not necessarily represented in the Best Picture nominations (well, it is, kind of) — but there were certainly a very fair share of good and even great films that came out — some of which still get very repeated play in my house.
I will say though — this was kind of a dead year for Best Picture. It was clear they were waiting for the end of the trilogy to award Rings — to the point where Peter Jackson didn’t even get a Best Director nod. That and, with the amount of campaigning Harvey did for Gangs, it pretty much led everyone away from voting for it. Not that they’d have voted it Best Picture — it’s great and all, but it’s kind of an unwieldy mess. But to go against Marty for Best Director — ooh, that hurts. And it’ll hurt again in 2004. But, without those two, it’s really a dead year. Those other three really aren’t Best Picture material.
But, it’s important to note that Miramax had three of the five nominees here for Best Picture. Three. And John C. Reilly is in all three of ’em. Add that to the fact that Two Towers was clearly not winning, and Harvey and Bob had a 75% chance of winning Best Picture. So, they can say all they want about him campaigning too had for Gangs, but essentially come Oscar night, the fight was between his two other pictures. He was all but assured this one no matter what he campaigned for. He even got a Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress out of the deal. That man’s a fucking genius. (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Actor & Best Actress – 2002
These two categories annoy me. In one, a completely undeserving person won, and in the other, I can’t see why that person outperformed everyone else. And I’m trying to. It’s really annoying. You can seriously watch all five of the performances back to back, and at best, maybe rank the winning performance third. At best. And the other one, well, we all know about The Nose. Well, actually, they’re both noses. That’s funny.
Best Actor – 2002
And the nominees were…
Adrien Brody, The Pianist
Michael Caine, The Quiet American
Nicolas Cage, Adaptation.
Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York
Jack Nicholson, About Schmidt
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actor & Best Supporting Actress – 2002
These are an interesting set of nominations. I remember this being my first real Oscar race. 2001 I watched as merely a viewer. 2002 was when I started drawing party lines. I had my favorites, decided who I liked, had very definite ideas of who I thought should win each category. Supporting actor specifically made me very happy. Because, to me, it was who I picked. Apparently, to everyone else, it was an upset. Now I get to go back and look and analyze this from a more objective point of view. I’m excited. (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Picture & Best Director – 2001
I say 2001 was a bad year for film, and it’s hard to disagree with that fact. Sure, there were some good movies, but not many Oscar movies. We got our first Harry Potter, we got Monsters, Inc., we got Shrek. But none of these will ever get (well, now…) nominated for Best Picture.
But, here are the good pictures from 2001 that did not get Best Picture nominations (some you may feel aren’t worthy, but, when you look at them, you can see why they would, could or should — rhymes — be in contention):
A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Ali, Amélie, Black Hawk Down, Mulholland Drive, Pearl Har…uhh…never mind, and Training Day.
I actually thought there would be more. That kind of made my argument for me. Sure, this doesn’t absolve the Academy for not nominating some of these, mostly — well, really just Amélie and Mulholland Drive, but we knew Lynch was too much of a mad genius for the Academy. The lack of Amélie love really surprises me because they nominated a foreign film just the year before this.
Also, the reason there’s such a problem with what won is because the film that probably should have won had a caveat to it. (The whole, ‘There are two more of them coming out, and we’d probably be better off just giving them the awards at the end of it as an accomplishment deal instead of giving it to the first one.”) (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Actor & Best Actress – 2001
This is one of those, you knew what they were gonna do like three weeks out. And you couldn’t do anything about it. One was deserving, one wasn’t. But, the one who wasn’t actually didn’t have competition, while the one who was arguably had people nominated that did better than they did. So, I guess we call it a wash. (Certainly not a whitewash though.)
(Get it, because the winners are both black.)
(Yeah, I went there. I know. But how could you not? I mean, wash — the joke practically set itself up.)
BEST ACTOR – 2001
And the nominees were…
Russell Crowe, A Beautiful Mind
Sean Penn, I Am Sam
Will Smith, Ali
Denzel Washington, Training Day
Tom Wilkinson, In the Bedroom (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actor & Best Supporting Actress – 2001
2001 — the year where nothing happened. This is the year whose only distinction is that it was the one where everyone’s like, “Vote for more black people!” Other than that this was forgettable in almost every way, down to the Best Picture winner which was one of those, “I guess…” decisions.
2001 was a bad year for movies. Something about 1s and 0s must make the movies not good. But at least the Supporting Actor and Lead Actor categories had some interest to them. Along with the once again bad decision-making that plagues most Oscar years.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – 2001
And the nominees were…
Jim Broadbent, Iris
Ethan Hawke, Training Day
Ben Kingsley, Sexy Beast
Ian McKellen, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Jon Voight, Ali (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Picture and Best Director – 2000
2000 was an interesting year for the Oscars. And the industry in general. They were coming off an incredible year for motion pictures in 1999. Just to recap, look at this list of movies that came out in ’99:
- American Beauty
- American Pie
- Analyze This
- Any Given Sunday
- Baby Geniuses
- Being John Malkovich
- The Blair Witch Project
- Blue Streak
- Bowfinger
- Bringing Out the Dead (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Actor & Best Actress – 2000
These are fun, because, it’s a mix of actor vs. performance. You look at the sheet of winners and be like, “They won for that?” And then your brain starts processing, and you’re like, “Well, that makes sense. But, not for that. Well, they do like them, and they probably deserve something, and…”
BEST ACTOR – 2000
Javier Bardem, Before Night Falls
Russell Crowe, Gladiator
Tom Hanks, Cast Away
Ed Haris, Pollock
Geoffrey Rush, Quills (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actor & Best Supporting Actress – 2000
Here’s the first entry in our Oscar quest. I say our, because mine started a long time ago. Now it’s ours.
Since the Oscars will be upon us within the next 40 days (and nominations will be announced in exactly 7 days), I figure this is a good time to start gearing up for that wonderful, wonderful night.
How this is gonna work is, from now until Oscar night, I will go over all the major 6 nominees for every year of the past decade, Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress and Director. I will go over who won, what I thought of the performances, who I would have voted for, who I thought should have won, all of it.
The purposes of this are educational (and expository). I want you to be able to know what I think are the worthwhile performances in 83 years worth of films, so that if you should ever come across one of them, maybe you’ll actually give them a chance based on some good things I had to say about it. Maybe you’ll discover something in here that ends up becoming one of your favorite films all because of me. And wouldn’t my ego love to hear that.
My other goal is simple — I’ve watched a shit ton of movies this past year. I want to document my watching them in some way. I want to be able to go back and remember what I thought of certain films, because, eventually, being the DVD hound I am, I will want to buy some of them, and I want to know which ones I liked and want to add to the collection.
So that’s that. Now, let’s start with 2000 and work backwards. (more…)
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