A great year for actors, a lousy one for actresses, at least in the lead categories.
I don't know about you, but for me, the best actor trophy comes down to Jack Nicholson or George C. Scott. Here's a refresher course, in case you've forgotten:
I go back and forth. Who you got?
By the way, I did not nominate Don Rickles for best supporting actor this time around. That's the sort of thing you do when you're battling cancer and you need a lift before your next round of chemo and radiation. That was then, this is now. Although the late, great Don Rickles was my favorite stand-up comedian — my pals Bellotoot, Mister Muleboy and I saw him something like twelve times, and he once devoted a solid ten minutes in the middle of one of those shows to insulting me personally (carve that on my tombstone) — and though he brings me joy whenever I see him on the screen, especially in Kelly's Heroes, he was not really an Oscar-caliber actor. Sorry, Mr. Rickles.
Anyway, have at it.
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 ✱.
If you like cowboys — whether of the midnight or home-on-the-range variety — 1969 is the year for you ...
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 ✱.
Edith Evans' performance in The Whisperers may be good, bad or indifferent, but the notion that she could legitimately wind up with more votes than any other actress in this entire project strikes me as too fanciful to seriously contemplate. And while I'm back in 1967, I thought I would re-do all of the acting categories.
For the curious, Bonnie and Clyde, in a splintered vote, won the poll for best picture of 1967, but just like in real life, Mike Nichols won for directing The Graduate. (Click here to see the results.)
Oh, and check out Alexander's Blog by the Monkey's latest follower, who writes a blog about movies ...
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 ✱.
I got more complaints about my polls for 1963 than about any other year, so I rethought it from the ground up. This time I went with purely consensus nominees — looking up every alternate Oscar site I could find, noting everyone's choices, and with mathematical precision, coming up with 1963's nominees.
I really wanted to accommodate the Bergman fans and the Mifune fans and all of you who didn't think Tom Jones was two hours you'd never get back, but hey, I didn't invent math. If you don't like the results, blame the Mesopotamians!
By the way, my good friend Mister Muleboy and I were lucky enough to see Federico Fellini's masterpiece, 8½, in the big theater at the AFI-Silver the other day — a new 4K restoration. I'd seen it before, more than once, but never on the big screen, and Muleboy had never seen it at all.
What a great movie, about a famous director (played by Marcello Mastroianni) who can't get his latest film off the ground. The past, present and fantasies of the future play out in his mind in a visual tour de force as his wife, mistress, producer, priest and the press all push him to make a decision, any decision, before everything comes crashing down. It's funny and sad at the same time, and has been often imitated, but never equaled.
And then I stopped off at the library and picked up La Dolce Vita, Fellini's 1961 film, also starring Marcello Mastroianni, about seven wild nights in the seven hills of Rome. If you've never seen a Fellini movie, might I suggest you watch both films as a double feature, first La Dolce Vita, then 8½. Seen back-to-back, the films are the story of a man's journey from ambition to decadence to disillusionment and finally to a sort of hard-won wisdom.
It's also peak Fellini. Great stuff.
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 ★. 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 favorite movie of 1960 is The Apartment, closely followed by The Magnificent Seven, but after much to-ing and fro-ing, I finally decided Psycho was the best picture of the year because if you make a stabbing motion with your hand and go "ekk-ekk-ekk" nearly any movie fan will know what you're talking about. There's no other movie from 1960 with that kind of impact on the culture.
But I went with Jean-Luc Goddard for best director because Breathless had the biggest impact on the movies. Basically, every time you see a movie or television show shot with a hand-held camera, you're looking at Breathless ...
Note: I originally had La Dolce Vita down as a 1960 movie — which made sense since I have been nominating foreign movies (including British movies) in the year they were released in their home country while nominating Hollywood movies in the year they were Oscar eligible.
But then I wound up nominating Sophia Loren for best actress in 1961 even though the movie Two Women was released in its home country in 1960 — she won the Oscar for best actress in 1961, the first time an actor or actress won a competitive Oscar and that seemed like reason enough to make an exception.
So I've decided the same rule should apply for La Dolce Vita, which was a big hit in Europe in 1960 but which won an Oscar for best costume design and received three other nominations, including best director, in 1961. It's a great movie that might otherwise go to waste in 1960, so to 1961 it goes.
