Curly's Gold: Best Supporting Actor, 1991

So now that we've briefly gone over the 75 films screened from 1991, we can get into the Academy Awards. Just going by the non-specialty feature-length narrative categories, 25 films were nominated across 18 categories. We're only going to discuss a few of them this week, the nominees for Acting, Directing, and Best Picture, and, just like the 64th Academy Awards ceremony, we're starting with Best Supporting Actor:

Tommy Lee Jones, JFK

Harvey Keitel, Bugsy

Ben Kingsley, Bugsy

Michael Lerner, Barton Fink

Jack Palance, City Slickers

Three first-time nominees (Jones, Keitel, Lerner), three from (two) Best Picture nominees (Jones, Keitel, Kingsley), and one previous winner (Kingsley). Lot of overlap there, except for Hollywood veteran Jack Palance, up for his scene-stealing turn as cattle driver Curly in the smash hit City Slickers, his third nomination in a career that dated back to 1950’s Panic in the Streets. Veteran actor in a popular film giving the performance everyone's talking about - it's a familiar formula, you might even call it a winning one:

He wasn't the only winner of the lot, though. Keitel, up for playing the Los Angeles mobster Mickey Cohen, who teams up with Bugsy Siegel in Bugsy, was named Best Supporting Actor by the National Society of Film Critics for three roles: Bugsy, Thelma & Louise, and Mortal Thoughts (didn't see it). Lerner, as an Old Hollywood studio magnate in Barton Fink - a bit of Selznick, a bit of Mayer - hired a publicist and financed his own Oscar campaign after the Los Angeles Film Critics anointed him Best Supporting Actor at their annual awards; the absence of his co-star John Goodman, Golden Globe nominee and second runner-up at the New York Critics Circle Awards, was considered a surprise. As for the others, Kingsley, as New York mobster/Siegel's oldest friend Meyer Lansky, had been nominated at the Golden Globes, while Jones, as politician Clay Shaw, the only person ever put on trial for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy, had only been honored by the Dallas-Fort Worth Critics Association, and Lord knows they're a prime target for Dealey Plaza stories. 

He was also nominated at the BAFTAs, but due to British release dates, that wouldn’t happen until the following year. In fact, none of the nominees here were up for the 1991 BAFTAs, whose four-wide category consisted of Alan Bates for the 1990 Hamlet, Derek Jacobi for Dead Again, singer Andrew Strong for The Commitments, and Alan Rickman, who won for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I think our category’s stronger, frankly!

My own rankings, from fifth to first: 

Casting Coup: Coal Miner's Daughter

NOMINATIONS

Best Picture, Bernard Schwartz

Best Actress, Sissy Spacek - WON

Best Adapted Screenplay, Thomas Rickman
Best Cinematography, Ralf D. Bode
Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, John W. Corso/John M. Dwyer

Best Film Editing, Arthur Schmidt

Best Sound, Richard Portman/Roger Heman Jr./James R. Alexander

At the heart of Coal Miner's Daughter is a love story. Loretta Webb was only 15 (she claimed even younger) when she married 21-year-old Oliver "Doolittle" Lynn - she was only 16 when he whisked her away from her family and hometown of Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, to Custer, Washington, where they knew absolutely nobody. All throughout their marriage, which lasted until his death in 1996, Doo was an alcoholic, a womanizer, sometimes violent. But he also bought Loretta her first guitar, booked her first gigs, drove her all over the United States to get her music on the radio.

The marriage of Loretta and Doo is the main attraction of Coal Miner's Daughter, beautifully acted by native Texans Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones. It just doesn't work without that particular chemistry. The rest of the film is anchored in their alternating affection and tension - the friendship of Loretta and Patsy Cline isn't just of mutual respect between two artists, but two successful women who know from men problems (Patsy's ex-husband tried to quell her singing career). And of course, stepping out with an older man would certainly effect the relationship a 15-year-old has with her parents, to say nothing of actually moving clear across the country.

Casting director Michael Chinich (who also did The Blues Brothers and Melvin and Howard the same year), director Michael Apted, and Loretta Lynn herself assembled a fine ensemble to embody this unique conflict/blessing. But if they were to do this film today, what might that group look like? I know who I'd gather...

After the jump, of course.

Your Winners for the 2014 Hollmann Awards!

No boring speeches... No big lead-ins... But still musical numbers! It's the Hollmann Awards!

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Milena Canonero
The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson films have always been the reliable source for Costumes with a capital "c" -- the old European hotel setting allows for some old school elegance, even while staying true to the auteur's specific look.

2. Mr. Turner, 3. G.B.F., 4. The Immigrant, 5. Pride

BEST ENSEMBLE

Fiona Weir
Pride

Everyone is given their moment to shine, and there's not a weak link in the bunch -- all 468 actors nail the balance of drama and comedy, and each is recognizably human.

2. Mr. Turner, 3. Gone Girl, 4. Selma, 5. We Are the Best!

One of these winning films won more than two! Which one? Find the answer, and more awards, after the jump!

Casting Coup Week: Shane

Casting Coup Week is also up, followed by my retrospective of 1953. You should also check out Andrew's offerings over at his blog, but since you're already here, why not take in my re-casting of Shane?

You won't see little Joey Starrett represented here. I'm not about to try to remember all these damn kids.

A Banner Year: Supporting Actor, 1993

Usually, Best Supporting Actor is a playground for overdue veterans, previously-nominated favorites, and perpetrators of category fraud. Like 1975, though, 1993 is a great example of actoring at the edges, with two transcendent perfs, two sublime ones, and one that's pretty damn great.

And that one, won! Tommy Lee Jones for The Fugitive!

Casting Coup Tuesdays: The Swarm (a DISASTERPIECE)

I love The Swarm. I wish I owned it so I could watch it all the time always, maybe skip around to my favorite moments (but what isn't my favorite moment here?), watch the made-for-TV companion doc where they claim The Swarm is a warning. That would be awesome. As it is, I don't own it, so I have to make do with Netflix Instant Watch, and that's...that's just fine. Because no matter what, I get to bask in the glorious awful that is...The Swarm.

How does one describe it? Opening with a bunch of military men marching into a small military base, they find an alarm sounding off, a civilian van outside, and every uniformed man dead. The civilian is entomologist Brad Crane, and he is there to stop the killers of those men: African Killer Bees, brought to Texas by...storms, I guess? And anger? Anyway, Dr. Crane has been warning of the inevitable African Killer Bee invasion for years, and now his warnings have come true! Meanwhile, the small town of Marysville is preparing for their annual Flower Festival, which apparently attracts thousands of people from all over, what with Marysville's varied floral beauties. Of course, bees and flowers mix like chocolate and ice cream, so it's a natural target for the villains of the piece. Plus, they're right next to the military complex! It's only a matter of time!

There's so much to love here, from the awful effects to Jerry Goldsmith's genuinely awesome score to those performances. Oh, those performances! Thrill as Michael Caine SHOUTS. EVERY LINE.  Marvel at Richard Widmark's boredom. Wonder what the hell Katharine Ross is doing here -- the character does nothing, and Ross sees no reason to give her purpose. Olivia de Havilland and Henry Fonda are the major standouts by sheer virtue of the fact that they give surprisingly sincere, honest, real, GREAT performances. How classy was old Hollywood? So classy they could get into The Swarm and still deliver the hell out of it.

I'm always confused by the climax of the film. I dare not spoil it for those of you who haven't seen it, but if you don't care about such things -- or have already seen it -- join me in this thought, will you?: an oil slick? After two and a half hours of preaching about the dangers pesticides have on the environment, the great solution is to cover the Gulf of Mexico with an oil slick and set it on fire? Did BP sponsor Dr. Crane's research? It's absurd.

The Swarm is already tapped for a remake, somehow. Can one improve on the audacity, the self-seriousness, the insanity of the original? I doubt it, but God bless 'em for trying. Perhaps they'd consider some of my suggestions?

DEATHS: 10

ROMANCES: oh my God...all out of nowhere...I'm gonna say 3, but one of those is a love triangle

The Awesome Fall of Mr. Stone

In W. news, two roles were cast, one of them quite recently.

Scott Glenn


is playing Donald Rumsfeld


instead of Tommy Lee Jones


as previously reported.


Oh, and do you want to know who's going to play Vice President Dick Cheney? Shit, I know you do.




will be played by


RICHARD DREYFUSS!

Ho.
Ly.
Shit.

Casting Coup: The Godfather

*What was I thinking here? First of all, my run-down of the Best Picture nominees of 1972, though meant to be amusing, isn't that funny, and almost reads as offensive. Second...a blaxploitation Godfather isn't a bad idea, really, but...what was I trying to prove here? Why Tommy Lee Jones as Moe Greene? Weird.*

CASTING COUP MONTH remembers the wisdom of Michael Caine, who did the Sleuth remake precisely because it was different from the original. After all, he reasoned, what's the point in doing the same damn thing all over again?

There are many remakes that have gone for the shot-for-shot, exact same thing "re-imagining". They say it's different, but it's not. Gus Van Sant's Psycho was the same film, but in color! John Moore's The Omen tacked on a "prologue" about the End Times approaching, but then gave the same story with better death sequences. Rob Zombie's Halloween had a forty-five-minute prologue begging us to love Michael Myers before making the same movie, only with worse dialogue and no acting. It was pathetic.

So, what's the point in doing The Godfather (1972) is you're not going to spice things up a bit? After all, the original was AFI's #3 greatest film of all time in 1997, before moving up to #2 in 2007. Many critics and film scholars consider it superior to Citizen Kane. And sure, it won only three out of its eleven Oscar nominations, but fuck you, you know?

Besides, three of those losses were in one category, so there was probably a lot of vote-splitting. Oh, yeah, you knew that, right? RIGHT? Three of the five Supporting Actor Nominees were from The Godfather. The Oscar went to Joel Grey for Cabaret, making him that rare breed of actor, winning an Oscar and a Tony for the same role. This happened seven times previously (and if they keep making decisions like replacing Cherry Jones with Meryl Streep, may never happen again). Anyway, Robert Duvall, James Caan, and Al Pacino were all deserved nominees--though can't we agree that Pacino should have been in the Lead Actor category?

Nino Rota lost the Oscar for Original Score, as it was deemed ineligible, its nomination withdrawn. Apparently, he was re-using old themes from Fortunella, an earlier film. Ironically, the Oscar went to Charlie Chaplin, Ray Rasch, and Larry Russell for Limelight, a film made in 1952 but not released in the USA until 1972. Meanwhile, Anthony Powell's Costumes for Travels with My Aunt (starring Maggie Smith) triumphed over Anna Hill Johnstone's designs.

Cabaret was the big winner that year. Besides Best Supporting Actor, The Godfather lost the Sound (Charles Grenzbach/Richard Portman/Christopher Newman to Robert Knudson/David Hildyard), Film Editing (William Reynolds/Peter Zinner to David Bretherton), and Director (Francis Ford Coppola to Bob Fosse) to the Kander and Ebb musical. It seemed poised to take the Best Picture Oscar; alas, this was not to be.

If The Godfather would only get three Oscars, it was going down swinging. First off, one of the most important awards, that of Best Adapted Screenplay, went to director Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo, the original novelist. Writing a best-selling novel, then getting the Oscar for your script? Bad-ass, Mario. Marlon Brando (the title character?) won Best Actor, and famously decided not to accept his award until the Native Americans were better treated. A Hispanic actress dressed as an American Indian accepted the award, and made the entire thing just plain weird.

Best Picture. The Godfather won Best Picture. It had to win Best Picture. It kicked way too much ass not to. Deliverance? Just a hicksploitation flick, really. Cabaret? Fairy musical. Sounder? Please. A black folks movie? Please. The Emigrants? Just a Swede film, pass it by. It HAD to be The Godfather. Look, see the movie. It's got film noir bad-assery dripping out of its ears. The movie shits gold. Pure fucking mountain gold. Brando? Pacino? Duvall? All Gods. In a Zeus way, not in a Yahweh way. This thing put Coppola on the map.

Dare we consider, though, that the time of the Italian Mob flick has come and gone? That The Sopranos is over, whereas American Gangster is nominated at the Oscars? See where I'm going with this?

What if The Godfather was a blaxploitation gangster flick?

JACK WOLTZ
Who is He: A film producer who loves horses, but doesn't want any part of them in his bed.

Originally played by: Philip Baker Hall's brother, John Marley


My Choice: I've decided to make everybody who's not in the family white. And a comic actor. Because that's funny. Plus, wouldn't you love to hear this guy hurling racist obscenities at people?

Academy Award Nominee Elliott Gould (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Ocean's Thirteen)


CAPTAIN MCCLUSKEY
Who is He: A corrupt cop who screws over the Corleones. Bad idea, man, bad idea.

Originally played by: Sterling Hayden


My Choice: Less Irish, more Dutch. Let's call this character Captain Notirish.

Rutger Hauer (The Hitcher, Blade Runner)


VIRGIL "THE TURK" SOLLOZZO
Who is He: A glorified drug dealer. Dangerous and deadly. He says things like, "Try the veal, it's the best in the city." He's in league with Capt. McCluskey.

Originally played by: Al Lettieri


My Choice: Finally, we're getting to the actual inner workings of the Black Mafia. Virgil "The Man" Solomon would say things like, "Try the motherfuckin' veal, it's the motherfuckin' best in the motherfuckin' city!"

Academy Award/Hollmann Nominee Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction, Black Snake Moan)


JOHNNY FONTANE
Who is He: The Godfather's godson, a popular crooner who wants the lead role in a film that is most certainly not From Here to Eternity with Frank Sinatra. Not at all. Uh-uh.

Originally played by: Al Martino


My Choice: I won't do "gangsta rap", but there is a man out there able to combine hip-hop with Sinatra's charisma.

Academy Award Nominee Will Smith (Ali, The Pursuit of Happyness)


BONASERA
Who is He: An undertaker who asks the Godfather to kill the men who raped his daughter. Has the first lines of the movie.

Originally played by: Salvatore Corsitto


My Choice: As Goudet, I'm all about revitalizing careers

Sherman Hemsley ("The Jeffersons", "Amen")


DON EMILIO BARZINI
Who is He: The head of one of the Five Families. His hand-shaking with the Godfather is a great moment indeed.

Originally played by: Richard Conte


My Choice: As Emilio Boss, I've been waiting to see this guy go toe-to-toe with my Godfather for quite some time.

Delroy Lindo (This Christmas, The Cider House Rules)


LUCA BRASI
Who is He: The most famous man to ever sleep with the fishes. He hoped Connie's first child was a masculine child.

Originally played by: Lenny Montana


My Choice: As Luke Brands, the only actor who consistently gives top-notch performances in shitty movies.

Faizon Love (Blue Crush, The Perfect Holiday)


MOE GREENE
Who is He: A big deal in Vegas. Michael wants to do business with him.

Originally played by: Alex Rocco


My Choice: Let's dress this up a bit, give it a bit of down-home flair.

Academy Award Winner Tommy Lee Jones (The Fugitive, In the Valley of Elah)


SALVATORE TESSIO
Who is He: Family friend, and also a friend of Vito's. Hooray!

Originally played by: Abe Vigoda, still defying death at 126


My Choice: As Sam Tessly, an old veteran.

