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 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: Exposed

This batch of 15 films covers the period July 16 - September 19, 1997. Two Best Picture nominees came out in this period: The Full Monty on August 13 and L.A. Confidential on September 19.

The Full Monty, in which out-of-work steel workers in desperate need of money form a pseudo-Chippendales act promising full frontal nudity, was one of many British indie/arthouse films that took the US and Oscar by storm in the 1990s; indeed, between 1992 and 1998, nine such films were up for Best Picture. It was an insanely successful film, financially, grossing over $250M on a $3.5M budget. Of course, money isn't everything, but cultural impact is, and The Full Monty can boast that, too: two stage productions, one a musical (2000, book by Love! Valour! Compassion! playwright Terrence McNally), one a non-musical (2013); a television series spin-off that debuted on Hulu last summer; and, I would argue, is the reason other similarly-toned and -themed films from 2003's Calendar Girls to 2014's Pride were greenlit and made.

L.A. Confidential is the movie people today claim came closest to threatening Titanic's Best Picture win (I assume that's quite relative). Adapted from the James Ellroy novel of the same name, it depicts the corruption of the LAPD, its relationship with Hollywood and organized crime, and a trio of cops who decide, yeah, maybe it's time to do the right thing. Titanic may have been the people's choice, but L.A. Confidential was the critics' pick: the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics, and the Critics' Choice Awards all named it the Best Film of 1997. It was also a hit - $126M gross, $35M budget, hoo yeah.

Interesting to see two Best Picture nominees among these releases, especially as, nowadays, August and September aren't really considered "awards season" periods. Times change. Anyway, the rest of the summer: