We've talked about this before — my alternate Oscar picks are not exactly the same thing as my favorite movies. More of a case of me trying to narrow the field to something like a general consensus, and then counting on the crowdsourced wisdom of my movie-loving readers to pick the winners.
From time to time I'll squeeze in a personal favorite I feel has been overlooked but I rarely foist my idiosyncrasies on the world through my blog — I reserve that for face-to-face interactions with my friends and family. Poor bastards.
Never has the gap between the consensus and my personal favorites been greater than in 1995. Don't know why. I like to think I know an entertaining, well-made movie when I see one, but for some reason, many of my favorites from '95 missed with audiences, critics or both.
And vice versa.
Anyway, I posted a picture at the top of my favorites. The consensus picks (based on pure math) are below. Of them, I chose Toy Story as best picture because it was the first Pixar feature and a real groundbreaker. But I also like Apollo 13, Babe and Before Sunrise, and maybe you're a fan of one of the others. As always, the choice is yours.
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 ✱.
Lots of complaints about my picks for 1995 so I started from scratch and went with a purely consensus set of nominees. A pretty grim list. My fellow Oscar nuts don't have much of a sense of humor is all I can say.
If I didn't nominate your favorite movie or performer, don't blame me.
In case you were wondering, my personal favorites are, in alphabetical order, Apollo 13, Babe, Before Sunrise, Clueless, Congo, Devil in a Blue Dress, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Get Shorty, A Little Princess, Persuasion, The Quick and the Dead, Richard III and Toy Story. A baker's dozen. All top ten lists should be a baker's dozen.
The worst movie of the year, for those playing at home, was Demi Moore's version of The Scarlet Letter, with Showgirls giving it a real run for its money. I'd say one day we should hand out Alternate Razzie Awards for history's worst movies and performances, but life is too short to self-inflict one's own misery.
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 ✱.
1995 was the year of Jane Austen—four major adaptations in one calendar year: the 6-hour television miniseries Pride and Prejudice that made future Oscar-winner Colin Firth a star; Sense and Sensibility, which netted Emma Thompson her second Oscar, this time for best screenplay; Clueless, a hilarious modern updating of Emma starring Alicia Silverstone; and my favorite of the bunch, Persuasion, starring Amanda Root, whom you don't know, and Ciarán Hinds, whom you may, thanks to Munich, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and TV's Political Animals.
If you've ever clicked on my complete profile to the right of this post, you know I'm a big fan of Jane Austen's books. Pride and Prejudice is the most famous and most modern in its approach to storytelling, but I prefer the lesser-known Persuasion. Published posthumously, it's the most serious of Austen's books, with the central conflict that keeps two would-be lovers apart arising not from a simple misunderstanding—the sort of problem that could be cleared up with a forthright conversation or two—but from the British class system itself. Ultimately Austen rejects aristocracy in favor of meritocracy (embodied in the novel by the British navy), a pretty straightforward idea in the 21st century, but radical in the extreme two hundred years ago.
Granted, Captain Wentworth doesn't cut a dashing figure like Mr. Darcy, but then neither is he an upper class twit, which stripped of his looks and money, is all Mr. Darcy really amounts to. I think Austen came to realize that shortly before her death.
As an aside, I remember explaining Jane Austen's novels to my law school pals in terms they would appreciate—i.e., so obscene I can't possibly share the details with you—but let's just say it had something to do with how receptive each of her novels' heroines would be to guys with nicknames like "Dog" and "Thunder Tool." There was a big run on Pride and Prejudice after that, I think. Mansfield Park? Not so much.
PICTURE (Drama) winner:Before Sunrise (prod. Anne Walker-McBay)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical) winner:Toy Story (prod. Bonnie Arnold and Ralph Guggenheim)
PICTURE (Foreign Language) winner:Badkonake sefid (The White Balloon) (prod. Kurosh Mazkouri)
ACTOR (Drama) winner: Sean Penn (Dead Man Walking)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: John Travolta (Get Shorty)
ACTRESS (Drama) winner: Sharon Stone (Casino)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical) winner: Nicole Kidman (To Die For)
DIRECTOR (Drama) winner: Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: John Lasseter (Toy Story)
SUPPORTING ACTOR winner: Don Cheadle (Devil in a Blue Dress)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS winner: Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite)
SCREENPLAY winner: Nick Dear, from the novel by Jane Austen (Persuasion)
"That's Typing" Tuesday, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.
From my notes on the 1995 submarine thriller, Crimson Tide:
There's a telling moment early in Crimson Tide—Gene Hackman as the submarine skipper is standing on the conning tower with the last minute replacement for his executive officer (Denzel Washington). As they sail out of port, they smoke cigars and watch the sunset, a long moment of silence.
At last Hackman says, "Bravo, Hunter."
"Sir?"
"You knew to shut up and enjoy the view. Most eggheads want to talk it away. Your stock just went up a couple of points."
Which is true enough—as the man said, "Be here now." Yet, ironically, it's Hackman who is talking away the moment, and therein lies the scene's subtlety. He's no "egghead," but he is a bully, and he can't stand the notion that anyone could experience anything differently than he would. So he attempts to browbeat Washington even in this, a cigar and a sunset. Establish the pecking order right off the bat. He might just as well challenge his first officer to a pissing contest right there on the conning tower of the sub.
Washington neither backs down nor responds to the bait. He's inside himself where his sense of who he is resides. Just where it should be.
In fact, watching the movie again I was struck by just how much Hackman does talk. The man simply cannot shut up—about anything. Which makes him not only a bully, but an insecure bully at that, a dangerous enough phenomenon even when he isn't packing nuclear heat ...
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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