1991 Alternate Oscars

Anthony Hopkins's performance in The Silence of the Lambs is iconic, deservedly so, one of the greatest villains in movie history. In fact, his Hannibal Lecter is so memorable, you forget how little time he's actually on the screen — 16 minutes, one of the shortest Oscar-winning outings in history. Thus, I've dropped him into the supporting category where I think he belongs ...

My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.

Alternate Oscars: Best Actor and Supporting Actor of 1991 (Re-Do)

Anthony Hopkins's performance in The Silence of the Lambs is iconic, deservedly so, one of the greatest villains in movie history. In fact, his Hannibal Lecter is so memorable, you forget how little time he's actually on the screen. Thus, I've dropped him into the supporting category where I think he belongs.

Which leaves a bit of a mess in the lead category. I've nominated the five guys who ran closest to Hopkins in the various alternate Oscar lists I follow. Of them, I opted for Kevin Costner in JFK as my winner, as much a career win as for the individual performance, although I still think he's better than his competition.

By the way, do I buy into the conspiracy theories touted in JFK? Not for a second. I think in 1963 we couldn't wrap our heads around the notion that a pissant like Lee Harvey Oswald could kill the most powerful man in the world, the beloved John F. Kennedy, and came up with all sorts of elaborate explanations for such a heinous crime. But if there's anything that we've learned over the six decades since, it's that one man with a gun can murder multitudes. In retrospect, the only surprise is that Oswald didn't take out half the street.

Nevertheless, I enjoy a paranoid thriller about JFK's assassination — e.g., James Ellroy's The Cold Six Thousand, Stephen King's 11/22/63 — as much as the next guy, and Costner is at the heart of this one. That the film falls flat during its earnest third act isn't his fault.

But as always, you decide.

My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.

1991 Alternate Oscars

My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔.

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1991)

Do you ever wonder about our obsession, in cinema and in literature, with serial killers? I guess it started with Jack the Ripper—the notion that someone could murder six women in such horrific fashion in the heart of the largest city in the world and get away with it understandably scared the pants off people—but I think more than that, he reminded us and subsequent serial killers continue to remind us, however obliquely, that there are forces in the universe outside our control, and outside our ability to comprehend. That, and our own day of reckoning is an inevitable as the rising of the sun.

The problem is, though, with each fictional serial killer, we have to up the ante to get a reaction from the audience. Hannibal Lecter was stylishly sinister, but pretty straight-forward by today's standards. What, he'll only bite your face off? How droll. I pretty much topped out on my limit of baroque butchery some time ago and have since retreated to the relatively bloodless mysteries of the old masters. Philip Marlowe may get thumped from time to time, and Archie Goodwin takes more than his share of guff from Nero Wolfe, but at least I never have to choose between my murders and my lunch.

By the way, Anthony Hopkins wins a Katie Award for his performance in The Silence of the Lambs, just as he won an Oscar, but here as a supporting actor rather than the lead. You may not realize it because he was so memorable in the part, but Hopkins was only on screen for sixteen minutes—by far, the shortest performance to win an Oscar in a lead acting category in history.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Silence of the Lambs (prod. Ronald M. Bozman, Edward Saxon and Kenneth Utt)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Beauty and the Beast (prod. Don Hahn)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Da hong deng long gao gao gua (Raise The Red Lantern) (prod. Fu-Sheng Chiu)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Kevin Costner (JFK)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Danny DeVito (Other People's Money)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis (Thelma & Louise)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Bette Midler (For the Boys)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Zhang Yimou (Da hong deng long gao gao gua a.k.a. Raise The Red Lantern)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Alan Parker (The Commitments)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Jessica Tandy (Fried Green Tomatoes)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Zhen Ni, from the novel Wives and Concubines by Su Tong (Da hong deng long gao gao gua a.k.a. Raise The Red Lantern)