Almost Kate's: Best Supporting Actress, 2000

Roger Ebert said that "everybody from the Vegas oddsmakers to the espresso jockey at Starbucks can tell you that Gladiator, Russell Crowe, Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, and Kate Hudson are at the head of the pack." While he went against that "common wisdom" in some of his final predictions, he held to the impression that "the overwhelming favorite is Kate Hudson." It is a common refrain you read when researching this year: Hudson is the heart of Almost Famous, she glows, she's charming, she's Goldie Hawn's daughter, and wouldn't it be neat if they both won in the same category 31 years apart? 

She was one of four names that kept showing up everywhere: her Almost Famous co-star, who won prizes for both that film and her turn in Wonder Boys; Judi Dench, thought to be the benificiary of Miramax's Chocolat campaign, making it the third of five consecutive Weinstein-backed nominations for the Dame; and Julie Walters, whose chain-smoking ballet mistress in Billy Elliot was an audience favorite. All were nominated alongside Hudson. None were thought to stand a chance, even though, while she was also nominated at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and for Best Lead Actress at the British Academy Awards, the only major "precursor" she won was the Golden Globes. 

But hey, influence and bellwethers change over the years - remember, it used to be "common wisdom" to go with the New York Critics' pick...though that did turn out to be true this year. Alongside the aforementioned quartet was Pollock's Marcia Gay Harden, a name and performance little bandied about after her NYFCC win at the beginning of December. Her "fifth slot" was up for grabs among a number of contenders: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's Zhang Ziyi (BAFTA nominee, Indie Spirits winner, LAFCA runner-up), Traffic's Catherine Zeta-Jones (Golden Globe nominee), Quills' Kate Winslet (SAG nominee), maybe even longer shots like Small Time Crooks' Elaine May (winner at the National Society of Film Critics, I'm guessing because they had little opportunity to award her over the years) or Chuck & Buck's Lupe Ontiveros (National Board of Review winner!, Indie Spirits nominee). But the fifth spot was Harden's, with many assuming the nomination was the award for putting in great work in a little-seen film. What a twist - what a thrill:

Had I a ballot, this is how I'd rank them:

The Awards Begin: Oscars 2000

According to the invaluable, if overly bitchy, Inside Oscar 2, 2000 was a dismal year for movies - so the insiders and critics thought. December arrived with no clear Oscar narrative and no frontrunner anywhere, except for Julia Roberts in Best Actress. Still, the pundits kept beating the same tired drums: Erin Brockovich is too TV movie-scaled, Requiem for a Dream is too NC-17, Gladiator is too popcorn-dumb, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is too foreign, Almost Famous and Wonder Boys bombed (all concerns which, to me, seem pretty irrelevant to how people watch and feel about movies). It didn't help that the Academy's fine print was excluding films left and right: the acclaimed Yi Yi, named Best Foreign Language Film by the New York and Los Angeles Critics, wasn't even included on the annual Reminder List, since its distributor didn't file paperwork to be considered; Croupier, which did appear on the Reminder List and was named among the Top Ten Films of the Year by the National Board of Review, was disqualified when it was discovered it had aired on Dutch television before being released theatrically. 

Still, a consensus did form, as always, which meant sure things and surprises on Oscar nomination morning, and you'll see that for yourself this week and the next as we go through the various categories. Of the hundreds of films released this year, I only saw 120; of those films, only 29 were nominated at the 73rd Academy Awards, though up to nomination morning, there were still longshot hopes for films like All the Pretty Horses (which I did not see) and The House of Mirth. Alas, come February 13...:

The ceremony itself began March 25, 2001, hosted by Steve Martin. The first award of the night was for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, with nominees Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Gladiator, Quills, and Vatel all honored to be nominated. Tim Yip went home with the Oscar for his work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. 

The next award was Best Supporting Actress. The nominees were Judi Dench (Chocolat), Marcia Gay Harden (Pollock), Kate Hudson (Almost Famous), Frances McDormand (Almost Famous), and Julie Walters (Billy Elliot). And we'll discuss it....tomorrow.

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Christmas and Thereafter: December 2000 (concluded)

So we come to the end of the year 2000. There's one rewatch I saved for this post, for the last week of the year is always a marathon of holiday filmgoing. For me, anyway. Here is what cinemas offered - in LA and NYC, at least - from Christmas Day to the end of the year...:

It's Awards Season: December 2000 (contd)

The holiday movie season is also known as awards season for a reason: of the nine films reviewed here - all released within a three-week span, mind - five of them went on to be nominated for Oscars, two of them even winning!:

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: 

A Classic Compromised?: November 2000 (contd)

The holiday season is now officially upon the year 2000. One could tell at the time because the ads and tie-ins for Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas were inescapable. The original work was a plea against the commercialization of the holiday, the Grinch's heart growing because he sees that, to the Whos, gifts are a bonus, the Christmas holiday is about being together with friends and family. In the lead-up to the new live-action adaptation, we were subjected to a Visa ad that directly contradicted that:

The promotion was also advertised on Kellogg's cereal boxes and was the center of a lawsuit between Visa and American Express. All I knew at the time was that, "Just in case we're wrong..." was cyncial and completely antithetical to what my favorite Christmas story was about. It soured me on the movie before it even came out, I refused to see it. A year later, when it came out on VHS, we rented it just to see...and Mom and I turned it off once Cindy Lou started singing (as it turns out, there are no other comparable musical numbers - this is the movie's attempt to get a hit single and possible Original Song nomination). So yes, I managed to avoid seeing this now-classic holiday film - seen and beloved and memed by apparently everyone else in my generation and all the generations after - until this year. Did I like it? Did I hate it? How were the other November 2000 releases? Let us talk:

Follow Your Passion: November 2000

We're nearing the end of the year 2000, as we reach November. Only two rewatches for this, neither of which I actually saw in 2000: