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The Oscar Quest: Best Director – 1972
Let’s not waste time here. The Godfather won Best Picture, it was a great decision. A top three decision of all time. Coppola lost Best Director to Bob Fosse and Cabaret. Unacceptable for this year, acceptable for all time. No need to waste space on something we can all agree on. (We can agree, can’t we?)
Marlon Brando won Best Actor. Nuff said. Best Actress went to Liza Minnelli for Cabaret. Nuff said. Great decision. Best Supporting Actor — which I talked about very recently — was Joel Grey, also for Cabaret. To echo my sentiments in the article, unacceptable, but understandable how it happened. And Best Supporting Actress went to Eileen Heckart for Butterflies are Free. That was a very weak category, and is what it is. So, now, this one.
BEST DIRECTOR – 1972
And the nominees were…
John Boorman, Deliverance
Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather
Bob Fosse, Cabaret
Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Sleuth
Jan Troell, The Emigrants Read the rest of this page »
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actor – 1966
The thing I remember best about 1966 is that it’s one of, if not the only — double checking on this right now. Yes it is — it’s the only year in the history of the Academy (with five Best Picture nominees) where the Best Actor category matched up exactly with the Best Picture category. That is — all the Best Actor nominees were all the male leads of the five Best Picture nominees. No other category can boast that. There are a couple of fours, and 1964 has four matches and one repeat, but, the other nominee didn’t really have a male lead, so, 1966 will always be the only year (unless they go back to five nominees) where Best Actor matched Best Picture.
It also was a pretty good year overall, with A Man For All Seasons winning Best Picture, Paul Scofield winning Best Actor for it and Fred Zinnemann winning Best Director for it, and then every other award going to the other film that was just as great that year, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with Elizabeth Taylor winning Best Actress and Sandy Dennis winning Best Supporting Actress. The only other category that wasn’t won by either of those two films (but not for lack of trying), was this category, which is a pleasant little change up. Because who doesn’t love Walter Matthau?
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – 1966
And the nominees were…
Mako, The Sand Pebbles
James Mason, Georgy Girl
Walter Matthau, The Fortune Cookie
George Segal, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Robert Shaw, A Man for All Seasons Read the rest of this page »
The Oscar Quest: Best Actor – 1982
Oh, 1982. A good year capped off by a boring Best Picture winner. Gandhi is many things — a great film, a terrific biopic on one of the most important men of the 20th century — but an interesting film it is not. It didn’t need to win Best Picture. It’s just too on-the-nose. Which, kind of what the 80s were for the Oscars — a boring decade. Think about it. How many interesting decisions did the Academy make in the 80s? Amadeus? Platoon? Rain Man? Terms of Endearment? Even the ones that won weren’t great decisions. At best they’d be strong films in other decades. So, I just count this as one in a long line of boring 80s choices.
Richard Attenborough winning Best Director this year was — well, I talked about it already. Recently too. Meryl Streep winning Best Actress was — well, I talked about that too. Jessica Lange winning Best Supporting Actress was a fine decision, and Lou Gossett Jr. winning Best Supporting Actor was — well, it was. Which leaves this category. The most interesting of all the categories this year. It’s tough talking about it. Because on the one hand, he played Gandhi. But on the other hand — well, is the other hand. It’s kind of a lose-lose.
BEST ACTOR – 1982
And the nominees were…
Dustin Hoffman, Tootsie
Ben Kingsley, Gandhi
Jack Lemmon, Missing
Paul Newman, The Verdict
Peter O’Toole, My Favorite Year Read the rest of this page »
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actress – 1983
Still don’t know what to do with 1983. Or rather, how do you solve a problem like 1983? For the most part, 1983 is a boring year. Two of the five Best Picture nominees are pretty meh — The Dresser and Tender Mercies — one of them is amazing but was never going to win — The Big Chill — and then the other two…which do you pick? — Terms of Endearment and The Right Stuff. I love The Right Stuff, but, I don’t love it enough to call it a slam dunk Best Picture winner. And I love Terms of Endearment, but it’s also not quite a Best Picture winner even though it is. James L. Brooks also winning Best Director is kind of okay, and yet at the same time — I don’t know. I just don’t know what to do with this year.
Best Actor this year went to Robert Duvall, which — thank fucking god. The man was part of the biggest upset ever recorded in the Best Supporting Actor category in 1979 when he lost for Apocalypse Now. Interesting bit of fact about that whenever I get to it. But for now, even though the performance isn’t incredible (I actually compare it to Jeff Bridges’s Crazy Heart performance), the man deserved to win, so, we live with it. Best Actress this year went to Shirley MacLaine, which, also, fucking finally. That woman should have won 23 years before this. And I think she said that in her acceptance speech as well. Best Supporting Actor this year was Jack Nicholson in Terms of Endearment, because, why not? I think that was their reasoning. Why the fuck not? He was the big name in pretty weak category.
But, this year is very much a dead year for me because, the winners are clear cut, they’re not very interesting past — it’s about time — and the Best Picture choice is weak in terms of Best Picture choices, but, probably not a bad choice in terms of the nominees for this year. I’m pretty sure when the time comes it’ll be my vote, then again maybe not. I don’t know. It’s just — what do you do with a year like this? Read the rest of this page »
The Oscar Quest: Best Actress – 1958
1958 is a year — I think this is my first time talking about it since I’ve been writing these articles. I never really decided my feelings on the year as a whole. I agree with a lot of the decisions, but, for some reason this year just kind of feels like a blank to me.
Gigi won Best Picture, which is why it feels like a blank to most people. It wasn’t a terrible decision, mostly because the year itself didn’t really have a standout nominee. The Defiant Ones was also nominated, and that’s really the film that people can point to the best out of the other nominees and say it should have won, but both that and Gigi feel like films that, in most years, would be solid #2s. You know? I like them but, I just don’t see either of them as being winners. The other three nominees this year were Auntie Mame, which is a good film but kind of a bloated entry in the Best Picture nominees, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which is a great film but is very stagy and feels more like an “actors'” film more than a Best Picture winner, and Separate Tables, which is a solid film and a classy film, but not a Best Picture winner. So, this year is kind of a year of all fours without a solid five. That’s why I think it this year doesn’t really stand out among the really good ones.
As for the rest of the year, Best Actor went to David Niven for Separate Tables, which is more of a career achievement than anything. Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier probably split the vote for The Defiant Ones, Paul Newman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof — I don’t know, maybe he was too new to the industry to win over a veteran — and Spencer Tracy for The Old Man and the Sea, which is a Spencer Tracy nomination. So I guess that makes sense. Best Supporting Actor went to Burl Ives for The Big Country, which makes perfect sense, as he was great in that and great also in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof this year (kind of strange he didn’t win for that, but, hey, a win’s a win). Best Supporting Actress went to Wendy Hiller for Separate Tables, which was a great opportunity to give a veteran an Oscar in a relatively weak category. And Best Director was Vincente Minnelli for Gigi, which was a perfect decision, since Minnelli deserved an Oscar and didn’t get one the other time he was nominated in 1951. So, that’s 1958. A good year but not a great year. One that might be unfairly swept under the rug because of an unflashy Best Picture decision. Read the rest of this page »
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