Cinema '62: Best Supporting Actress

Today, we look at the nominees for Best Supporting Actress, with four movies we'll be seeing a lot more of - Bird Man of Alcatraz, The Miracle Worker, Sweet Bird of Youth, To Kill a Mockingbird - and The Manchurian Candidate. 

The original AFI List of the 100 Greatest American Movies included The Manchurian Candidate at #67, TIME named Mrs. Iselin among the 25 Greatest Movie Villains, and Screen Drafts called it the second-best Cold War film. It's a well-done noose-tightener about brainwashed soldiers, political manipulation, and the conspiracy that binds these two into one master plan. It's interesting because there's not a lot of mystery behind it, the movie tipping its hand pretty early as to what's going on, though not necessarily why it's going on. That seems a little muddled, particularly the cross and double-cross. Great performances from Laurence Harvey and Khigh Dhiegh. Ballsy finale. Great (Oscar-nominated) editing by Ferris Webster. I wish I liked it!

The nominees:

Cinema '62: Best Supporting Actor

Yesterday, we looked at the Adapted Scores of 1962. Today, it's the Best Supporting Actor lineup. All of these actors were here for the first time; none of them would be back for a second nomination (although...one of them still could, one day). We'll talk about many of these films again, but there is one film for which this was the lone nomination: Billy Budd.

Have you seen Billy Budd, co-written and directed by Peter Ustinov, adapted from the novel by Herman Melville and a play by Louis O. Coxe and Robert H. Chapman? It's a beautifully done movie whose conversations about interpreting justice, shortcomings of the law, and the decision to believe in and behave the best in the face of the worst could be dull or didactic; instead, the intelligent screenplay and complex performances make for an exciting two hours. Good year for boat films!

The nominees:

Cinema '62: Best Adapted Score

Our first category is Adapted Score, or as it was known at the time, Scoring of Music - Adaptation or Treatment. Four of these nominees are musicals, while one of them is an "adaptation" (read: orchestration) of a score by Jackie Gleason. The nominees:

Cinema '62 Starts Now!

It's been three months - long overdue for our next retrospective, this time focusing on the year 1962. Why 1962? Honestly, Mutiny on the Bounty led me to this decision: it's the first and, so far, only time a remake of a previous Best Picture winner (1935's Mutiny on the Bounty) was itself nominated for Best Picture. With Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story coming, I figured it was appropriate. 

But we'll get into Best Picture next week. This week, we're looking at Adapted Score, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Director,  and Adapted Screenplay. But first, some of the other nominated films:

The 1985 Retro Hollmann Awards - The Winners

Here they are, the winners of the 1985 Retro Hollmann Awards!

The 1985 Retro Hollmann Awards in 2021

And the nominees for the 1985 Retro Hollmann Awards are:

Best Visual Effects

Back to the Future

Kevin Pike, special effects supervisor

Ken Ralston, supervisor of visual effects (ILM)

Cocoon

Greg Cannom, special alien creatures and effects

Peter Anderson, creature development / visual effects

Ken Ralston, visual effects supervisor

Mitch Suskin, visual effects production supervisor

Enemy Mine

Bob MacDonald, Jr., special effects supervisor

Don Dow, visual effects supervisor

Lifeforce

John Gant, special effects

John Dykstra, special visual effects

Robert Shepherd, special effects producer

Young Sherlock Holmes

Stephen Norrington, animatronics supervisor

Kit West, special effects supervisor

Dennis Muren, visual effects supervisor

More, after the jump....

Top Ten of 1985

Honorable Mentions: Fright Night, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, The Return of the Living Dead, Smooth Talk, The Trip to Bountiful, Trouble in Mind, Twice in a Lifetime, Wetherby.

And now, the Top Ten, in alphabetical order.