Academy Award Winner Sidney Poitier (Lilies of the Field, A Raisin in the Sun)


CLEMENZA
Who is He: A fatty who can cook--and kill. One of the awesomest characters, he remembers to leave the gun, but take the canollis.

Originally played by: Academy Award Nominee Richard S. Castellano (Lovers and Other Strangers)


My Choice: Well, he needs to be deadly, yet have comic timing.

Academy Award Winner Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland, Battlefield Earth)


APOLLONIA CORLEONE
Who is She: Michael's bride when he is exiled in Italy.

Originally played by: Simonetta Stefanelli


My Choice: When Michael goes to Nigeria, he meets the beautiful Abali. Here is the beautiful Abali.

Academy Award Nominee Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda, The Martian Child)


CARLO RIZZI
Who is He: Connie's abusive husband. Gets the shit beaten out of him by Sonny.

Originally played by: Gianni Russo


My Choice: As Carl Ross, a favorite of ours here on Planet Earth.

Academy Award Nominee Terrence Howard (Hustle & Flow, Crash)


CONNIE CORLEONE RIZZI
Who is She: The Godfather's daughter, whose wedding to Carlo opens the flick.

Originally played by: Academy Award Nominee Talia Shire (The Godfather: Part II, Rocky)


My Choice: As Connie Tyson Ross, an actress that I hope gets more and more exposure as time goes on.

Hollmann Nominee Anika Noni Rose (Dreamgirls, The Princess & the Frog)


FREDO CORLEONE
Who is He: The weakest of the sons. Spineless, willing to take sides against the Family, not cool. Guy's just a mess.

Originally played by: John Cazale, ex-fiance of Meryl Streep (he died of bone cancer)


My Choice: As Freddie Tyson, this guy can play anything, from a psychotic sociopath (Devil in a Blue Dress) to British explosives expert (The Ocean Movies).

Academy Award Nominee Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda, Talk to Me)


SONNY CORLEONE
Who is He: The hot-headed oldest son, he is quick to react with his fists, but is not the best thinker.

Originally played by: Academy Award Nominee James Caan (The Godfather)


My Choice: As Sonny Tyson, again: bona fide bad-ass.

Idris Elba (This Christmas, American Gangster)


TOM HAGEN
Who is He: The German-Irish orphan adopted by the Godfather, he becomes the consigliere to the Family. Here's a secret: he's my favorite character.

Originally played by: Academy Award Winner Robert Duvall (Tender Mercies)


My Choice: Like I said, if you're not in the Family, you're a whitey.

Academy Award Nominee John C. Reilly (Chicago, The Hours)


KAY ADAMS CORLEONE
Who is She: Michael's fiancee and eventual wife, she remains out of the loop. She flip-flops between willful ignorance and angry demands for the truth.

Originally played by: Academy Award Winner Diane Keaton (Annie Hall, Something's Gotta Give)


My Choice: She's a white woman. And slightly older. And a feminist. Oh-ho, she most certainly does NOT fit in with the mob wife stereotype!

Janeane Garofalo (Ratatouille, Wet Hot American Summer)


MICHAEL CORLEONE
Who is He: He may be the youngest of the brothers, but he's the only competent one. Takes over the Family Business after the Godfather's retirement. Goes from War Hero to Crime Lord within a two hour film.

Originally played by: Academy Award Winner Al Pacino (Scent of a Woman)


My Choice: As Mike Tyson (lol), only the greatest actor under forty to come out of this generation.

Chiwetel Ejiofor (American Gangster, Kinky Boots)


VITO CORLEONE
Who is He: The Fucking Godfather

Originally played by: Academy Award Winner Marlon Brando (On the Waterfront, The Godfather)


My Choice: Are you ready? Bear with me here, people, because you will see the wisdom of this choice. This guy's playing Vincent Tyson.

Danny Glover (The Royal Tenenbaums, Gone Fishin')


What d'ya think? Too radical? Or JUST RIGHT?