The Supporting Actress Smackdown 1994 Edition arrives in just two weeks (Sunday June 24th) so as we approach and you vote (hint hint), let's talk context in movies and entertainment.
Great Big Box Office Hits: 1. Forrest Gump 2. The Lion King 3. True Lies 4. The Santa Clause 5. The Flintstones 6. Dumb & Dumber 7. Clear and Present Danger 8. Speed 9. The Mask and 10. Pulp Fiction just barely beating out Interview with the Vampire to complete the top ten.
Oscar's Best Picture Nominees: Forrest Gump (13 noms / 6 wins), Pulp Fiction (7 noms / 1 win), The Shawshank Redemption (7 nominations), Quiz Show (4 noms), and the surprise Four Weddings and a Funeral (only 2 nominations in the 'only 5' Best Picture era!).
After the jump more vintage '94 and our best guess as to what would have made the list in the current voting era of 5-10 nominees...
I'm going to say there would have been six or seven nominees only with Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway (7 noms / 1 win) a definite and the foreign film Three Colors: Red (3 noms in major categories) a possibility if the new voting system for Best Picture were retroactively applied. Other films Oscar kinda liked in a year where the love was mostly unemphatic and spread fairly wide: The Madness of King George (4 noms / 1 win), The Lion King (4 noms / 2 wins all in below the line categories), Speed (3 noms / 2 wins all in below the line categories), Little Women (3 nominations), Legends of the Fall (3 noms in below the line categories), Tom & Viv and Nobody's Fool (2 noms in major categories).
Serial Mom has only become more popular over the years.
Films That Endured in Some Way That Were Not Nominated for Any Oscars and Weren't Box Office Smashes Either: Léon: The Professional, The Crow, Natural Born Killers, Shallow Grave, The Last Seduction (ruled ineligible for Oscars), The River Wild, Serial Mom, Chungking Express, and Exotica. (Two arthouse darlings that people now think of as 1994 films -- due to IMDb dating -- are Priest and Muriel's Wedding but they were squarely 1995 films for almost everyone with only festival debuts in 94 but for an Australian release for the latter in late 1994.)
Nathaniel's Top Ten of 1994
Heavenly Creatures introduced the world to Kate Winslet & Melanie Lynskey. The world is not grateful enough.
- Heavenly Creatures
- Pulp Fiction (though I worry how it's aging. about to watch again)
- Queen Margot
- Bullets Over Broadway
- Three Colors: Red
- Ed Wood
- Reality Bites (no movie screams "94!" more to me. I saw it 4 times in the theater and my friends and I quoted it endlessly)
- Four Weddings and a Funeral
- Nell (sorry not sorry. Loved it in '94)
- Chungking Express
Magazine Covers for Context:
It was the year of the OJ Simpson's arrest, Kurt Cobain's suicide, The Rwandan genocide, Nelson Mandela's election in South Africa, the Harding/Kerrigan Olympic scandal, Forrest Gump and Lion King making behemoth bank to become two of the most popular films ever, and Pulp Fiction making a surprise cultural impact. Popular cover girls were Cindy Crawford and Brad Pitt among many more. Here are some magazines from the time.
Mix Tape (Huge-Ass Hits of '94): According to Billboard the year's biggest hits were "The Sign" by Ace of Base, "I Swear" by All-4-One, "I'll Make Love To You," by Boyz II Men, "The Power of Love" by Céline Dion, "Hero," by Maraiah Carey, "Stay" by Lisa Loeb, and "Breathe Again" by Toni Braxton.
THE GREATEST PERFORMANCE IN THE HISTORY OF MUSIC VIDEOS: Juliette Lewis in "Come to My Window"
Songs I was, um, let's just say obsessed with, that year were the aforementioned "Stay" plus "Come to My Window" by Melissa Etheridge, "The Last Goodbye" by Jeff Buckley, "Linger" by the Cranberries, "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails, "Take a Bow" by Madonna, 'Gentlemen Who Fell" by Milla Jovovich (yes that Milla Jovovich) and every single thing about these three albums: Hole "Live Through This," Tori Amos "Under the Pink," and Salt-n-Pepa "Very Necessary".
TV: "Frasier" and "Picket Fences" won the top Emmy Awards for the 93/94 season. I was 1000% about "My So Called Life" that year --even ditching "Friends" to watch it as no one else was doing (hence the cancellation). Other famous programs that debuted that year were "Ellen," "Inside the Actors Studio" "Chicago Hope" "ER" and "Party of Five". Turner Classic Movies channel also makes its debut -- Gone With the Wind (1939) is the first movie they show.
Other Arts: Tony Kushner's Angels in America: Perestroika won Best Play and Stephen Sondheim's Passion best musical at the Tony Awards. Edward Albee's Three Tall Women (currently on Broadway in a wildly acclaimed revival) wins the Pulitzer for Drama while "The Shipping News," by Annie Proux wins the Pulitzer for Fiction. Edvard Munch's masterpiece "The Scream" is famously stolen in Oslo in early 94 and recovered months later in the year.
Saiorse Ronan was the first 1994 baby to win an oscar nomination. And still the only.
Born in '94
Oscar Nominees: Saoirse Ronan only!; Actors: Dakota Fanning, Miles Heizer, Ansel Elgort, Dakota Blue Richards, Taissa Farmiga, Booboo Stewart, Israel Broussard, Eller Coltrane, Zoey Deutch, Dacre Montgomery, Nat Woolf, Kofi Siriboe, Ivana Baquero, and Alice Englert (Jane Campion's actress daughter); Singers: Justin Beiber, and Harry Styles
Showtune to Go: Tony-winning genius Donna Murphy singing Sondheim's sublime "Loving You" from Passion.