The 2000 Retro Hollmann Awards Winners

Very late, but here they are! You thrilled at the Top Ten, pored over the nominations, and now - the winners of the 2000 Retro Hollmann Awards:

The 2000 Retro Hollmann Awards Nominations

After 122 movies and several months, here are the nominees for the 2000 Retro Hollmann Awards:

My Top Ten of 2000

Not to be too contrarian, but only two movies in my Top Ten were nominated at the Academy Awards, none of them for Best Picture, two nods and zero wins between them. Not to play favorites, but four of my Top Ten are not just films I'd seen before, but films I'd seen many times before. As for my almost-made-its, here they are, linking to my original reviews: Almost Famous, American Psycho, Billy Elliot, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich, Mission to Mars, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Red Planet, Snatch, Vatel, The Virgin Suicides, and What Women Want.

And now, the Top Ten...in alphabetical order:

Up for Grabs?: Best Picture, 2000

When Awards Season began, everyone said the race was wide open. The Los Angeles Film Critics chose Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as Best Film, the New York Film Critics Circle chose Traffic as Best Film, the National Board of Review named Quills the Best Film of 2000, and the Golden Globes gave Almost Famous its award for Best Picture - Musical/Comedy. As always, the race narrowed as the year continued. Gladiator won the BAFTA for Best Film, the Golden Globe for Best Picture - Drama, and the PGA Award for Outstanding Producers of Theatrical Motion Pictures.

The final group of nominees came down to: Chocolat, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich, Gladiator, and Traffic. And the film that kept winning, did so again:

As I fully reviewed all the other films of the year in order of their release, I shall do the same here, before ranking them:

A Double Dose of Soderbergh: Best Director, 2000

Only thrice has one person taken two slots for Best Director. Clarence Brown did it at the 3rd Academy Awards, Michael Curtiz did it at the 11th Academy Awards, and Steven Soderbergh did it at the 73rd Academy Awards.

One of the big stories of the season was Soderbergh's double whammy of Erin Brockovich, proving to be more than "just" a Julia Roberts vehicle, and Traffic, the all-star drug trade epic proving to be just as entertaining as it was Important. But despite being the critics' pick, it was believed he would split his own vote and go home empty-handed. Besides, there were two other more likely would-be winners. One was Ridley Scott, who helmed the movie that, after all, many believed would win, Gladiator. The other was Ang Lee, Taiwanese director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, who was winning the battle against foreign language bias: the Golden Globes, the British Academy, and even the Directors Guild of America named him the Best of the Year. He had the momentum, the industry vote. Rounding out the five was Billy Elliot's Stephen Daldry, this year's representative of Audience-Friendly British Entertainment.

In the end was the beginning. That is to say, the critics awards got it right:

Had I a ballot, here's how I would rank them:

The Sure Thing: Best Actress, 2000

If you were betting in your Oscars pool in 2000 and picked anyone but Julia Roberts to win Best Actress, you'd look like quite the dummy. No win in any category this year was as certain as hers.

There was only one major awards body that made no mention of Roberts: the New York Film Critics Circle. Eventual nominee Laura Linney won Best Actress for You Can Count on Me, with The House of Mirth's Gillian Anderson and Dancer in the Dark's Björk as runner-ups, and eventual Best Actress Oscar nominee Ellen Burstyn among the runner-ups for Supporting Actress for Requiem for a Dream. Otherwise, Roberts ran through awards season like General Sherman: the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards, the LA Film Critics, the National Board of Review, the Critics Choice Awards, the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, the MTV Movie Awards, the Teen Choice Awards, and on and on and on until the night of the Oscars:

Had I a ballot, here's how I would rank them:

The Frontrunner Who Wasn't: Best Actor, 2000

As sometimes happens, the biggest news about the Best Actor nominees was the absence of a shoo-in and the presence of a dark horse.

The great film scholar Nick Davis was writing about the Oscars in 2000, and his predictions for the nominees cite Michael Douglas as a lock and probable winner, with Harris tenth. This is, of course, just one voice, but he was not alone: as Inside Oscar 2 relates, "The year's biggest surprise was the failure of Michael Douglas to be nominated," while "Harris especially was a bit of a surprise...he hadn't received any critics awards and hadn't been up for a Golden Globe or SAG award." 

Douglas had also missed at the SAG Awards: remember, Benicio del Toro was up for Lead there (and won), but also nominated was the incredible young find from Billy Elliot, Jamie Bell, who went on to win the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. Alas, like Douglas, he missed out with Oscar, and, like Harris, he missed out on the Globes. Not that getting a nomination there is a guarantee: in addition to Douglas, the entire Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy roster was left off the Oscar ballot: no Jim Carrey for Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, no George Clooney for O Brother, Where Art Thou? (he won the Globe!), no John Cusack for High Fidelity, no Robert De Niro for Meet the Parents, and no Mel Gibson for What Women Want!

Who did get in alongside Harris? The obvious locks were Gladiator's Russell Crowe, leading the now Best Picture favorite, and Cast Away's Tom Hanks, who many felt could have been the frontrunner had he not already won twice before. The critical praise was enough to get Before Night Falls' Javier Bardem through, and while he never won any prizes, Quills' Geoffrey Rush was a constant throughout the season. With Douglas gone, it was anyone's guess which one would win, and I'm sure there was a clenching of bettors' sphincters when Marcia Gay Harden picked up her Oscar earlier in the ceremony. Was the Academy suddenly hot for Pollock, as Roger Ebert guessed they might be?

No, as it turns out:

Here's how I'd rank them, if I had a ballot: