The 1970 Retro Hollmann Awards, Part Two

Goodness, here it is, the finale of our look back at 1970, the end of the 1970 Retro Hollmann Awards, and all just in time for Christmas Eve! Please recall our Top Ten, our nominees, and our first day of awards. And enjoy! On to the next nine awards:

The 1970 Retro Hollmann Awards, Part One

You know the nominees, you've seen the Top Ten - now, the first nine winners of the 1970 Retro Hollmann Awards:

The 1970 Retro Hollmann Award Nominees

After the jump, my nominees for the best of 50 years ago. Refer to my Top Ten for further favorites...

Top Ten of 1970

As I mentioned Friday while discussing the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, 1970 presented an abundance of great films - even the not-so-good movies are great entertainments! So how does one make a Top Ten? After narrowing the 74 films screened down to 18 based on feeling, I had to consider not only what I would gladly watch again, but what I would have people prioritize. "Oh, you have to see [x]!"

So, due apologies to Alex in Wonderland, The Aristocats, The Boys in the Band, Cherry, Harry and Raquel!, Girly, The Out-of-Towners, Patton and The Traveling Executioner, but these are my Top Ten Films of 1970, in alphabetical order:

1970, Day Twelve: Best Picture of the Year

This has been one of the more interesting retrospectives for me. It's the first time in a while that I've disagreed with all but one of Oscar's choices (though it was close for some of them!). I've liked more movies than I've disliked, many of them equally, so that making a Top Ten and deciding a winner here have been equally frustrating tasks. I'm sure it was the same for the Academy 50 years ago; only the National Board of Review agreed with their pick:

Unless...I agree, too? Oh, ho-ho, read on, my friends...

1970, Day Eleven: Actress

Notable notes in the Best Actress competition for 1970 include this fun gem: it is, as of this writing, the last time an entire lead acting category was made up of first-time nominees. C'est vrai! Jane Alexander and Glenda Jackson would each be nominated another three times, but both were having their breakthroughs. As for the other three, none of them would ever be nominated again: Sarah Miles, taking the lead role in previously-discussed Ryan's Daughter; Ali MacGraw, the leading lady in #1 hit Love Story; and Carrie Snodgress, making her big screen breakthrough in Diary of a Mad Housewife. That film follows an unappreciated middle-class wife and mother whose husband's social-climbing wears her down physically, mentally, emotionally. Then she becomes a writer's fuck-buddy and begins coming into her own. The movie is the performance, so let's discuss that...and the others:

1970, Day Ten: Actor

The Best Actor nominees this year were all nominated at the Golden Globes for Best Actor in a Drama. That includes, among the other previously discussed and soon-to-be-discussed films, The Great White Hope, a compelling drama about a black boxer who becomes a target of the US government not just because of his becoming heavyweight champion of the world over all the white competitors, but because of his relationship with a white woman. Thoughtfully written, perfectly cast (in addition to nominees James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander, the ensemble boasts Lou Gilbert, Beah Richards, Marlene Warfield and Hal Holbrook), with an eye for detail and a scale of design on par with most epics.

But there were no Comedy/Musical Globe nominees! Just straight-faced misses. That means the Oscars skipped out on:

• Richard Benjamin for Diary of a Mad Housewife. As the ambitious husband pressuring his wife to help him surpass the Joneses, Benjamin is obnoxious, thoughtless, amusing. He's also supporting Carrie Snodgress, and supporting is where he belongs!
• Albert Finney for Scrooge, a musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Finney was in his early 30s when he took the role of 50+ Ebenezer Scrooge. Despite winning the Golden Globe and already being a nominee for Best Actor, he missed out...though he'd eventually return to the Academy's good graces. I'm glad they didn't. He's...miscast.
• Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland for MASH. As Trapper John, M.D., and Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce, respectively, Gould and Sutherland anchor the anarchy. Gould was nominated the year before for Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice; Sutherland is still waiting.
• Jack Lemmon for The Out-of-Towners. Lemmon's everyman routine gets an edge. Visiting NYC for a business meeting that he hoped to parlay into a getaway with his wife, the domino effect of just terrible mishaps that greet them quickly take him from harried businessman to entitled asshole. It is hostile and the best.

Instead, they went for:

1970, Day Nine: Original Screenplay

Let's get right to it, the nominees for (deep breath) Story and Screenplay Based On Factual Material Or Material Not Previously Published Or Produced:

1970, Day Eight: Adapted Screenplay

A film whose creators insisted was mostly improvised took the award for writing, something even credited scribe Ring Lardner, Jr., was surprised by:

The winner is the only one based on a work I've never been exposed to. The original MASH is a novel credited to Richard Hooker, the joint pen name of former military surgeon Dr. H. Richard Hormberger and journalist w.C. Heinz. The 1968 best-seller was followed by a series of sequels and inspired a stage play, a television series, and, of course, the movie. But I've never read it! I've read the play andf watched the show, but those are my only other MASH frames of reference.

The other nominees? I know them. I own copies of both Airport and Women in Love and read the original stage versions of I Never Sang for My Father and Lovers and Other Strangers in high school. Did the movies honor the source material? Who cares, it's cinema, they need to do their oWn thing. Did they accomplish that? Let's see!

1970, Day Seven: Director

Last week, we discussed both supporting acting categories, all three music categories, plus a grab bag of nominees honored for other disciplines. Today, we look at the nominees for Best Director.

Of the four first-timers, three weren't just helming Best Picture nominees: they made the biggest hits of the year. Only Airport outgrossed MASH and Patton; Love Story topped them all.

The other first-timer was Ken Russell, director of the D.H. Lawrence adaptation Women in Love, about two sisters whose lives become entwined with a pair of best friends - one a teacher, one heir to the mining company their town runs on - and the various thrills, sexual and otherwise, that come about because of it. Russell would go on to make several films that showcased, as women in Love star Glenda Jackson put it, sexual neuroticism, often through biographies of composers like Tchaikovsky (The Music Lovers) or Liszt (Lisztomania). He also directed one of my all-time favorites, The Devils.

The fifth nominee was Federico Fellini, up for the third time for Fellini Satyricon, an extremely sweaty adaptation of the ancient work by Petronius. The film follows a gay youth's travels through society as he searches for his young lover: he goes to bath houses, experimental theatre, bacchanals, even faces off against a minotaur. A sweaty, erotic, very gay, dreamlike film, the nomination must have come as a surprise for...well, many, especially considering it's the film's only nomination!

The eventual winner was Franklin J. Schaffner, director of such films as The Best Man and Planet of the Apes, honored for his work on the #4 film of the year, Patton:

A closer look:

1970, Day Six: Original Song

Fascinating that none of the Let It Be tracks wound up here, but then again, there is a curious trend of Song Score/Adapted Score winners not even being nominated in this category, like Victor/Victoria or Purple Rain. Interestingly, the only entrant to miss a Golden Globe nomination - the only "precursor" for this category - wound up taking the Oscar:

The nominees are:

1970, Day Five: Best Original Song Score

An oft-revised category, the Original Song Score category (which, need I remind you, only needs someone to start campaigning to actually be revived) in 1970 brought together five very unlikely nominees (well, four, at any rate). And of those nominees, the unlikeliest of winners:

Let's talk about both the nominations and the movies, shall we?:

1970, Day Four: Original Score

This year's field was dominated by Best Picture nominees: Airport, Patton, and the winner, Love Story:

Two exceptions, though, one from a newbie, the other from a veteran of the game...

Cromwell is a historical drama in the vein of Anne of the Thousand Days or A Man for All Seasons, depicting the clash between statesman Oliver Cromwell and King Charles I - a clash that included Civil war, the execution of the King, and Cromwell's becoming head of state and government. It feels like a film made for those who already know the history, with the many people and their titles and their loyalties increasingly difficult to track - I know there's betrayal and double-crosses and whatnot, but I could not for the life of me figure out who was betraying or why. Hoarse Richard Harris disappoints; Alec Guinness is great. This was one of the film's two nominations; it won for Costume Design.

Sunflower is a drama about a woman who refuses to believe her husband, declared MIA, died in war; she searches for him in the Soviet Union and uncovers the shocking truth. Sophia Loren (who this year, returns to cinema in Netflix's The Life Ahead) is quite gutting in the film. Otherwise, I wasn't too crazy about it. I don't mind its score, though, which you can hear, alongside the other nominees, right here:

1970, Day Three: Supporting Actress

Of the five nominees for Best Supporting Actress, four came from Best Picture nominees. The one exception is Lee Grant, nominated for The Landlord, the film's only representative at the Academy Awards. 

The directorial debut from In the Heat of the Night's Oscar-winning editor Hal Ashby, The Landlord is a comedy about a wealthy white boy who buys an apartment building in the predominately black NYC neighborhood of Park Slope with the intention to gut and renovate it, but finds his efforts thwarted by the tenants. Perhaps a wee long, it's still a funny, thoughtful, impactful film. 

Grant was lucky, as any of the film's female ensemble could've been nominated: Pearl Bailey as the shotgun-toting ambassador of the building's residents, Diana Sands as the beautiful downstairs neighbor, Marki Bey as the mixed race dancer who starts to date the landlord, Susan Anspach as the landlord's vaguely liberal sister. Not entirely surprising that the film only garnered one nomination - due to the Academy's relative conservatism, not due to the quality of the film; after all, it took them another 13 years to honor the cinematographer Gordon willis, whose work on The Landlord is...so...good.

The rest, as I say, came from Best Picture-nominated films. Let's talk about all of them:

1970, Day Two: Supporting Actor

Beautifully coiffed, her consonants cleanly crisp, reigning Best Actress winner Maggie Smith rolls out with a lineup of one-and-doners (plus Gene Hackman) before handing off the night's second competitive statuette to her fellow countryman:

John Mills' filmography spans 72 years and over 100 works, including In Which We Serve, This Happy Breed, Great Expectations, Oh! What a Lovely War (Hollmann Awards nominee, in fact!), and PBS's late-90s telecast of Cats. By the time Ryan's Daughter came out, he had been working 38 years, and fathered two successful actresses, Juliet and Hayley (of The Parent Trap and Tiger Bay). His win, though, was no sure thing. 

1970, Day One: A Bunch of Nominees

The year: 1971 (remember, each Academy Awards ceremony is held the year after the one they're honoring). The date: April 15th (funnily enough, 50 years later, the 93rd Academy Awards is scheduled for April 25th, the first time the Oscars have been held in April since The Last Emperor took home Best Picture in 1988). The place: the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles, currently part of the Music Center and home to the LA Opera (I saw Satyagraha there!).

And the nominees? That's what the next two weeks are all about, as we go into depth on the acting categories, the writing categories, the music categories, Director, and Picture. Today, though, we focus on films not nominated in any of those categories, but elsewhere:

1970: The Capper

These ten, according to the official Reminder Lists, were among the end-of-the-year qualifiers for Oscar consideration. Exceptions are The Wizard of Gore and The Phantom Tollbooth, both of which had unusual releases - the former because of its drive-in/grindhouse target, the latter because it was more or less buried by its studio.

1970: Summertime Cinema

Yesterday took us from January into the spring; today, we look at the films of the summer (excepting Oscar and other awards nominees). Again, I'm going by the qualifying LA releases, except for The Human Condition (that's IMDb info).

1970: The First Five Months

Continuing our look at the films of 1970. The ten films herein were released within the first five months of the year - at least, according to that year's Reminder List for Academy Awards qualification.

1970: The (Non-Oscar) Nominees

Fifty years ago, the films of 1970 came out. Most of them, at least - some made their festival or international debuts one or several years earlier. Point being, we're ending 2020 by going back a full 50 years to the films of 1970. Last week, I posted the 74 films screened. Next week, we begin our look at the 30 Academy Award nominees. This week, the remaining 44.

Let's start with the 14 films that just missed Oscar, films that saw themselves up for Golden Globes, critics prizes, and honors from their respective guilds, but just didn't have the votes in the Academy to make the cut.

This December: 1970

Tuesday, December 1st, marks the beginning of the Silver Screening Room's 1970 Retrospective, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the US release of...well, of a lot of movies. I watched 74 in all, including 30 Academy Award nominees, so be prepared for discussions of:

The 1931-32 Retro Hollmann Awards, Part Two

A long and unexpected delay - life does that sometimes! But finally, after 72 films screened, six Oscar categories reexamined and judged, a Top Ten decided, and nine awards given, it's the exciting conclusion of the 1031-32 retrospective: The Retro Hollmann Awards, Part Deux!: 

The 1931-32 Retro Hollmann Awards, Part One

This first part of the 1931-32 Retro Hollmann Awards focuses on the eight categories not yet added to the Academy Awards - the Supporting Acting categories, the Music categories, Costume Design, Film Editing, Makeup, and Visual Effects - as well as Best Ensemble. Which is where we're starting:

The 1931-32 Hollmann Awards - Nominees

For the umpteenth time, here are the nominees for the Retro Hollmann Awards - this time, covering 1931-32.

A note: While the Fifth Academy Awards only had nine feature film categories, with the number of nominees in each fluctuating (but never five!), I have the full 18 regular Hollmann Awards categories here, five nominees per category. The order below was determined by random drawing.

The nominees are:

Top Ten of 1931-32

Here 'tis, my Top Ten for the films released between August 1, 1931 and July 31st, 1932. Apologies to the almost-made-its: À nous la liberté, Broken Lullaby, Grand Hotel, Mata Hari, Million Dollar Legs, Murders in the Rue Morgue, and Waterloo Bridge.

Now, the list proper, in alphabetical order:

Best Motion Picture of the Year: 1931-32, Day Fourteen

The Fifth Academy Awards was the place for screen history: movie debuts, ties, and the one trivia piece everyone gets a kick out of, Grand Hotel winning Best Picture with no other nominations.

What's funny about that Grand Hotel bit is...it wasn't the only lone Best Picture nominee. Of the eight films competing, four were unnominated elsewhere. In addition to the ensemble drama Grand Hotel, there was Five Star Final, about a tabloid ruining the life of a woman trying to get her life back on track; One Hour with You, a musical-comedy in which a happily married couple find their marital bliss threatened by the wife's best friend; and The Smiling Lieutenant, a musical-comedy in which a lieutenant merrily living in sin with a female orchestra leader finds himself betrothed to the princess of a small nation. It's a curious mix of loners, especially alongside based-on-a-bestseller Arrowsmith, two-time Oscar winner Bad Girl, hit weepie The Champ, and dangerously sexy Shanghai Express. So let's talk about it!

Best Actress, 1931-32, Day Thirteen

The story of the fifth Best Actress race is that of the stage. Marie Dressler was already a Hollywood powerhouse and Oscar winner - indeed, she was the reigning champion for Best Actress, thanks to her performance in Min and Bill - but the other two nominees were better known for their theatrical, rather than their cinematic, output. (For more on Marie Dressler, I recommend the You Must Remember This spin-off show Make Me Over; Dressler's career and why it was so unique is covered in one episode by Farran Nehme.)

Lynn Fontanne and husband Alfred Lunt were the King and Queen of Broadway. Though Fontanne had appeared in two earlier films in the silent era, the stage was her true metier. Look up her credits on IBDb, and you'll find consistent work from 1910 - 1958; look up her credits on IMDb, and you'll see four films, two television guest appearances, and three teleplays, including The Magnificent Yankee, which earned her and Lunt Emmy wins. Much was made in 1931 of MGM being able to nab the couple to recreate their smash stage hit of 1924, The Guardsman, and even more so once the success carried over into cinema. Despite Thalberg's best efforts, however, Fontanne and Lunt were not to be swayed: back to the boards of New York they tread.

Helen Hayes was an accomplished stage actress - she would eventually come to be known as the First Lady of the American Stage - when she joined her writer husband in Los Angeles. Once again, MGM did the coaxing, landing Hayes for her screen debut in The Sin of Madelon Claudet...provided they hire her husband to do the adapting, of course. Hayes wasn't crazy about the role or the film, but it led to a long and illustrious screen career, one that she was able to balance alongside a healthy stage career. Her asthma pushed her to retire from theatre work in 1971 after the revival of Harvey, but she continued doing films and TV roles through 1985. She's an EGOT-er, including two Oscars and two Tonys.

And with that intro done, here's they work they were honored for:

Best Actor: 1931-32, Day Twelve

Norma Shearer presented the award for Best Actor - and to go by Inside Oscar, it was an exciting way to present it. She did the nominees, then the winner was revealed via an audio clip from their performance as the star's photograph was projected behind Norma. Fredric March accepted...and then some time later, the ballot-counters realized that there was only a three point difference between two of the nominees. According to the rules of the time, that meant...A TIE!

Wallace Beery went up a little late, but he accepted his Best Actor trophy. It was the first of only six times this happened, and the first of only twice in the acting categories. Beery and March had just adopted children, so March made a joke about them winning for "best male performance," ha-ha. The third nominee, Alfred Lunt, probably would've felt crunchy about it had he cared. He and his wife Lynn Fontanne were both up for Academy Awards for The Guardsman, recreating their hit stage roles; both also declined MGM contracts so that they could return to treading the boards in New York.

The nominees:

Best Director: 1931-32, Day Eleven

Five years in, and already the Academy was repeating itself!

The nominees for Best Director, 1931-32, had all been here before. Josef von Sternberg had just been nominated the previous year for Morocco, when he lost to Skippy's Norman Taurog. King Vidor was on his third go-round, having been previously nominated at the Third Academy Awards for the all-Black musical Hallelujah, which he lost to Lewis Milestone for All Quiet on the Western Front, and at the First Academy Awards, where he was nominated for The Crowd. The man he lost to, the first-ever winner for Best Director, was none other than Frank Borzage, nominated then for Seventh Heaven.

And now we have Borzage on his second nomination, for Bad Girl. And guess what? He won again! Two for two? Not so bad, Mr. Borzage. But let's take a closer look, shall we?

Best Adaptation: 1931-32, Day Ten

Monday, we discussed the nominees for Best Original Story, as presented by the reigning winner for Best Adaptation, Howard Estabrook. Estabrook also presented for, of course, Best Adaptation, which saw three nominated films from a classic, an award winner, and a recent bestseller.

Arrowsmith was published in 1925, the ninth novel by Sinclair Lewis. Lewis won the Pulitzer Prize, but declined it, saying, among other things, that, "All prizes, like all titles, are dangerous." And here we are now discussing its feature film adaptation's Oscar nominations. Lewis is known for his socially conscious novels tackling American issues through various occupations. Among his best-known works are Main Street (adapted for film in 1923 and 1936), Babbitt (adapted for film in 1924 and 1934), Elmer Gantry (adapted for film in 1960), Dodsworth (adapted for film in 1936), and It Can't Happen Here (never adapted).

Bad Girl was published as a novel by Viña Delmar in 1928. She was 23 and it was her first novel, and with the provocative title and subsequent banning of it by some cities, she was bound to be a sensation. A novelist, short story writer, playwright, and screenwriter, Delmar adapted the novel for the stage, and would later write the screenplays for Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) and The Awful Truth (1937, nomination for Best Screenplay).

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde came from the 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a mystery with an unbelievable ending written by Robert Louis Stevenson. My goodness, you know Stevenson's work: Treasure Island (1883, over 50 adaptations), Kidnapped (1886, at least nine adaptations), The Black Arrow (1888, at least eight adaptations), A Child's Garden of Verses (1885). Jekyll and Hyde (as it sometimes known) has been adapted countless times, starting in 1908. This is one of the most famous versions, alongside the 1920 version with John Barrymore and the 1990 Broadway musical by Frank Wildhorn.

That's how they started; here's how they ended up:

Best Original Story: 1931-32, Day Nine

On November 18, 1932, the Motion Picture Academy held its fifth annual awards show at the Ambassador Hotel in the heart of what is now Los Angeles' Koreatown. Academy President Conrad Nagel (an actor whos appeared in five films released during the eligibility window, none of which were nominared or seen by yours truly) was the Master of Ceremonies; he also presented the Short Subject awards as well as a Special Award to walt Disney, for the creation of Mickey Mouse. All that business followed the awarding of Sci-Tech Awards, Sound Recording, Interior Decoration, and Cinematography. And then the writing awards, presented by Howard Estabrook.

Estabrook was the reigning winner of the Best Adaptation Academy Award, which he received for Best Picture Cimarron. I don't know which writing category came first, but I'm starting with....Original Story. Not screenplay, mind you: story. Adaptation and Dialogue were often credited to different writers than the story, a holdover, I imagine, from the scenarist days of silent film. Starting in 1940, there were three writing awards: Story, Story and Screenplay, and Screenplay (for adaptations and screenplays not written by the original scenarist). Things were simplified after the awards for 1956, and from then on, it was just Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay.

That is now, but this was then. The four (?!) nominees for Original Story, 1931-32, were:

Some Nominees: 1931-32, Day Eight

A week from today, I'll discuss the eight Best Picture nominees, eventually crowning my personal favorite. But there were nine other films nominated in seven categories at the 5th Academy Awards, and while we'll delve into some of those individual elements so honored, here I'd like to talk about the films as a whole.

The Fourth Quarter: 1931-32, Day Seven

These are films released May 1, 1932-July 31, 1932 - the final qualifying quarter for the Fifth Academy Awards:

The Third Quarter: 1931-32, Day Six

These films were released February 1, 1932-April 30th, 1932.

The Second Quarter: 1931-32, Day Five

Looking at the non-nominated films released between November 1, 1931 and January 31, 1931:

The First Quarter: 1931-32, Day Four

Today and into Thursday, we're looking at the films released in each quarter of the qualifying period. Excluding the nominated titles, I present the films of August 1, 1931, through October 31st, 1931:

Sounds Like Paramount: 1931-32, Day Three

Among the many ways the Fifth Academy Awards differed from the ones to come: this was the second and last ceremony in which the Sound Recording category went to the studio's sound department instead of an individual film and its sound engineers. For the second year in a row, the winner was Paramount.

The Joan Blondell Show: 1931-32, Day Two

She wasn't nominated (this year, at least), but how do you talk about the films of 1931-32 without talking about Joan Blondell, she of the bright yellow hair, sardonic wit, and big doe eyes? 

Checking In To The Grand Hotel: 1931-32, Day One

Today we begin our month-long look at the films of 1931-32 - that is, the Fifth Academy Awards.

The Oscars of yesteryear were markedly different from the ones we know today. For instance: the Academy didn't officially adopt the nickname of "Oscar" until 1939! They were held at the Ambassador Hotel, long since demolished, the property now the site of Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. Votes were being tabulated during the ceremony - a twist that resulted in the show's first tie. Gosh, and Best Picture - eight nominees, four of them with no other nominations...including the eventual winner, Grand Hotel. 

Let's talk about Grand Hotel a little.

The 1931-32 Watchlist

Starting October 1st, the blog is taking a month-long journey through the winning, nominated, and qualifying films for the 5th Academy Awards, honoring movies released between August 1, 1931, and July 31st, 1932. If you'd like to join in the fun, the 72 films screened are:

In the Months Ahead...

Powering down in September to focus on back-to-back retrospectives.

In November, we'll look at the films of 1970, featuring these Best Picture nominees:

But first, in October, it's the cinema of August 1, 1931-July 31, 1932 - the Fifth Academy Awards - featuring these Best Picture nominees:

See y'all in October!

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And Finally, For Now...: 2020, Day Thirteen

This is the final day for my 2020 catch-up capsules. More to come, of course, throughout the rest of the year, but until then...

For Rent: 2020, Day Twelve

All these titles are available to rent - the cheapest at $1.99 on iTunes, the highest at $12 via Kino Marquee, a "digital cinema" that sends your ticket purchase to support the independent theater where you would have seen the movie, were we not in shutdown.  

Nominees' Latest: 2020, Day Eleven

One of today's directors is an Oscar nominee for his previous work behind the camera; another is a two-time nominee for writing. Do you know who?

Auteurs On Parade: 2020, Day Ten

Five films, all the work of writer-directors, with many even putting on the producer cap!

Here's Some More: 2020, Day Nine

You know the drill by now, surely. Five reviews of 2020 releases, all currently available through either VOD and/or its home streamer...

The Good Stuff: 2020, Day Eight

People. People. You must watch these movies. All of them. Even the not-as-good-as-the-others one!

Chef's Kiss: 2020, Day Seven

Of the films released up to this date (that I have seen), I really do consider today's Best of the Bunch picks to be among the Top Ten...

Original Programming: 2020, Day Six

Five more 2020 releases, all exclusive to their respective streaming platforms.

Mostly Netflix: 2020, Day Five

My mom has a new kitchen, and I have some new thoughts on new films.

Late But Here: 2020, Day Four

Sometimes life gets in the way, but we are back and continuing our look at this year's cinema.

Sofa Screenings: 2020, Day Three

The look at 2020 so far continues with a bunch of movies I watched on my couch.

From Cinemas to Streamers: 2020, Day Two

Continuing my month-long look at the cinema of now!

It's About Time: 2020, Day One

More than halfway through 2020, and I'm finally talking about this year's releases, something I'm planning to do weekdays in August, five movies a day, in order of viewing. So let's start with:

The 1992 Retro Hollmann Awards, Day Two

Yesterday, Bram Stoker's Dracula championed with five wins, while the remaining four awards were split among four films. Today, the final nine of my 1992 Retro Hollmann Awards, including Best Picture of the Year. Remember to check out the alphabetized Top Ten for further writing on those, and the full list of nominees.

Now, the show....

The 1992 Retro Hollmann Awards, Day One

The awarding of the 1992 Retro Hollmann Awards begins! Reference the Top Ten, check out the full list of nominees, then sit back and enjoy as we cover the first nine categories, including Director, Original Screenplay, and Score, and beginning with....

The 1992 Retro Hollmann Awards Nominations

From 73 films, behold: the nominees for the 1992 Retro Hollmann Awards!

Top Ten of 1992

So, we've talked about the Oscar picks of 1992, and what I would have chosen from the nominees. We've discussed the horror offerings of 1992 and my personal Top Seven. Now, having seen 73 films from 1992, I can safely say that this is my Top Ten - with apologies to the almost-made-its: Glengarry Glen Ross, Shadows and Fog and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.

1992, Day Fourteen: Best in Horror

Herewith is our third and final Screen Drafts-inspired perusal of the horror offerings of 1992. I've talked about the Oscar-nominated titles, the theatrical releases, and the home video selections. But as anyone who has listened (or participated) can tell you, the fun in Screen Drafts isn't just hearing the debates and choices, it's coming up with your own list.

1992, Day Thirteen: Horror at Home

Continuing our look at the horrors of 1992, as inspired by the 1992 Horror episode of the podcast Screen Drafts.

It is up to each new panel of guests to decide for themselves, but there is a rule that allows for titles not released in cinemas to be eligible for the draft. In this case, Joe Begos and Graham Skipper opted to allow for DTV titles to count towards their final seven, and one even made it on there! Following are six direct-to-video titles (one of which was the title played), one made-for-TV movie, and one theatrical release that was just one title too many for yesterday's.

