10 Years Ago, This Weekend, "The Hours" Won Best Picture at the Globes
Sunday, January 20, 2013 at 11:00PM Nicole Kidman was having a pretty great night.
Meryl won for "Adaptation" and Nicole won for "The Hours"
Hanging' out on all sorts of red carpets with Meryl Streep usually helps in that regard. If you can't share scenes with her at least have her on your team by way of a shared movie.
Our 10th Anniversary Celebration of The Hours
- Nicole Kidman remembers her Oscar win (Exclusive Interview!)
- Breakfast with... Clarissa, Virginia and Laura Brown
- Epic Discussion Part 1: Ravenous Kisses, Fidgety Hands
- Epic Discussion Part 2: Score, Performance, Re-Casting
We hope you enjoyed this look back. I imagine The Film Experience would be more popular if it stuck to current movie news all the time like every other site but I cannot live without my retro celebrations. I'm greedy. I need films from all eras in my movie diet.
This next part is for Hours and Film Experience Obsessives only...
Julianne at the January Golden Globes in 2003
Other Key Prizes The Hours won in its theatrical journey:
Best Foreign Film Trophies: in Norway, Sweden, and Germany's own 'Oscars' if you will
Berlinale: Best Actress (shared - Kidman, Streep, Moore)
NBR: Best Film
GLAAD: Outstanding Feature Film
WGA: Best Adapted Screenplay
BAFTA: Best Actress (Kidman) and Best Score (Philip Glass)
Oscar: Best Actress (Kidman)
Out of curiousity for what I myself was feeling back in January 2003 I looked back at my own awards and I was surprised to see that The Hours -- which I think about a lot and which is a favorite communal piece among the Actressexuals of the world that The Film Experience named and helped unite -- did not score all that spectacularly well in my own awards. It was nominated here at the Film Bitch Awards for only three traditional categories: Best Actress (Nicole Kidman), Best Adapted Screenplay (David Hare), and Best Editing (Peter Boyle) medalling only for the latter (bronze). In my "extra" categories it scored a silver medal for Toni Collette in the cameo department, a nomination for "Best Kiss" for Janney & Streep, and a Best Scene nomination for The Train Station.
It made my top ten list at #8, though. I wrote:
In almost any article you'll read about this motion picture, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel upon which it is is based is called "unfilmable." Never mind all that. Unfilmable novels get made into movies every year. I read the novel (a work of genius) after hearing of the casting of this motion picture. With actresses as talented as Streep, Kidman, and Moore onboard, unfilmable was always an inappropriate adjective. Who better than the exceptionally talented A list team to illuminate the interior monologues that this magnificent book is riddled with?
Though the film falls short of the masterfully complex feeling of Michael Cunningham's novel, it's still a sophisticated, perceptive and fascinatingly assembled triptych. It casts a rarely seen thematic light on the generational progress of female as well as gay liberation. The ambitious carefully rendered portraits of sadness illustrate how emotional struggles can be passed down and reverbate through bloodlines, art, and relationships.
Shameful Confession: Not many people recall this now but Gangs of New York was not the only 2002 Best Picture nominee that year that was supposed to be a 2001 movie. The Hours was delayed for about a year and was originally supposed to open in 2001. I actually saw the film long before its theatrical release first on a bootleg. That's how desperate I was to see it - three of my all time favorite actresses headlining together and Hollywood told me I had to wait another full year !?! I'm not proud of this and i literally never did it again with another picture because a) unethical and b) unfair to both the movie and the moviegoer because it's not the proper way to see something! I have wondered from time to time if my initial somewhat muted reaction to it (obviously admired but didn't quite go gaga for it) had something to do with that shoddy first viewing experience several months before seeing it come to its proper gorgeously wrought life on the big screen.
Film Bitch Awards Flashback
My best actress nominees of 2002... (and yes i know i know i've been promising a book of the first ten years)
It breaks my heart to see Meryl Streep left off the list as she was with Oscar (the dread 6th spot with both!) as it's one of my favorite performances of hers but the only performance that could possibly budge is Kidman's own and I go back and forth on which I prefer in the movie. I'm not sure I agree with my "semi-finalists" there anymore but that top five is for the history books, yes? So much great actressing.
Reader Comments (15)
These retro celebrations are just one of the many things why I have been reading The Film Experience for more than five years now, please don't stop.
Loved this retrospective. I was never a huge fan of The Hours, the actressy-ness excluded of course, but it's so wonderful to read articles like the ones that have been on the site this week that are written by people who feel passionately and fondly about their subject. And even better, who are outside of the rush of awards season and given the space of several years go get comfortable with it, to have perspective, to have seen it more than once.
Didn't you nominate Miranda Richardson in the supporting category?
Nat: When you look at your Top Ten lists link up top, you no longer have The Hours in the top 10 (or even listed). Has it fallen since its #8 placement at the time?
Oh, please, Nathaniel. This blog is so impeccably maintained in its balanced between current, future, and retrospective posts, I hope you should never doubt its purpose, mission, and execution. I was hoping for even MORE articles about The Hours when you first introduced the subject matter. But I'm so happy you reminded us of this film, its moment, and its ripples in the cinematic ether over these ten years. So few films have cut as deep and waded as long, in such a time. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
H U P P E R T
everything Steve said.
I so love the shared Berlinale award for all three of them.
In Armani and YSL!
I love this Streep win. It set in motion the second wave of awards for Meryl. Not being alive to enjoy Meryl's march to the podium in the 1980s, I had never imagined that I would get to see her win another award.
No need to excuse. You know we love this retro celebrations. I enjoyed so much when you and Nick Davis revisited 1986. Why not 87, 88 or 89?
Even though the cast turned out to be superb, I read The Hours in 1999 with no casting announcements yet and that was such a relief for me as a reader. These days every single book seems to come out with a movie adaptation on its way.
I think the retor stuff keeps the blog alive and interesting and i love the podcasts,the last one with the backlask line cracked me up,what would be good if you did actress or supporting actress years from times past and what would have been your picks,keep on moving on.
Ahhh seeing old film bitch nominees, loves it
Ahhh, Blanchett in the Semi-Finalists. I doubt we'll be seeing her in your chart in the near future hehe.
Tell him, Paco!
Personally, I keep going back and forth about whether to the performances should have been classified as lead or supporting. I don't buy the "Streep and Kidman are leads, Moore is supporting" argument that stuck with the Academy. I think they're either all lead or all supporting, depending on how you interpret it. On one hand, they're all clearly the focus of their individual storylines in the film, all of which are roughly equal in importance and length (well, within a few minutes of each other, anyway). So in that respect they could all be considered leading roles. On the other hand, since each of the individual segments are about one-third of the total movie, it could be said that they're all contributing to a larger whole, and are thus all supporting roles. I personally like this latter interpretation more, if only because I get to give Julianne both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in my personal fantasy award show.
As somebody who would much rather read somebody write about stuff they're actually passionate about rather than whatever's new just because they have to, I adore any and all retro stuff!