My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔.
As I look at my list of movies from 1979, I find it interesting just how many of them — Apocalypse Now, Manhattan, North Dallas Forty, All That Jazz, even the robot in Alien — were about the destructive nature of what we now call toxic masculinity. So, of course, the Academy (always with a finger on the pulse of its own product) gave all the Oscars to the movie about toxic feminism, Kramer vs. Kramer. Pee-yew!
Okay, I exaggerate. But Kramer vs. Kramer is, at its heart, comfort food for men in need of reassurance when what they desperately needed was a cold, hard slap in the face.
For years, I had Woody Allen's Manhattan down as the best picture of the year (I first saw it forty years ago, the summer I turned eighteen), but in revisiting it recently, I saw not the wistful romance I remembered but the uncomfortable story of a sweet seventeen year old girl (Mariel Hemingway) who finds herself in the clutches of a creepy, balding homunculus twenty-five years her senior (Woody Allen). Woody works overtime to remake the girl in his own crabbed, misanthropic image, but — good for her! — she wriggles free of his grasp at the last minute. The cinematography (Gordon Willis) is gorgeous, the Gershwin music sublime, and maybe I'm just cranky because both Mariel Hemingway and I are now old enough to be the girl's grandparents, but I don't find this stuff amusing anymore.
Ahhhhhhh! How can you me choose between Jerry Goldsmith, Time After Time (fantastic movie), and Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, which makes for one of the best endings of a movie, ever. The pain!
I thought that we had re-established equilibrium [wherein I know and appreciate nearly all the reasons that you voted a particular way, but I went another],as our votes synced . . . not at all. But you and I both saw Mariel Hemingway's performance as worth the vote.
She's always struck me as wooden and ill-fitted to her characters, and I've heard line readings that made me cringe (with accompanying uncontrollable retching noises). But my last viewing opened my eyes to some "choices" and some moments of honesty that made me reassess her work in Manhattan.
I might have considered Sellers (being blank is not at all easy, I think), but once I saw the outtakes, I couldn't ever see him again as Chauncey Gardner, but only as Peter Sellers portraying Chauncey.
We, too, signed up for the Criterion Channel -- if nothing else, it might give me some options while in the hospital. Two weeks is a long time to be lying in bed.
As for Mariel Hemingway, I knew I would be swimming against the Meryl Streep tide but sometimes you just gotta take a stand.
By the way, I'm assuming you voted for Breaking Away every opportunity you had. It's a fine picture, but surprisingly seems to have slipped from the national consciousness over the last forty years.
(2) I am indeed fond of Breaking Away. Unlike nearly every similar movie to follow, it depicted its "townies" and its "debutantes/frat boys" honestly. The boys/men at university aren't the blond assholes of Karate Kid/Revenge of the Nerds/ etc., but instead are just . . . young men. They dislike the people they don't know, puff their chests out, and act like 18-yr.-old dummies. The "townies" are conflicted, real people full of fear and/or resentment and/or ambition (in varying amounts). Th father, played perfectly by Dooley (and relied on for many, if not most, of the laughs) may be the most real father I've ever seen in a movie. My old man was comic relief, and smart, and sentimental, and unsentimental, and derisive, and supportive. And the Italian racing team are fuckers.
(3) I'm not a religious man, but if the notions of heaven and hell hold true, in 100 years Streep and Olivier will be entertaining untold masses, and the rest of us will be in heaven. . . .
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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6 comments:
Ahhhhhhh! How can you me choose between Jerry Goldsmith, Time After Time (fantastic movie), and Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, which makes for one of the best endings of a movie, ever. The pain!
Lol!
Happy April! Hope things are going well.
Lot of good choices in 1979! Time after Time is one of my faves -- saw it in the theater back in the day and have seen it several times since.
Life here is good, hanging in there. Hope you're doing well!
I thought that we had re-established equilibrium [wherein I know and appreciate nearly all the reasons that you voted a particular way, but I went another],as our votes synced . . . not at all. But you and I both saw Mariel Hemingway's performance as worth the vote.
She's always struck me as wooden and ill-fitted to her characters, and I've heard line readings that made me cringe (with accompanying uncontrollable retching noises). But my last viewing opened my eyes to some "choices" and some moments of honesty that made me reassess her work in Manhattan.
I might have considered Sellers (being blank is not at all easy, I think), but once I saw the outtakes, I couldn't ever see him again as Chauncey Gardner, but only as Peter Sellers portraying Chauncey.
OH BOY The Criterion Channel is live today.
Le Samourai awaits. . . !
We, too, signed up for the Criterion Channel -- if nothing else, it might give me some options while in the hospital. Two weeks is a long time to be lying in bed.
As for Mariel Hemingway, I knew I would be swimming against the Meryl Streep tide but sometimes you just gotta take a stand.
By the way, I'm assuming you voted for Breaking Away every opportunity you had. It's a fine picture, but surprisingly seems to have slipped from the national consciousness over the last forty years.
(1) I spent 1992 to 1994 lying in bed;
(2) I am indeed fond of Breaking Away. Unlike nearly every similar movie to follow, it depicted its "townies" and its "debutantes/frat boys" honestly. The boys/men at university aren't the blond assholes of Karate Kid/Revenge of the Nerds/ etc., but instead are just . . . young men. They dislike the people they don't know, puff their chests out, and act like 18-yr.-old dummies. The "townies" are conflicted, real people full of fear and/or resentment and/or ambition (in varying amounts). Th father, played perfectly by Dooley (and relied on for many, if not most, of the laughs) may be the most real father I've ever seen in a movie. My old man was comic relief, and smart, and sentimental, and unsentimental, and derisive, and supportive. And the Italian racing team are fuckers.
(3) I'm not a religious man, but if the notions of heaven and hell hold true, in 100 years Streep and Olivier will be entertaining untold masses, and the rest of us will be in heaven. . . .
I love, 'Breaking Away.' Feels like home to me.
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