Vintage Oscar Thoughts

[NUguy514]

A little over a week ago, I decided to commit to watching all the movies I hadn't yet seen with Oscar-winning performances, which amounted to maybe eleven movies or so. Thanks to Apple TV, YouTube, and a few very suspect and likely Eastern European streaming sites (the only viable options for Disraeli and Come and Get it, the latter of which came with Romanian subtitles), I finished last night with A Double Life (a great movie, by the way) and have now seen every Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress performance to go with my complete list of Picture, Director, and Actress winners. Here are my top tens in each category with asterisks next to my top five (there might be a few swaps from when I first made the Picture, Director, and Actress lists):

Best Picture
All About Eve*
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Bridge on the River Kwai
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King*
Moonlight*
Ordinary People
Schindler's List*
Shakespeare in Love
The Silence of the Lambs*
Slumdog Millionaire

Best Director
Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity*
Alfonso Cuarón, Roma*
Bob Fosse, Cabaret
Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman
Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King*
Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain*
Sam Mendes, American Beauty
Lewis Milestone, All Quiet on the Western Front*
Steven Spielberg, Schindler's List

Best Actor
F. Murray Abraham, Amadeus
Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront*
Peter Finch, Network
Anthony Hopkins, The Silence of the Lambs*
Fredric March, The Best Years of Our Lives
Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Gregory Peck, To Kill a Mockingbird*
Sean Penn, Milk*
George C. Scott, Patton
Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland*

Best Actress
Julie Andrews, Mary Poppins
Halle Berry, Monster's Ball*
Olivia de Havilland, The Heiress*
Jodie Foster, The Silence of the Lambs*
Katharine Hepburn, The Lion in Winter
Holly Hunter, The Piano
Frances McDormand, Fargo
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Meryl Streep, Sophie's Choice*
Hilary Swank, Boys Don't Cry*

Best Supporting Actor
Mahershala Ali, Moonlight*
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Joel Grey, Cabaret
Timothy Hutton, Ordinary People*
Ben Johnson, The Last Picture Show
Kevin Kline, A Fish Called Wanda
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight*
Haing S. Ngor, The Killing Fields
George Sanders, All About Eve*
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds*

Best Supporting Actress
Judi Dench, Shakespeare in Love
Patty Duke, The Miracle Worker
Cloris Leachman, The Last Picture Show*
Mo'Nique, Precious*
Rita Moreno, West Side Story
Eva Marie Saint, On the Waterfront
Beatrice Straight, Network*
Meryl Streep, Kramer vs. Kramer
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton*
Marisa Tomei, My Cousin Vinny*

These are what I'm feeling today. I reserve the right to change any of these at any time because I left out amazing work by some people; the choices were tough, but they had to be made!

[NGL]

It looks like Gravity, with seven, will be the film to win the most Oscars this decade. This will be the first full decade in Academy history whore no film has won more than seven awards. Although, this does count a special-non-competitive award given to Harold Russell for The Best Years Of Our Lives in 1946.

[Culturegeek]

(01-22-2020 10:01 AM)NGL Wrote:  It looks like Gravity, with seven, will be the film to win the most Oscars this decade. This will be the first full decade in Academy history whore no film has won more than seven awards. Although, this does count a special-non-competitive award given to Harold Russell for The Best Years Of Our Lives in 1946.

That's a mean thing to say about Gravity!

[NGL]

It was a typo, not an attempt to label Gravity the ultimate Oscar bait.

[NUguy514]

(01-23-2020 06:44 AM)NGL Wrote:  It was a typo, not an attempt to label Gravity the ultimate Oscar bait.

Obviously, that's why Cg was joking with you.

[NGL]

Just to finally clear things up, my response to Cg was also a joke.

[Culturegeek]

That said, if Meryl Streep wanted to star in a sequel to The French Lieutenant's Woman and call it "Space Whore," I'm down for that.

[corbs]

The 2010's was the first decade for Jack Nicholson to not be nominated for an Oscar since the 60's. Would have made him the only person ever nominated for acting Oscars in 6 decades in a row.

Not sure if I missed that earlier I just thought it was interesting.

[eurocheese]

They should've hurried up with that Toni Erdmann adaptation. He's no longer listed as attached, which is crazy. He'd be a perfect fit for it, and Wiig/Cholodenko might get nods as well.

[malcolm1980]

Parasite made history as the first non-English language film to win Best Picture. It was only, I believe, just the 10th non-English language film to make the Best Picture list. I think had the expanded Best Picture been around in the past decades, there could be more. I thought it would be fun to speculate which non-English films of the years with five nominees would've made the list based on the nominations they received beyond Best Foreign Language Film/International Feature. I think these are most likely:

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (Director, Screenplay, Editing, Cinematography)*
Pan's Labyrinth (Screenplay, plus Cinematography, Makeup and Production Design wins)+
City of God (Director, Screenplay, Editing, Cinematography)*
Talk to Her (Director plus Screenplay win)*
Amelie (Screenplay, Cinematography, Production Design, Sound Mixing (!!!))+
Three Colors: Red (Director, Screenplay, Cinematography)*
Cyrano de Bergerac (Actor, Production Design plus a Costumes win)+
My Life As A Dog (Director and Screenplay)*
Fanny & Alexander (Director, Screenplay, plus wins for Production Design, Cinematography and Costumes)
Ran (Director, Production Design and Cinematography plus a win for Costumes)*
Face to Face (Director and Actress)*
Day For Night (Director, Screenplay, Supporting Actress)**
A Man and a Woman (Director, Actress plus a Screenplay win)
The Battle of Algiers (Director, Screenplay) **
Divorce: Italian Style (Director, Actor plus a Screenplay win)*
8½ (Director, Screenplay, Production Design plus a win for Costumes)

+ = lost International Feature
* = not nominated for International Feature for whatever reason.
**= won/nominated for International Feature in a different year due to a weird rule.

Did I miss anything?