Steven Spielberg won the Oscar for directing Schindler's List in 1993. No great surprise — it's a terrific movie, one of the best of all time.
The shocker is that even though by that time he'd already directed Duel, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun and Jurassic Park (also in 1993), the Oscar for Schindler's List was Spielberg's first.
What did the Academy think he'd been doing for twenty years? Peeling potatoes?
Spielberg's Oscar reminds me of Christopher Nolan's for Oppenheimer — well deserved but also a bit condescending. Hollywood is loathe to give Oscars to talented directors who rake in boatloads of money making entertaining movies (see, e.g., Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Quentin Tarantino and Greta Gerwig), at least not until they make one so serious and respectable, the voters just have to say, Ah, good boy, finally made something worthwhile!
Well, screw you, pal. As Randy Newman said when he finally won an Oscar after 16 nominations, "I don't need your pity!"
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 ✱.
Another actress poll I shut down early — "shenanigans."
By the way, before I forget (as I often do), these were 1993's alternate winners in the categories I am not revisiting:
Picture: Schindler's List
Actor: Bill Murray (Groundhog Day)
Director: Steven Spielberg (Schindler's List and Jurassic Park)
Supporting Actor: Ralph Fiennes (Schindler's List)
Supporting Actress: Gong Li (Farewell My Concubine)
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 ✱.
My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔.
Steven Spielberg had a pretty good year.
On the other hand, the appeal of the highly-acclaimed British imports The Remains of the Day and In the Name of the Father completely eludes me. But you like them so I nominated them.
Bill Wyman over at the New Yorker website reminds me that this month is the twentieth anniversary of Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville, which can only mean that I have gotten old.
Except in terms of their uniform excellence, Jurassic Park and Schindler's List are about as different from each other as any two movies can be. That they were both directed by the same man in the same calendar year—indeed Spielberg was editing the former in the evenings while directing the latter during the day—is extraordinary. Very few directors exhibit that sort of range over the course of a career, much less at the same time.
PICTURE (Drama) winner:Schindler's List (prod. Steven Spielberg, Branko Lustig and Gerald R. Molen)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical) winner:Groundhog Day (prod. Harold Ramis and Trevor Albert)
PICTURE (Foreign Language) winner:Ba wang bie ji (Farewell My Concubine) (prod. Feng Hsu)
ACTOR (Drama) winner: Liam Neeson (Schindler's List)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: Bill Murray (Groundhog Day)
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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