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The English Patient has a lot of fans—after all, it was a popular winner when the Academy gave it the Oscar for best picture—but like Elaine on Seinfeld, I do not count myself among them.
"How could you not love that movie?"
"How about, it sucked?"
As somebody observed at the time, The English Patient is Casablanca turned on its head, with the problems of the world not amounting to a hill of beans to three crazy, mixed-up people. It's okay with me if you love it, but if you're looking for it to win an alternate Oscar, you'll have to read a different blog.
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Lone Star (prod. R. Paul Miller and Maggie Renzi)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Fargo (prod. Ethan Coen)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Ridicule (prod. Frédéric Brillion , Philippe Carcassonne and Gilles Legrand)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Ewan McGregor (Trainspotting)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Emily Watson (Breaking The Waves)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Frances McDormand (Fargo)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: John Sayles (Lone Star)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Joel Coen (Fargo)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Steve Buscemi (Fargo)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Secrets & Lies)
SCREENPLAY
winner: John Sayles (Lone Star)
I got this announcement from my pal Isabel the other day and thought I'd pass it along to you:
We are thrilled to announce that THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, Broadway's longest-running show, is celebrating its 25th Anniversary this January! Since PHANTOM has such incredible Phans, we are running an online 25th Anniversary PHAN Loyalty Sweepstakes to show our appreciation.
100 lucky winners will receive a pair of tickets to the Anniversary performance, and two grand prize winners, in addition to the performance, will also receive additional passes to the exclusive post-performance party, as well as a one-night stay at the Algonquin Hotel (Exclusive official Hotel Sweepstakes Partner) and air transportation from American Airlines (Exclusive Official Airline Sweepstakes Partner) for two during the weekend of the event.
The cast of PHANTOM recorded a video with a special message on how to enter for a chance to win:
PHANS can enter directly through or Facebook page Sweepstakes tab or through this link (here).
Assuming we didn't all perish this morning in a Mayan apocalypse (I wrote this yesterday, so somebody let me know how it turned out), it sounds like a pretty sweet deal for one lucky winner.
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)
Another great year for movies. A lot of people would go with Pulp Fiction as the best picture of the year, and I would have agreed at the time—saw it four times in the theater. I now rank it number two behind another movie I saw in the theater that year (along with about nine other people), a popular little ditty called The Shawshank Redemption.
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Shawshank Redemption (prod. Niki Marvin)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Pulp Fiction (prod. Lawrence Bender)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Trois couleurs: Rouge (Three Colors: Red) (prod. Marin Karmitz)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Morgan Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Johnny Depp (Ed Wood)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Jennifer Jason Leigh (Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Toni Collette (Muriel's Wedding)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Krzysztof Kieslowski (Trois couleurs a.k.a. The Three Colors Trilogy)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Martin Landau (Ed Wood)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Natalie Portman (Léon: The Professional)
SCREENPLAY
winner: Roger Avary and Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction)
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)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Juliette Binoche (Trois couleurs: Bleu a.k.a. Three Colors: Blue)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Angela Bassett (What's Love Got To Do With It?)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Steven Spielberg (Jurassic Park and Schindler's List)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Ralph Fiennes (Schindler's List)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Winona Ryder (The Age of Innocence)
SCREENPLAY
winner: Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis, from a story by Danny Rubin (Groundhog Day)
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