In Contention

Tag: Ordinary People

  • LIFE WITHOUT OSCAR: 1979 and 1980

    Catch up with the idea behind this series here.

    After I saw “Apocalypse Now,” I thought to myself that it was a much, much better movie than “Kramer vs. Kramer.” A quick glance at the internets revealed that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had already determined that “Kramer vs. Kramer” was in fact, the better film. How could I be so wrong? Oh well, can’t argue with those arts and sciences people.

    That same bunch nominated Edouard Molinaro as Best Director, for a foreign film about a gay couple no less. Who says the Academy isn’t progressive? They also awarded Meryl Streep her first Oscar on her second attempt, clearly worried that there may never be another chance to honor her.

    Family drama continued to dominate as the 1980’s rolled around when “Ordinary People” scooped the top prizes for Robert Redford. Poor old Marty Scorsese sentiment began right around then, but it should be noted that it was kind of his fault that the ceremony was delayed a day, after “Taxi Driver” obsessed John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan for Jodie Foster. Take it away, Johnny Carson!

    Miss Piggy: Jonathan, you saw “The Muppet Movie.” Can you stand there, in your rented tuxedo, and tell me that I am not Oscar material?
    Johnny Carson: Oscar Mayer maybe.

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  • Remembering ‘Raging Bull’

    Robert De Niro in Raging BullThe first time I saw “Raging Bull” was in 1980, the second day the film was in theater after release. I was an acting student at the time, heading to the theater with my friend Kevin McDonald, who went on to fame as one of the “Kids in the Hall” stars and film roles in “Galaxy Quest,” denim guy on “Seinfeld” and loads of voice work.

    Like me, Kevin was a film junkie, and we both had been looking forward to the new Scorsese film. Our paths went very different ways, but I know for a fact he recalls this evening with much fondness as what we saw changed our lives forever.  Two and a half hours later we left the theater exhausted, drained and stunned by the event.  We talked incessantly about the film on the subway as we headed back home and convinced our classmates to see it with us the next night, if I recall correctly.

    There was little doubt Robert De Niro would win not only the Academy Award for Best Actor but every other acting award n the planet as well, but I remember being shocked when Scorsese himself did not follow suit. When the Oscar nominations were announced, Scorsese and his film were up for eight, but the writing was on the wall: Robert Redford‘s “Ordinary People” was going to win the lion’s share, no doubt about it.

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  • The angel says…

    Here is a movie from a director who had gotten typed into being a success only in x-treme cinema, set in another country, often in another language, with three sets of young, inexperienced actors playing the same kids from single-digits to 20-ish, delving into the internationalism of both human aspiration and the medium of television (which might as well be movies), unafraid to deliver some of the harshest moments in mainstream cinema this year, yet emotionally kind and compelling to its core… all of this, made for a studio Dependent that has been put out of business, sold off, in part, by the parent studio to another studio’s Dependent that passed on its first opportunity to make it, sold brilliantly, surrounded by talent that is both charming and unusually generous and kind of spirit, and now in line to win The Oscar and all that comes with that honor.

    From David Poland’s recent “20 Weeks to Oscar” column at Movie City News.  Of course, he later chalks “Ordinary People” up as superior to a modern masterwork like “Revolutionary Road,” but you take what you can get (while wondering why the comparison was made int he first place).

  • The 80s yielded one great Best Pic winner: ‘Platoon’

    Ten awards for Best Picture were handed out throughout the 1980s, one of the worst decades for film in history, and I’d wager that only “Platoon,” the Oscar winning giant of 1986, can lay claim to being a great film.

    Oh, that is not to say there were not great films made in the 80s; there were indeed, but nobody went to see them, despite rave reviews. Many of the decade’s very best films were released and abandoned, to be re-discovered on video, at that time a very new addition to the film industry.

    “Raging Bull” ended up being the finest film of the decade, hell one of the five greatest films of all time, yet Oscar did not see it that way. Somehow, Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece lost the Oscar for Best Picture and the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Film to Robert Redford and “Ordinary People” — a well crafted film, but hardly the raw and angry work of the former.

    That same year would see the releases of “The Empire Strikes Back” — a superior film to the first “Star Wars” installment, yet snubbed for a nomination for Best Picture — and Richard Rush’s “The Stunt Man,” which might have been a strong choice for a nomination as well.

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