1980 Retro Hollmann Awards Nominees

A total number of 65 films were screened for the 1980 retrospective - including 22 Oscar nominees, eleven Razzie nominees and five Oscar-Razzie nominees (overlap is not uncommon). And so the moment has come: the nominees for the 1980 Retro Hollmann Awards.

I present the 18 categories in the order in which I figured out my lineup:

BEST SCORE

American Gigolo

Giorgio Moroder

The Elephant Man

John Morris

Mad Max

Brian May

Somewhere in Time

John Barry

The Stunt Man

Dominic Frontiere

The remaining categories, after the jump...

1980 Top Ten

After 65 films, 10 Oscar categories, and five re-castings, I am ready to divvy out the awards for 1980....in due time. The nominees tomorrow, the awards later on in the week.

Until then, my personal top ten of the year. The complete list of films screened follows at the end. How many have you seen?

American Gigolo

Dir/Scr: Paul Schrader

Cin: John Bailey

Neon noir with a special hatred for Beverly Hills, a place where the wealthy surround themselves with beauty, until it becomes inconvenient. The clothes, the sets, the attitude, all influenced how we see this decade. Genuine suspense, and a strong and sexy performance from Richard Gere at its center.

The remaining nine, after the jump...

Melvin and Howard Get a Win: Original Screenplay, 1980

Yesterday, we started our journey through 1980 with the nominees for Best Supporting Actor. Today, the nominees for Best Original Screenplay: three fictional, two true-ish. Let's meet the writers, shall we?

The Film: Brubaker
The Plot: The new warden of a small prison farm in Arkansas tries to clean it up of corruption after initially posing as an inmate.
The Writers: W.D. Richter, who later worked on Big Trouble in Little China and Home for the Holidays. Story by Richter and Arthur A. Ross, who wrote Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Great Race. First and only nominations for both men.

The Film: Fame
The Plot: A chronicle of the lives of several teenagers who attend a New York high school for students gifted in the performing arts.
The Writer: Christopher Gore, a playwright known for back-to-back musical flops (and now cult status, of course) Via Galactica and Nefertiti. It is his only film credit, but he was later Emmy-nominated for the animated short Faeries - and, of course, Fame became a six-season series.

The Film: Melvin and Howard
The Plot: The story of hard-luck Melvin E. Dummar, who claimed to have received a will naming him an heir to the fortune of Howard Hughes.
The Writer: Bo Goldman, a previous winner in Best Adapted Screenplay for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; he would later be nominated in that same category for Scent of a Woman. A total of three nominations, with this one resulting in his second Oscar.

The Film: Mon oncle d'Amérique
The Plot: The intersecting stories of three people who face difficult choices in life-changing situations are used to illustrate the theories espoused by Henri Lebroit about human behavior and the relationship between the self and society.
The Writer: Jean Gruault, known for his contributions to the French New Wave: Paris Belongs to Us, Jules & Jim, Les Caribiniers, etc. This marked the first of three collaborations with director Alain Resnais, followed by the musical Life is a Bed of Roses and Love Unto Death.

The Film: Private Benjamin
The Plot: A sheltered young high society woman joins the United States Army on a whim and finds herself in a more difficult situation than she ever suspected.
The Writers: Nancy Meyers, who would later be best-known as the auteur behind comedies like Something's Gotta Give and It's Complicated. Charles Shyer, her then-husband, who collaborated with her on a number of film and television projects, including Baby Boom and the Father of the Bride remakes. Harvey Miller (not pictured), making his film debut after years of writing for Gomer Pyle, USMC, Love American Style, and The Odd Couple. All three also produced.

That's the class of 1980. And now...let's talk about the work.