As I've said before, the real point of this exercise is to create a God's-eye view of the history of movies — what was going on at a particular moment, who was influencing what — rather than an Academy-eye view of what the marketplace deemed worthy of releasing in Los Angeles in a given year. Which is tough to pull off because I'm not God.
Anyway, I'm making an exception in this case if for no other reason than to prove that I can.
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 ✱.
I don't mind All About Eve winning your vote for best picture — it's my second favorite movie of 1950 and one of the best of the decade — but when it goes from thirty votes behind to twenty ahead in a single afternoon, something's up. Thus, the revote.
And while we're here, I'm taking the opportunity to re-think my nominees for best director.
Vote your conscience but remember to mind the proprieties at all times. No patty-fingers, if you please.
Note: 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 ✱.
This is a simple re-vote. There were some clear-cut shenanigans the first time around so I shut down the ballot early ...
Tough choice for you. All five actresses, in my opinion, turned in the best performances of their career. If it means anything to you, Joan Crawford already has an alternate Oscar in the bank with her turn in 1932's Grand Hotel. But don't let that influence you if, like me, you're a fan of Mildred Pierce.
Have at it.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔.
Okay, let's start with an easy one — the best actor of 1944.
Note: I'm nominating American movies by the date of their Oscar eligibility (so To Have and Have Not will show up in 1945 not 1944), but foreign-made movies, including British movies, by the date of release in their home country. Foreign films, even British ones, tend to show up here late, sometimes years late, so that from the perspective of using these alternate awards to reveal movie history, nominating a foreign film in terms of its Oscar eligibility is somewhat counterproductive to my purposes.
For example, Olivier's Henry V showed up in the United States in 1946 and received four Oscar nominations, very nice, but the movie actually premiered in London in 1944 while the war still raged in Europe. Henry's famous St. Crispian's Day speech — "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; / For he to-day that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother" — must have made for one hell of a morale booster. So, I've nominated Olivier here.
(By the way, I think it's a great performance, which is saying something. Between me and thee, I'm not a fan of Olivier's generally. But Henry V is a great movie.)
As always, my choices are noted with a ★ (or in this case with a ✪ where there is a tie — sue me). Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔.
For years this blog was all about alternate Oscars. And then for the last two-plus years, it's been about nothing at all.
I blame cancer.
To clarify, I beat cancer. It was a knockdown, drag-out fifteen rounder, but twenty-six months after a surgery to end all surgeries, I'm standing over the prostrate body of esophageal adenocarcinoma.
But that's not to say that the battle didn't take its toll. Chemo, radiation, 13 hours of surgery and months of recovery. More surgery during the peak of the pandemic. Frequent bouts of nausea that continue to this day. Plus two years of insomnia, keyed by violent nightmares.
My brains are tired.
I used to write every day, if not on this blog, then on the great American novel, or for Sharpologist and even for Flicker Alley! But not for two years now. I got the nightmares under control with my own version of exposure therapy (binge-watching all 15 seasons of E.R.) — now it's time to wrestle the rest of my brain into line!
As you may recall, from April 2018 to November 2019, I posted weekly polls offering my alternate nominations for the big six Oscar categories (picture, actor, actress, director, supporting actor, supporting actress), plus various special awards.
Overall, I'm pleased with the results. Well, mostly.
What you don't know is that I received my cancer diagnosis right in the middle of that project — November 8, 2018, to be exact, or more precisely, right between 1957 and 1958 as the alternate Oscar flies. I went from very methodically working my way through a given year over the course of a week to advance posting about ten years in a single week, trying to squeeze it all in between various treatments.
As a result, I got more than a little sloppy at times. My choices for 1963 and 1995 were especially poor, leaving out some true classics.
On top of that, there was some occasional hanky-panky at the voting booth, with clear-cut cases of ballot stuffing that left me with some truly idiosyncratic results.
So, this is what I propose. Starting this week, I'm going to launch a handful of re-do's, where I give you a new set of nominees, as well as some re-votes (using a different free voting service), and then I'm going to start posting the results of all the voting, revealing my choice, your choice and the Academy's choice.
At this point, I suspect there are maybe three people who ever check in here — even Katie-Bar-The-Door doesn't drop in anymore — so the vote totals on the re-do's and re-votes might be a bit sparse. But I'm nothing if not a completionist, and besides, the real point of the exercise is to force myself back into the habit of writing. Part of me has really missed writing. Just not the part of me that does anything about it.
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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