Returning Champs: Best Original Score, 1983

I've always found it a challenge to write about this category - it's to be heard, to be experienced. Though I suppose there is something to be said about this category having its favorites, as many do. It's how John Williams can get a third nomination for one series - of course, he would return for a fourth (The Force Awakens), and let us not forget that Jedi was his 19th overall nod....out of 50.

Williams had won Oscars already -- but so, too, had fellow nominee Leonard Rosenman, though both of his were in the Adapted Score category (Barry Lyndon, Bound for Glory). Another two-time Oscar winner was Michael Gore, who won this category, and Original Song, just three years previously for Fame. Poor Jerry Goldsmith - the Under Fire composer only had one Oscar to console himself with!

The odd man out, clearly, was Bill Conti, who in years past had only been nominated for Best Original Song. The first time for Rocky, and yes, it is incredible that it was only nominated in Song, not Score. The second time was for the Bond flick For Your Eyes Only. The Right Stuff marked his third nomination, first Original Score nomination...and final time in the running for Oscar.

Fortunately for him, he won. Should he have? Let's investigate....

Swedes, Texans, and Jedi: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, 1983

I love this category - it's always a great mixture of Best Picture nominees, Best Picture also-rans, period pieces, and sci-fi.

Fanny and Alexander and Yentl fill the period piece slots, and given the number of nominations they accumulated, plus the buzz at the time, I think it's safe to say each came this close to a Best Picture nomination. Return of the Jedi is the obvious sci-fi/fantasy set -- spaceships, mythical setting specific to a weird creature, the usual-usual. The Right Stuff combines the fascination with space tech -- something that would also benefit Gravity, The Martian, and Inception -- with the period trappings of the 60s.

And then there's Terms of Endearment, the extremely rare contemporary entry that I can't imagine being anything other than a coattails nod, especially since it means ignoring the specificity of The Dresser or the wonder of Krull.

Fanny and Alexander won -- let's see if it should have. After the jump.

1983: An Introduction

The year was 1983.

The Cold War entered its 38th year (unofficially, though, for how does one keep track of an undeclared event?). Ronald Reagan was still in his first term, and while 1982 had witnessed an unemployment high unseen since the Depression, it began it's decline this year -- slowly, but surely. People were pensive about nuclear war, nuclear waste, nuclear meltdowns, with apocalyptic visions of the future taking over the airwaves. M*A*S*H ended, The Thorn Birds was our new obsession, and the end of the year brought the greatest gift we could ever receive: the music video for Thriller.

And at the movies? That comes after the jump.