1992, Day Twelve: Horror in Cinema

As I said on day one, the impetus for choosing 1992 was an episode of Screen Drafts, the movie podcast that pairs experts and enthusiasts in a competitive collaboration to come up with best-of lists. The episode in question was 1992 Horror, drafted by Joe Begos and Graham Skipper, which posited that the 90s in general was an underrated decade for horror, but 1992 in particular boasted some gems. Their final list of seven included both theatrical and straight-to-video releases, and I did my due diligence and watched everything. I listened to the podcast once more and sought out not just their top seven, but films discussed that didn't make the final list, plus a couple of other flicks.

Here's just a sampling: ten horror films theatrically released in US cinemas in 1992, nine of which were mentioned on the podcast:

1992, Day Eleven: Other Nominees

Here are nine other films nominated for Academy Awards across seven categories:

1992, Day Ten: Best Picture

The five films nominated for the 1992 Academy Award for Best Picture are:

1992, Day Nine: Supporting Actress

If you've talked to anyone who was following the 1992 Oscar race, you will hear an oft-told urban legend about how Supporting Actress shook out. 

Basically, going into the Oscars, this was a three-woman race between Judy Davis (the ninth of sixteen actors nominated for a woody Allen film), Joan Plowright (never nominated veteran and widow of Laurence Olivier) and Miranda Richardson (the critics' darling). Looking back at Inside Oscar's account and contemporaneous sources, Richardson was the favorite, not just for delivering a killer monologue à la Network's Beatrice Straight, but for also having central roles in sleeper hits Enchanted April and The Crying Game. Smart money was on Davis or Richardson; I know one person who put money on Plowright; and of the two "surprise" nominees, Vanessa Redgrave would be the obvious spoiler pick.

No one saw it coming:

You can hear the screams! It's one of Oscar night's biggest shockers, and immediately gave rise to a number of theories. 

The most prevalent one purports that Jack Palance, that doddering old fool, read the wrong name. The Academy, not wanting to start the night by embarrassing an elder statesman of Hollywood, let it slide. That's not how the Oscars work, and if you think it does, then you somehow missed the time Moonlight won Best Picture while the La La Land producers were giving their acceptance speeches - there are measures put in place to prevent it, starting with the damn envelope. But you don't even need to get into the 2016 Oscars to see why the Palance theory doesn't work: just watch the clip! Having told the TelePrompTer to take a hike, less he be distracted, he takes his time reading the card, making sure he gets it right. People have also said he was going off of the memory of the last time he read aloud, but you're telling me Jack Palance isn't aware of Joan Plowright or Vanessa Redgrave?

Even those who accepted that it was the right name had a horrid little theory: it must be because Tomei was the only American nominated - Palance himself points this out before he reads the name - and in a xenophobic fit of solidarity, conferred the honor on her rather than these upstart Brits (well, and Aussie Davis). It's a bizarre theory that flies in the face of both the Academy's international membership ranks and its willingness to award the British. Hedda Hopper used to write op-eds about it. Redgrave herself was a previous winner! That very evening, Emma Thompson won Best Actress. That dog don't hunt.

Finally, there comes the "crotch vote" theory, which is very simple: the mostly male membership voted for Tomei because she was the most fuckable. She's the youngest nominee, undeniably beautiful, and while her character, Mona Lisa Vito, may have a smart mouth, she stands by her man...who just happen to be twice her age. She's not the cold ball-buster Davis plays, nor the cheated-upon housewife portrayed by Richardson, and she's certainly not Plowright or Redgrave.

The theories are not nice, and speak more to the gatekeeping of how we define "An Oscar Movie" than anything else, a gatekeeping that has made certain Oscar ceremonies seem more medicinal than celebratory. Still...if one actually takes the time to sit and watch the performances, did she deserve the win? 

1992, Day Eight: Score

Here are three scores that one assumes almost made it - they were, after all, nominated or awarded elsewhere - but didn't make the final cut. Each album cover will bring you to the score's playlist on YouTube, so treat yourselves!

  

From left to right, you're looking at the Golden Globe-nominated score to 1492: Conquest of Paradise by Vangelis, the LAFCA Award-winning score to Damage by Zbigniew Preisner, and the BAFTA Awards- and Golden Globe-nominated score to The Last of the Mohicans by Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman.

Great work, but not the nominees! The nominees are:

1992, Day Seven: Actor

Personally, I think it's interesting to look at the 1992 Best Actor lineup and not only see that there is one former winner, but that it is neither Clint Eastwood (this was his first acting nomination), nor is it Al Pacino (though that would soon be corrected). It's Denzel Washington.

Washington was already on his third nomination in 1992, having been nominated as a Supporting Actor for Cry Freedom and Glory; it was the latter that resulted in his first Oscar win. Malcolm X was his first nod for Lead Actor; his next five nominations would all follow suit: 1999's The Hurricane, 2001's Training Day (another win), 2012's Flight, 2016's Fences (for which he should have won a third Oscar) and 2017's Roman J. Israel, Esq. All told, that's eight nominations, exactly the tally Pacino had before he finally won his first:

Since then, there's been some debate over who should have won this year. Hell, it's a debate that goes even further back, to 1974-75: if Pacino won for either The Godfather: Part Two (as he could've) or Dog Day Afternoon (as he should've), would there have been less pressure to give him a career Oscar, thereby allowing Washington to take what Spike Lee claimed was rightfully his? Would Washington have even won? A second Oscar in three years doesn't always happen, and there were three other nominees, all on their first time; I can especially see a case for veteran Eastwood becoming the first actor-director to claim both prizes in one night. And what about Stephen Rea, star of the indie film du jour and Best Picture contender The Crying Game?

Fortunately, I'm here to settle once and for all not just the coulda-woulda - but more importantly, the shoulda:

1992, Day Six: Original Screenplay

Hello to a new week! We're continuing our look back at the films of 1992 with the Academy Award nominees for Best Original Screenplay:

1992, Day Five: Director

Our final slate of nominees for this week, and it's an exciting one:

1992, Day Four: Supporting Actor

Like Emma Thompson's Best Actress win, Best Supporting Actor was a march towards the inevitable:

But does inevitable mean deserved? Let's talk:

1992, Day Three: Original Song

Except for the recent phenomenons of "Shallow" from A Star is Born and the dance remixes of Frozen's "Let It Go", popular music and Oscar's Original Song category just don't have the same relationship as they did in the '80s and '90s. This year in particular: at the 36th Grammy Awards the following year, these same songs would compete against each other, and not just in the specialty categories for soundtracks. The Bodyguard's soundtrack won Album of the Year, Aladdin's "A whole New world" won Song of the Year, both competed against each other for Record of the Year (tho' The Bodyguard did so with the Dolly Parton cover "I will Always Love You" - and won), and, just like here, they made up 4/5 of the nominees for Best Song written for Visual Media.

OK, so I guess it was mostly The Bodyguard and Aladdin that dominated, but it's not difficult to see why. They're good songs! Actually, overall, it's an exceptional group of nominees, as you can hear for yourself:

1992, Day Two: Actress

You can't call the 1992 Best Actress competition a "race" - or even a competition. Sure, there were five nominees, four of them named at previous awards shows, but the season had already decreed a winner by Oscar night. And that winner was Emma Thompson:

It's not just that Thompson was nominated across 16 different critics groups and awards bodies around the world; it's more so that she won all of them. All of them. Not a loss in the bunch. It was a total and complete domination. Everyone else was just happy to be nominated.

And who was that everyone else? Let's talk:

1992, Day One: Intro and Adapted Screenplay

Today begins our month-long look at the films of 1992!

As I mentioned last month, this isn't just the usual Oscar-focused retrospective. This year was selected after listening to Screen Drafts, one of my favorite podcasts (full disclosure: I guested on the Original American Musicals episode with my best friend and Kipo writer Ben Mekler), in which "experts and enthusiasts competitively collaborate to create screen-centric best-of lists" - I think that's the logline, I'm doing that from memory. The specific episode: 1992 Horror, in which filmmakers Joe Begos and Graham Skipper select the seven best horror flicks domestically released in the United States in 1992. In addition to those seven, I'll also take a look at the other films discussed on the episode that did not make the final list.

But, of course, because this is how we do things around here, I'm also focusing on that year's Oscar race. It's the year Clint Eastwood suddenly became one of the great American auteurs (yes, he had directed plenty before, but not to this level of critical and awards success), Al Pacino finally got his Oscar, people were win to Marisa Tomei, and the Disney Renaissance once again dominated the music categories thanks to Aladdin.

We'll talk about all that, plus the horror picks, later this month. Today, we're starting the journey with Best Adapted Screenplay....

Coming in June....

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have already guessed this, but there’s a new retrospective starting June 1st: the films of 1992! Inspired by the 1992 Horror episode of Screen Drafts (with special guest GMs Joe Begos and Graham Skipper), I’m catching up with the theatrical releases drafted therein, as well as that year’s Best Picture nominees from the Academy Awards and Golden Globes:

There will also, of course, be a handful of other 1992 US releases, from Captain Ron to Raise the Red Lantern, The Muppet Christmas Carol to Edward II, Bebe's Kids to Newsies - just to name a few.

It starts Monday, June 1st, with the nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay: Enchanted April, Howards End, The Player, A River Runs Through It, Scent of a woman.