Our "Year of the Month" or, rather, first half of the month, is 2002. We've already talked Frida and Unfaithful , Viola's first bigscreen breakthrough, and Nicole's Best Actress win. We also introduced you to the Smackdown Panelists who'll be talking about the Best Supporting Actress race on June 17th so here's more context for that year in pop culture time...
Great Big Box Office Hits:
The leggy sleeper hit My Big Fat Freek Wedding, M Night Shyamalan's alien-invasion movie Signs, and the animated Ice Age were the top three "original" hits. Sequels or franchise launchers, were, as ever in our modern era, the very biggest hits with Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, and the then-latest Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter installments as the top four titles. The musical adaptation of Chicago was also a smash. And the major Oscar favourite. More on that after the jump...
Oscar's Best Picture Nominees:
Chicago (13 noms / 6 wins) battled it out with Roman Polanski's highly acclaimed Holocaust drama The Pianist (7 noms / 3 wins) for the top Oscars. The Academy ended up splitting Picture/Director to accomodate both. Rounding out the Best Picture list were Gangs of New York (10 noms / 0 wins), The Hours (9 noms / 1 win), and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (6 noms / 2 wins).
WHAT IF?
2002 is a fascinating case study in everyone's modern game "what would also have been nominated had the current rules been in place allowing for up to 10 Best Picture nominees?". Would love to hear your theories! A strong case could be made for Talk to Her as a rare foreign language nominee (since Almodóvar's hard-to-describe masterpiece had momentum and snagged a Director nomination and a Screenplay win. Otherwise the what-if story is murkier. Adaptation was well liked by the acting branch but awfully strange for Oscar's early Aughts taste, Road to Perdition and Frida both had plentiful craft nominations but people seemed cool on it them as whole movies. My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a populist juggernaut but awfully slight for Oscar's typical taste. Far From Heaven was well regarded but the Academy wasn't generous given what it deserved with only 4 nominations; hell, even the acting branch was stingy with Todd Hayne's gorgeous Sirk homage. About Schmidt had precursor attention but stumbled on nomination morning with only two citations. Catch Me If You Can and Y Tu Mama Tambien are very popular NOW but were they popular enough then given the barely-there Oscar results (2 and 1 nomination respectively).
Films That Endured (in some way) That Were Neither Oscar Nominees Nor Blockbusters
The comedy About a Boy, the sadomasochistic sexual drama Secretary, Spike Lee's 25th Hour, the one-shot arthouse classic Russian Ark, and JLos romcom Maid in Manhattan all had staying power (of some kind or another). Three famous titles from abroad Brazil's City of God, Hong Kong's Infernal Affairs, and the UK's 28 Days Later all started collecting fans in 2002 but they didn't hit the US until 2003 or 2004. City of God was an Oscar hit the following year, Infernal Affairs was remade into an English Language Best Picture winner (The Departed) and 28 Days Later proved hugely influential igniting a zombie craze that still hasn't subsided.
Nathaniel's Top Ten of 2002 (adjusted for current tastes)
- Far From Heaven
- Y Tu Mama Tambien
- Talk to Her
- 25th Hour
- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
- Late Marriage
- The Hours
- Monsoon Wedding
- Spirited Away
- Lovely & Amazing
...and I've just rewatched Chicago so perhaps it should move into the top ten. It's aged so well but more on that later.
Magazine Covers for Context...
(You can click to enlarge)
As you can see popular covergirls were Kirsten Dunst, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connelly, Jennifer Aniston, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, and Eminem.
Mix Tape (Select Hits of '02 to get you in the right headspace)
"Work It" (Missy Elliott), "Just Like a Pill / Get the Party Started / Don't Let Me Get Me" (P!nk), "Dirrty" (Christina Aguilera), "Can't Get You Outta My Head" (Kylie Minogue), "No More Drama" (Mary J Blige), "Whenever Wherever" (Shakira), "Don't Know Why" (Norah Jones), "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" (Britney Spears), "Hella Good" (No Doubt), "Gone" (NSync), "Hands Clean" (Alanis Morrissette), "Long Time Gone" (Dixie Chicks), "Complicated" (Avril Lavigne), and "A Thousand Miles" (Vanessa Carlton), and "Lose Yourself" (Eminem) from 8 Mile which is one of only two songs this century to hit #1 on the Billboard charts AND win the Oscar (the other is Lady Gaga's "Shallow" from A Star is Born).
More Music
American Idol premiered on Fox as an instant smash franchise and gave the world Kelly Clarkson during its freshman outing. "The Eminem Show" was the year's top selling album. The year's biggest surprise smash, as albums went though, was the "O Brother Where Art Thou?" soundtrack which won Album of the Year at the February Grammy's and cracked the top ten biggest sellers of the year when all was said and done. 2002 was also a year of classic bands splitting up: Supertramp, NSync, Culture Club, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Hole, and Salt-N-Pepa among them.
TV:
The West Wing (Season 3) and Friends (Season 8) won the top Emmys in September but CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (Season 2) was the #1 ranked program in the land. Jennifer Aniston won Best Actress for Friends and Stockard Channing won not one but two acting Emmys for Supporting Actress in a Drama (West Wing) and Supporting Actress in a Miniseries (The Matthew Shephard Story).
In other television happenings of 2002, The Wire began its acclaimed run on HBO, Joss Whedon's Firefly began and ended its cult-beloved run on Fox, MTV wrapped up its animated series Daria , and The Rosie O'Donnell Show also aired its last episode. 2002-era Nathaniel was wildly depressed at the cancellation of the awesome forever undervalued marital/family drama Once & Again starring Billy Campbell, Sela Ward, and the then-tiny Evan Rachel Wood, who wouldn't return to a TV series principal role until WestWorld in 2016.
Literature
Popular books included Alice Sebold's afterlife drama "The Lovely Bones," Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Klaus's "The Nanny Diaries", Ann Patchett's hostage drama "Bel Canto," Sarah Waters victorian crime novel "Fingersmith," Neil Gaiman's fantasy "Coraline" and David McCullough's Pulitzer winning biography "John Adams" . They have all since been adapted for televison or film, "Fingersmith" twice over, including the sensational South Korean film The Handmaiden (2016).
Stage
The Pulitzer Prize for drama went to Suzan-Lori Parks "Topdog/Underdog" which was also up for the Tony for Best Play. The Tony Award wins went to Edward Albee's incredible "The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?" (play) and "Thoroughly Modern Millie" (musical) the latter of which catapulted the ever-delightful Sutton Foster to instant fame (and the first of two Tony wins). Bernadette Peters and Gregory Hines hosted the Tony Awards that year. Unbeknownst to the those of us watching, Hines already had cancer and he would die a year later at just 57, a great loss to musicals.
Showtune to Go!
Our favourite number from Thoroughly Modern Millie...