The 1961 Retro Hollmann Awards, Part One

The first nine categories of the Retro Hollmann Awards of 1961! Each category is presented in the same order as the original Academy Awards telecast, with only two exceptions: the first two, for they did not exist at the time - one of them still doesn't, but that's OK. On to the awards!

Best Ensemble

A Raisin in the Sun

2. Flower Drum Song; 3. The League of Gentlemen; 4. The Innocents; 5. Judgment at Nuremberg

Of course, if any film was going to win this, it'd be the one up for five acting nominations. The family unit itself is beautifully played, with the realistic moments of frustration and love, doubt and certainty. But there's also generous room for the guests in their household: Bobo, George Murchison, that too-polite white guy, Mr. Asagai.

In second place, the dynamite song-and-dance ensemble of Flower Drum Song. In third, the conspirators - and the women in their lives - in The League of Gentlemen. In fourth, the concerned staff, mischievous children, and checked-out uncle in The Innocents. In fifth, the all-star cast of Judgment at Nuremberg.

The remaining eight categories are after the jump.

Too-Early Oscar Predictions, 2019 Edition

Yes, it's that time again - way-too-early Oscar predictions! Never have I ever gotten more than two or three correct this far ahead, but that does not stop me. Maybe it should, but it won't. Not ever.

Picture

Dolemite is My Name

Ford v. Ferrari

The Irishman

The Last Thing He Wanted
Little Women

The Laundromat
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Pain and Glory

Untitled Todd Haynes Project

Yesterday

Five and a half true stories: Dolemite is My Name (biopic of Rudy Ray Moore), Ford v. Ferrari (about the competition between the titular companies for Le Mans 1966), The Irishman (Scorsese and De Niro return to gangster drama), The Laundromat (Panama Papers), Untitled Todd Haynes Project (lawyer takes on polluting chemical company) and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Tarantino's riff on Hollywood '69 - fiction, but with real people as players). We also have possible crowdpleaser Yesterday, Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Little Women, Dee Rees' adaptation of Joan Didion's The Last Thing He Wanted, and Pedro Almodovar's showbiz drama Pain and Glory. We'll know soon enough if Pain & Glory or Yesterday have "the goods", as the former is premiering at Cannes and the latter comes out at the end of June.

Last year, I correctly predicted two of the nine eventual nominees: Roma and Vice.

Predictions in six more categories after the jump....

The 1961 Retro Hollmann Awards Nominations

And the nominees are.....

Top Ten of 1961

One of the more difficult Top Tens I've ever had to make. When push came to shove, I thought about what's close to my heart: the films I think about randomly or bring up in conversation; that changed or helped me better articulate my views on something; whose images moved me beyond words.

Honorable Mentions: Bachelor in Paradise, The Ballad of Narayama, Immortal Love, The Innocents and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

The Top Ten - in alphabetical order - after the jump....

1961: The Movies

Wrapping up 1961. These are the 75 movies I saw:

The Absent-Minded Professor

Angel Baby

L'Avventura

Babes in Toyland

Bachelor in Paradise

Back Street

Ballad of a Soldier

The Ballad of Narayama

Black Sunday

Blue Hawaii

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Breathless

Cash On Demand

The Children's Hour

El Cid

Claudelle Inglish

The Curse of the Werewolf

La Dolce Vita

Fanny

Fear No More

Flower Drum Song

Francis of Assisi

General Della Rovere

Goodbye Again

The Great Impostor

The Guns of Navarone

Homicidal

The Human Condition: Road to Eternity

The Hustler

Immortal Love

The Innocents

Judgment at Nuremberg

King of Kings

The League of Gentlemen

Les liaisons dangereuses

Lover Come Back

A Majority of One

The Mark

Master of the World

The Millionairess

The Misfits

Mr. Sardonicus

Mysterious Island

No Love for Johnnie

Odd Obsession

One Hundred and One Dalmatians

One, Two, Three

One-Eyed Jacks

The Parent Trap

Paris Blues

Pit and the Pendulum

Pocketful of Miracles

Purple Noon

Question 7

A Raisin in the Sun

Return to Peyton Place

Rocco and His Brothers

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone

Sanctuary

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

The Savage Innocents

The Seventh Commandment

Snow White and the Three Stooges

Splendor in the Grass

Stop Me Before I Kill!

Summer and Smoke

Throne of Blood

Town Without Pity

Two Women

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

West Side Story

Yojimbo

The Young Doctors

The Young Savages

Youth in Fury

On Monday - my Top Ten. On Tuesday, my nominees. And on Thursday and Friday, my awards.

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Day Eleven: The Rest of the Nominees, 1961

Over the past two weeks, we've discussed the 1961 Academy Award nominees in the eight major categories, plus score and song. All together, that's 23 films we've looked at, plus a mention of the difficult-to-find Khovanshchina.

Ah, but there were even more films up for Oscars that year! After the jump, nine more nominees, and my thoughts 'upon them.

Day Ten: Best Picture, 1961

Best Picture: the last award given at the Oscars, the last Oscar category we're covering for 1961. Doesn't mean we're done with the year as a whole, though! I've still my own personal picks for the Best of the Year.

But that's still to come. Let's focus on the Academy's picks today, shall we? After the jump...

Day Nine: Best Actress, 1961

The performances nominated for Best Actress at the 1961 Oscars are iconic, career-changing, and, at least in one case, confusing. The nominees, after the jump.

Day Eight: Best Original Song, 1961

Let's not dilly-dally. The songs, after the jump.

Day Seven: Best Adapted Screenplay, 1961

If the 1961 Oscars were looked at then as we do it now, Best Adapted Screenplay would be considered anyone's game. All five honorees received nominations from other bodies; four of them won. What's more, of the six writers, there was one previous winner, two previous nominees, and one who would return soon after. These are the big guns, Oscar-wise.

The nominees, after the jump.

Day Six: Best Supporting Actress, 1961

Day-and-a-half late, but we're back with the Academy Award Nominees of 1961! We start this week with the nominees for Best Supporting Actress, after the jump.

Day Five: Best Director, 1961

We wrap the first week of 1961 with Best Director. If you missed out on the rest of the week, just click on these words. If you haven't missed out, welcome back.

The nominees after the jump....

Day Four: Best Actor, 1961

When I look at the Best Actor nominees for 1961, my mind immediately leaps to the Tony Awards rules - you know, how if you're above the title, you're the de facto lead, and if you're below the title, you're featured/supporting? Anyway, when I see Charles Boyer) and Maximilian Schell (fifth-billed - was he the cut-off?) among the Lead Actor nominees, that's what I think.

That's all. The nominees after the jump.

Day Three: Best Scores, 1961

A double dose of Oscar fun today, as we look at the nominees for Best Dramatic/Comedy Score and Best Musical Score. The former is what we would now know as Original Score; the latter, an unused category that has gone through many permutations, from Adapted Score to Song Score to Original Musical Score. This year was an especially odd one - a non-musical is nominated for its original score in the Musical category, while a film not in the Musical category lifted its score entirely from another medium. The very next year, the categories were distinguished between Substantially Original Score and Adaptation Or Treatment Score. You'll see why.

We start with the nominees for Musical Score - after the jump...

Day Two: Best Original Screenplay, 1961

In 1961, the Golden Globes weren't awarding screenplays and the WGA Awards had three categories: Comedy, Drama, and Musical. I mention this because it was an unusually robust film for adaptations, which may help to explain the unusual nature of the year's Best Original Screenplay lineup. None of these screenplays were honored anywhere else; three of them are foreign films; one is actually an adaptation! Honestly, except for that last part, we could use more lineups like this...in spirit, I mean. It's surprising, one-of-a-kind, and is willing to look outside the box to find the worthy.

The nominees after the jump.

Day One: Best Supporting Actor, 1961

Why 1961? A few reasons: With all the talk of Steven Spielberg's West Side Story remake, I wanted to revisit the original. There were a number of classics I needed to catch up with, such as Judgment at Nuremberg and The Hustler. And it marked the release of Road to Eternity, the second chapter of Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition, so, you know, why not?

We start with the nominees for Best Supporting Actor, after the jump...