10 Years Ago, This Weekend, "The Hours" Won Best Picture at the Globes
Sunday, January 20, 2013 at 11:00PM
NATHANIEL R in 10|25|50|75|100, Film Bitch Awards, Golden Globes, Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman

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

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. 

 

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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