The 1997 Retro Hollmann Awards: The Winners

The biggest gap from the beginning of a year to its conclusion in a while. Nevertheless, here we are: you've seen my take on the Academy Award nominees in six categories, my Top Ten, and my nominees. Now, here are my winners, the best of the best, for the 1997 Retro Hollmann Awards:

The 1997 Retro Hollmann Awards: The Nominees

Here they are, 31 films across 18 categories, the nominees for the 1997 Retro Hollmann Awards: 

Oscars 1997: Best Picture

There was no beating the Titanic juggernaut for Best Picture, not in 1997:

But here's how I'd rank 'em:

1997 Oscars: Best Supporting Actress

Best Supporting Actress was a tight race between two very different performers and performances. In one corner, the beauty demonstrating her thesping abilities in the throwback noir L.A. Confidential, Kim Basinger (some still may consider her role a leading lady part); in the other, the veteran whose career was older than 20th Century Fox, emotionally anchoring the narrative of the epic box office titan (!) Titanic, Gloria Stuart! Indeed, at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, they both won, a rare awards season tie.

Oscar did not go the same way.

It’s an interesting lineup overall, with three Best Picture nominees, a dramedy, and a studio comedy all in the mix. Here's how I'd rank 'em:

1997 Oscars: Best Actor

Hard to oversell what a slam-bang lineup 1997's Lead Actor was, is. One of those years where any one of them could win and it wouldn't be the wrong choice. The one that did win? A great choice!:

The nominees, as ranked by me:

1997 Oscars: Best Supporting Actor

Was it inevitable that Robin Williams would triumph at the Academy Awards?:

In addition to three previous nominations in Best Actor and being a beloved industry titan at the time, he was also only one of two Supporting Actors from Best Picture nominees, the other being As Good As It Gets' Greg Kinnear, at the time best known as the host for E!'s Talk Soup, for which he won two Daytime Emmys. L.A. Confidential and Titanic were better represented in the actress categories. And while The Full Monty won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast (or Best Ensemble, as some call it), none of its individual performers were ever able to gain a foothold in the awards race; only the BAFTAs, as one might expect, nominated Mark Addy and Tom Wilkinson, with the latter winning in a category that also included Rupert Everett for My Best Friend's Wedding (also a Golden Globe nominee) and Burt Reynolds for Boogie Nights (the only one of the nominees below so honored by the Brits). Reynolds found himself in the unfamiliar position of being the critics' pick all season, but while Boogie Nights was called his big comeback, Reynolds hated the movie: he fired his agent and publicly dismissed writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson and his experience working on it. The category's other big comeback story, Robert Forster, had a better time with Jackie Brown, praising his experience and crediting it with revitalizing his career (even on Wikipedia, his bio has a section called "Career Slump" before one labeled "Jackie Brown").

The performances, as I rank 'em: 

1997 Oscars: Best Director

We now start our journey through the 50th Academy Awards, celebrating the films of 1997. Next week we'll do Best Picture, this week we'll do the Acting categories, but today: Best Director.

Now, if you recall, it was a director who set me on this path of 1990, 1997, and 2003: Kevin Costner. Readers voted the years in which he directed a film as the project to follow my The Winner Is John Ford series. Sadly, as we noted yesterday, The Postman was little appreciated in its time, though Costner did "win" Worst Director at the Razzies and its overseas equivalent, Spain's Yoga Awards. Unfair and unjust.

Two directors who missed the Oscar lineup: James L. Brooks for Best Picture nominee As Good As It Gets and Steven Spielberg for Amistad, both nominated at the Directors Guild of America Awards and at the Golden Globes. The Boxer's Jim Sheridan was also nominated at the Golden Globes while missing out at the Academy Awards. And then there's Baz Luhrmann, whose 1996 Romeo + Juliet was no awards favorite in the States but qualified for the next year's BAFTAs, where he was nominated for Best Director against Curtis Hanson, Peter Cattaneo, and James Cameron...and won. 

But there can be only one King of the World at the Oscars: 

Here's how I'd rank 'em:

1997: Good Will, Great Success

Ten movies we get into today, all released between November 7 and December 10, 1997.  December 5th, though, saw the release of our next Best Picture nominee: Good Will Hunting.

Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures does a good job of placing us in Matt Damon’s and Ben Affleck’s shoes, two good-looking young actors who haven’t quite hit yet and are waiting for that One Great Part that will showcase their talents. Together, they collaborate on an expansion of a short script Damon wrote in college, a thriller about a Southie math genius recruited by the government. Castle Rock Entertainment buys the script, Rob Reiner and William Goldman make some suggestions about what to take out (the thriller aspect) and what to build up (these therapist scenes…), but the movie doesn’t get made. There’s interest from studios, but no one wants to buy the script due to the writers’ requirement: that they be cast in the roles they wrote for themselves. Fortunately, by this time, they’re friendly with indie success Kevin Smith, who convinces Miramax to make the film and cast the guys…and you know the rest. Movie’s made, released, and is a huge hit, ending up on Top Ten lists, grossing $225.9M on a $10M budget, winning Oscars for Damon & Affleck’s screenplay and for Robin Williams’ against-type performance as the therapist, and cementing the young men’s status as Stars.

And this is what was out in theaters as it started it’s run: