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:

Good Music...Mostly: Score and Song, 2000

Best Original Music Score, or whatever the full name is, is always a tough one to judge. To me, it's the score that best complements a film, that does not overwhelm. I have often heard people scoffingly say of some nominated scores, "I don't even remember any themes!" which I don't think is necessarily unfair, but it is a narrow view of the how and why of the score. There are scores that I would never listen to on their own that I have nevertheless included in my own Hollmann Awards because, in context, they transform or even clarify a film's tone, theme, or meaning - I'm thinking specifically of how James Newton Howard's Nightcrawler gets us into Jake Gyllenhaal's warped mindset, or even how Son Lux's Everything Everywhere All At Once is unhummable, sure, but the movie would not work nearly as well without it. 

So this is how I approach this category, and I imagine, so do many of the Academy's voters. And that, finally, is how they came to pass up Björk's Dancer in the Dark and Maurice Jarre's Sunshine in favor of Rachel Portman's Chocolat (the only female composer to be nominated in Original Score more than once), Tan Dun's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (the sole first-time nominee...also the sole only-time nominee), Hans Zimmer's Gladiator (though other groups also acknowledged "wailing woman" vocalist and co-composer Lisa Gerrard, the Academy gave sole credit to Zimmer), Ennio Morricone's Malèna (this same year, he received the National Board of Review's Career Achievement Award), and John Williams' The Patriot (even if the score was seventeen cats fighting on untuned pianos, Williams would have been here: in 33 years, 34 of his scores were nominated). Of these composers, only Tan and Morricone never won before...and Morricone would have to wait another decade-plus for his chance:

None of these are bad, all of them greatly boost their films, but - if I had a ballot, here's how I'd rank them:

The End of the Election: December 2000

December 2000, marked the end of Election Day in the United States.

Most election years, it gets done, more or less, on the first Tuesday of November; by dawn, we know who the next President of the United States is. The 2000 race between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush was a special one. An especially close one, one whose results are still discussed and debated to this day. They even made an HBO Film out of it, actually shot in Tallahassee, the state capital of Florida, where the main controversy was centered.

Many of my friends and teachers - then and now - were true blue Democrats. My family was and is mostly Republican. What I remember from then is this: the news pundits at the time erroneously called Florida for Gore before all ballots were in, then had to call it for Bush, then had to admit it was too close to call; Gore conceded to Bush personally, then retracted it; initial recounts narrowed the margin but still in Bush's favor. I also remember the photos of volunteers closely scrutinizing a ballot to differentiate a Legitimate vote from dimples or hanging Chads. You have to remember, too, though: I was eleven years old, whatever news I was getting was filtered through the biases of those around me...and by sketch comedy shows. Each side accused the other of conspiring to "steal" the election, which we would later see echoed in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Recounts were demanded county by county, including my own Broward and neighboring Miami-Dade, both pretty heavy on Democrats. There was the Brook Brothers riot, where well-tailored Republicans got nasty in a campaign of harassment against independent vote counters in Miami-Dade (I remember that, too, and how suspiciously those vote counters were greeted - one of the three wasn't independent at all but a Democrat). Finally, the US Supreme Court made its historic decision in Bush's favor on December 12, 2000, a decision which people still scrutinize and object to.

It was a circus. It was thought the 2000 Presidential Election might help us to move on from the Monica Lewinsky scandal and impeachment proceedings - certainly that was why President Clinton was kept at a distance from the Gore campaign. And yeah, I guess in one sense we did move on, but just from one scandal to the next. People said they were sick of the story, but they kept tuning in, and the news cycle kept pumping us with every detail, some vague and contradictory, making things seem more or less sinister than they might actually have been. Politics became sports: we weren't electing leaders or representatives, but supporting our team! News became entertainment, not uncovering the truth but presenting a new twist to the tale, tune in, buy now! Where's our sense of reality? Where's our sense of shame? Where's our sense?

When national news made us sick, tired, and depressed, here's what the multiplex could offer: