Vintage '05
Wednesday, August 12, 2020 at 10:00AM The Supporting Actress Smackdown of 2005 is just a week away so get your votes in! Before we get there it's time for more context of that year in showbiz history. Ready?
Great Big Box Office Hits:
Franchises of multiple kinds dominated the box office with Harry Potter 4, Star Wars Episode 3, and the launches of Chronicles of Narnia and Chris Nolan's Batman trilogy as half of the top ten list that year. Other huge hits were the romantic comedy Hitch, the Brangelina pairing of Mr & Mrs Smith, the remakes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, War of the Worlds, and King Kong, and the comedies Wedding Crashers and Meet the Fockers.
Oscar's Best Picture Nominees:
In the mid-Aughts the Oscars were veering away from big hits in their Best Picture lineups (to eventually rule-changing results) but Brokeback Mountain was the most successful of the lot with $178 million globally...
Sadly and infamously it lost the Oscar to Crash which was weirdly regularly painted in the media as the "popular" movie, despite it being literally half as successful as Brokeback at the box office, both domestically and abroad. Munich, like Crash, was a modest hit. The other nominees, Capote and Good Night and Good Luck, were more critical darlings than popular.
But what would have been nominated in a ten-wide Best Picture field?
The biopics Walk the Line (5 nominations) and Cinderella Man (3 nominations) would likely have made it as they were both hits from Oscar's favourite genre and both received the key Film Editing nomination. The Constant Gardener (4 nominations) also received an Editing nod (Editing usually hews much closer to Best Picture than it did that particular annum). But after those three it's a lot harder to read. What would have been the final two nominees? Memoirs of a Geisha received 6 nominations and King Kong 4 but neither of them scored in any of the 'big eight' categories. Pride & Prejudice was beautifully rendered and nabbed 4 nominations but people didn't seem to appreciate it as much back then as they should have. A History of Violence and Hustle & Flow were both critical darlings that received two nominations but they were quite edgy for AMPAS at the time in one of that organization's stuffiest decades. Woody Allen's Match Point had comeback buzz but only received 1 nomination... was it running 6th-7th place in Supporting Actress and Director (?) and, if so, maybe Best Picture wasn't so far off? March of the Penguins was a huge populist hit... but no documentary has ever been up for Best Picture even in expanded field years.
WHICH FILMS DO YOU THINK IT WOULD HAVE BEEN?
Films That Endured (in some way) That Were Neither Oscar Nominees Nor Blockbusters:
2005 is too recent to play this particular game. Films that might eventually qualify for staying power include The 40 Year Old Virgin, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and the documentary Grizzly Man. If you're accounting for foreign titles Kung Fu Hustle and 2046 are arguably the key titles (at the moment at least... but who knows what another 10 years will do to perceptions of this film year).
Nathaniel's Top Ten of 2005
- Brokeback Mountain
- A History of Violence
- Pride & Prejudice
- Caché
- Me and You and Everyone We Know
- The New World
- Wallace & Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
- Kings and Queen
- Brothers
- Good Night, and Good Luck.
The last title there was up higher in its year but I barely remember anything about it (!) A rewatch is surely necessary. On the other hand a recent screening of Capote suggests I greatly underestimated it in 2005.
Magazine Covers for Context...
(You can click to enlarge)
Frequent cover stars were Jessica Alba, Scarlett Johansson, Kanye West, 50 Cent, Reese Witherspoon, Vince Vaugh, Nicole Kidman, Tom Brady, Charlize Theron, various Desperate Housewives and Lost and Star Wars stars. Magazines were obsessed with celebrity couplings including Renée Zellwegger's shortlived nuptials, Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes noisy romance, and most consistently for the entire year, the Jennifer Aniston / Brad Pitt/ Angelina Jolie triangle and fallout.
Mix Tape (Select Hits of '05):
"We Belong Together" by Mariah Carey was the best-selling single of the year. Other key hits included "Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani, "Mr Brightside" by the Killers, "Since U Been Gone" (and basically everything else) by Kelly Clarkson, "Gold Digger" by Kanye, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day, "Hung Up" by Madonna, "Don't Cha" by the Pussycat Dolls, "Candy Shop" by 50 Cent, "My Humps" by The Black Eyed Peas, "Fix You" by Coldplay, "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt, and "Lose Control" by Missy Elliott.
TV: Departing Everybody Loves Raymond and arriving Lost won the top Emmy Awards though a good deal of the television buzz that year centered around huge freshman hit Desperate Housewives which became the second series (after Golden Girls in the 1980s) to nab three leading actress nominations in a single year. The lead acting prizes went to Tony Shalhoub (Monk), Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives), James Spader (Boston Legal), Patricia Arquette (Medium), Geoffrey Rush (The Life and Death of Peter Sellers), and S Epatha Merkerson (Lackawanna Blues). Also premiering that year but too late for those particular Emmy Awards were Grey's Anatomy (which never left the air thereafter), Weeds (Showtime), Kathy Griffin My Life on the D List (Bravo), The Colbert Report (Comedy Central), and Dancing with the Stars (ABC).
Ending their television runs in 2005 were two-time Emmy champ Everybody Loves Raymond, former Emmy champ NYPD Blue, HBO's expensive flop Carnivale, and their much beloved family drama hit Six Feet Under.
Literature: Playwright Harold Pinter won the Nobel for his body of work. Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell won the Hugo. New buzzy books or best-sellers included Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, Zadie Smith's On Beauty, Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief, David McCullough's 1776, John Grogan's Marley & Me, and Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Stage: Doubt (which won the Pulitzer for Drama) and Spamalot! won Best Play and Best Musical respectively at the Tony Awards. The also-rans in the top categories were clearly the excellent Pillowman (which won 2 Tonys) and the transcendent Light in the Piazza (which won 6 Tonys and should have taken the top prize, too).
Showtunes to Go:
Here's Sara Ramirez singing the best song from Spamalot! "Whatever Happened to My Part?"
It might as well double as the anthem of all actors who have so much more to show then their careers and roles often let them. To think Sara became a Tony winning star singing this and then never got cast in a movie musical and instead spent the next decade plus on Grey's Anatomy.
Reader Comments (36)
Spot on with your 5 - 10 BP pics,I think Memoirs of a Geisha,Match Point,The Constant Gardener,A History of Violence & North Country.
I enjoy Joe Wright's P&P, but it surely wasn't helped by coming barely 10 years after the definitive BBC adaptation. For a lot of people Matthew Macfadyen was no Colin Firth...
This doesn’t feel that long ago. I’m getting old. Remember when topless Jennifer Aniston was everywhere you looked on the magazine rack?
Would have benn:
-Brokeback
-History of Violence
-Wall the Line
-Match Point
-Me and you and you know what
Love these recaps of the Smackdown years! Appreciate all the work you put into them.
My top 10:
Pride & Prejudice
Brokeback Mountain
Serenity
Thank You for Smoking
Heights
Match Point
Capote
Good Luck and Good Night
Loggerheads
Kinky Boots
Hovering just outside of those:
Brick, Walk the Line, The Upside of Anger, The Constant Gardner and Time to Leave.
God, I loathed Cache. I've never been so viscerally angry at a movie for wasting my time. A cinematic apologia for a white man's guilt over his racist past and tendencies.
My personal Top 10:
1. The Squid and the Whale
2. Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
3. Palindromes
4. 2046
5. Saraband
6. Brokeback Mountain
7. Capote
8. Save the Green Planet!
9. Paradise Now
10. Turtles Can Fly
Best Documentary: Grizzly Man
1) 2046
2) Brokeback Mountain
3) Capote
4) Cache
5) L'Enfant
Apatow has his detractors but I don't think there's any denying 40-Year-Old Virgin made a sizeable impact on the comedy genre.
Save for the perfection that is "Brokeback Mountain," 2005 was not a great year at the movies. Rachel McAdams had a good year though. Her underrated "Red Eye" and "Family Stone" are the only two films other than "Brokeback" I would watch again.
Family Stone EASILY makes my Top 10 and is such a delightful revisit with a strong cast and a very thoughtful screenplay
Brokeback Mountain has only gotten better with time. It's just an amazing piece of film, and Heath Ledger's finest hour (probably Jake G's as well).
Also, I'd forgotten that David Harbor has a small role in it where he makes googly eyes at Jake G! (sigh, who wouldn't)
01. Brokeback Mountain
02. The Squid and the Whale
03. Pride & Prejudice
04. Junebug
05. Nobody Knows
06. Howl's Moving Castle
07. Caché
08. Grizzly Man
09. A History of Violence
10. Capote
It's all about BM for me. I hate everything related to Crash and most of my hate isn't because it beat Brokeback it's because it is plainly a bad film. Squid and Whale I wish was as admired in 2005 as it is now because if there were a film Baumbach should've broken through with the academy it should've been it. Linney and Daniels were highly deserving of couples leading noms.
Light in the Piazza is one of my favourite musicals and I agree it should've beaten Spamelot which is a show which really is of it's time and doesn't hold up as a stellar show.
absolutely love these 2000s mass entertainment recaps you're doing. Please keep doing them!
completely subjective, I am pretty sure the five movies that would be in had it been an expanded year, would be:
6. Walk the Line
7. The Constant Gardener
8. Memoirs of a Geisha
9. Match Point
10. A History of Violence
Geisha, Pride and Prejudice and Walk the Line.
I think a History of Violence is probably too dark to make into the top category. I think something scrappy like Hustle and Flow (given the love of small films with big performances at the time) and Memoirs of a Geisha would have been likelier contenders.
One thing that made 2005 so exciting was finally seeing S Epatha Merkerson finally get her due as an actress with a rich HBO role. Though it hasn't led to much awards success in the future, she had a great TV awards season.
Also, not to nit-pick since the Emmys are odd, but Grey's Anatomy was eligble for awards in 2005, and scores some major - this will be a big player next year - nods in Directing and Supporting Actress for Sandra Oh.
When books are written about pop culture in the aughts I hope there's a chapter on Mr. & Mrs. Smith. It really does feel like the apex of something—Bush-era intelligence porn, tabloid sensationalism, the last movie stars who could still open pictures.
Kanye was called a class act...
Also King do Hustle great action comedy love Stephen Chow.
My Top 10 of 2005 is:
1. BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
2. CRASH
3. JUNEBUG
4. NOVEMBER
5. HEIGHTS
6. WALK THE LINE
7. KING KONG
8. SIN CITY
9. MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
10. CURSED
Top 10 of 2005:
Hak se wooi (Election)
Brokeback Mountain
A History of Violence
Cache
The Proposition
Lady Vengeance
The Constant Gardener
Batman Begins
Sin City
Match Point
Acclaimed movies from this year I have not seen yet: The Death of Mr. Lãzãrescu, L´enfant, Three Times, 2046
The 10 nominated Oscar movies:
Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Munchen, Good Night and Good Luck
A History of Violence, The New World, The Constant Gardener, Match Point, Memories of a Geisha
Great performances not nominated:
Cate Blanchett in Little Fish
Scarlet Johansson in Match Point
Jospeh Gordon-Levitt in Brick
Emily Watson in The Proposition
Christian Bale in Batman Begins
Viggo Mortensen in A History of Violence
Maria Bello in A History of Violence
Robin Wright in Nine Lives
Juliette Binoche in Cache
Ralph Fiennes in The Constant Gardener
Mickey Rourke in Sin City
Matt Dillon in Crash
Tilda Swinton in Narnia
BTW, I am so happy someone else mentioned HEIGHTS! Thanks joel6! It is such a severely underrated film. Before Chris Terrio won the Oscar for ARGO, he made this small gem of a movie which contains Oscar worthy performances from Glenn Close, Elizabeth Banks (who IMO has never been better), Jesse Bradford and James Marsden. Everyone should give it a watch!
In a field of ten, the other 5 nominees i guess:
Walk the line (the clear 6th IMO)
The constant gardener
Pride and prejudice
A history of violence
as for the 10th i'm iffy between Match point and King Kong
Top 10 films of 2005 (so far for me)...
1. The New World
2. Brick
3. Last Days
4. Brokeback Mountain
5. Cache`
6. The Proposition
7. L'Enfant
8. A History of Violence
9. The Squid and the Whale
10. Pride and Prejudice
Once again, Nine Inch Nails is ignored here as Trent Reznor came back big with 3 #1 Modern Rock hit singles from With Teeth. Yes, it's often regarded the weakest albums amongst NIN fans but it was still great to hear new things from after being gone for a few years. Queens of the Stone Age came out with an excellent album.
Y'all can take your poor man's Radiohead/U2 in Coldplay and that Black Eyed Peas bullshit and shove it up your ass.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith holds up very well. Actually all Doug Liman films do. Very underrated director.
My favorite of the year - Brick. But I was also so into 2046, and I love seeing multiple mentions of Heights. I've watched that so many times. Felt so real and lived in to me, and it just looked right and had some excellent performances (including one of my favorites from Close). Also, Red Eye was so much fun.
As to the rest of the top 10 I'd guess:
6. Walk the Line
7. The Constant Gardener
8. Memoirs of a Geisha
9. History of Violence
10. Match Point
And I always thought there was a decent chance Walk the Line would have won if it'd gotten into the top 5.
I think in a ten-wide field, THE SQUID AND THE WHALE squeaks in -- hopefully bringing enough momentum with it to perhaps score nods for Daniels and Linney
My top 10:
1.Brokeback mountain
2.Cache
3.The deat of Mr. Lazarescu
4.A history of violence
5.Grizzly man
6.El aura
7.C.R.A.Z.Y.
8.L'enfant
9.Good night and good luck
10.The constant gardener
Hung up was the last great song by Madonna
The last episode of Six feet under was really great and introduced Sia's Breathe me
The one movie my students constantly quote from that year is Grizzly Man. I also can't stop staring at those magazine covers. Did you know there are "Gay Teens"! Heh.
I really didn't like the actual Best Picture line-up. This is a year that would have really benefitted from a field of ten. I think 6-10 would have been Walk the Line, The Constant Gardener, Match Point, A History of Violence and King Kong.
Other films I liked were Caché, L'Enfant, Oliver Twist and Revenge of the Sith.
Very interested look back as always.
I remember starting visiting the film experience around this time. It would be also interesting to do a look back at 2005 film experience.
What were the most popular posts, most written about performances.
I love, love this post, down to Sara Ramirez. I guess that year marked me more than I remembered. Brokeback, I couldn’t connect with at the time, yet, keeps growing deeper as I age. Talk about a great film.
High expectations for Rent the movie and not so good and when they film Wicked unfortunately Idina Menzel won't reprise her role - or Kristin Chenoweth. :'(
H -- i love your comment. I think you're right.
Christine -- gay teens was a new concept!
thevoid99 -- i included Nine Inch Nails in that collage of magazine covers
I remember this year like it was yesterday - but it was 15 years ago! Yikes!
Brad/Jen/Angelina were all the rage that year. And I remember seeing Mr. and Mrs. Smith in the theatres - such a fun time! Their chemistry was electric.
Other than Brokeback Mountain, I'm not crazy about the top 5 films Oscar chose for best picture. The other four leave me cold, although it's been awhile since I've seen them. Walk the Line was clearly in sixth place. I remember many pundits were predicting it to be nominated. Munich was the surprise. Of the remaining in a ten-wide field, probably The Constant Gardener and Cinderella Man? And then Hustle & Flow and A History of Violence could've been the passion picks.
I'm surprised Match Point didn't do better. It was hailed as such a return for Woody Allen and received rave reviews (and was a decent art house hit). Weird that it only received a screenplay nod.
my five:
*brokeback mountain*
match point
murderball
mysterious skin
paradise now
"HBO's expensive flop Carnivale"
HEYHEYHEY!!! THEMSFIGHTINGWORDS!!! >:/