Oscar's One Hit Wonders or When Bad Nominations Happen to Good Actors

[Here's abstew to talk about a semi-annual Oscar tradition. Even if you disagree with the picks you surely recognize the curious problem. Will any of 2013's future nominees qualify for this list? -Editor]

When it comes to acting nominations, let's face it, not everyone can be Meryl Streep (17 nominations and counting). And with only 20 acting nominations to hand out each year, there's always going to be people left out. So many factors affect nominations: how well the actor is liked in the industry, whether they've been nominated (or won) before, how visible they've been promoting the movie, whether or not it's their "time". Sometimes the actual performance doesn't weigh in as heavily as it should.

Which is why the Academy gives something I like to call the "Oh, sorry we didn't nominate you for that great movie you were in a couple years ago, but let's call it even by nominating you for this instead" nomination. For many actors their body of work greatly out-weighs the single nomination. (For purposes of this list, I'm focusing only on actors who've received their nomination in the past 25 years or so but this has been happening since the beginning of (Oscar's) time.)

With so many greats yet to receive a nomination, perhaps we should be grateful that the following actors can precede their name with "Academy Award Nominee", but knowing how much better they are than this single nomination implies... 

Single Nomination: Best Actress, Catherine Deneuve Indochine (1992)

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European Film Award Wi -- what? Scorsesaywhat?

I watched a bit of the European Film Awards live streaming earlier today and the first sight that greeted me was Anke Engelke looking like she'd stepped out of the Capitol to announce the next Hunger Games. The only thing she got wrong was that her hair and makeup were too demure. Tim said she looked a "teensy bit too lindt bunny" which made me giggle.

While attempting to watch the show I was pulled into an endless twitter debate about misogyny and glorification/condemnation thereof in The Wolf of Wall Street - a conversation which I expect will rage throughout awards season unless the veritable army of Scorsese stans succeeds in stamping out open discussion about the movie's merits; they're weirdly adamant that one should only do adrenaline fueled wolf howls at it which is, I don't mind saying, one of the worst things that can happen to a movie that merits any kind of considered conversation.

SOOOOOO, while I didn't make it all the way through the EFAs and am ashamed to note that I missed Catherine Deneuve's tribute altogether (argh) here are 5 thoughts from the ceremony...

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Team Top Ten: Women Who Deserve An Honorary Oscar

Amir here, to bring you this month’s Team Top Ten on a topic that remains one of our biggest collective pet peeves here at The Film Experience.

Every year when the Academy announces the list of recipients of the Honorary Oscar, we can expect only one thing: they will all be men. Sure, the odd woman wins the award here and there, but consider this: between 1993, when the honor was bestowed upon Deborah Kerr, until 2009, when Lauren Bacall shared the award with two men, not a single woman was deemed worthy of the biggest honor AMPAS has to offer. Apologists can point to the fact that men have run the industry at large since its inception. They would be right; the industry as a whole is equally at fault, if not more, but take a look at the list of women still awaiting their first statue – or *gasp* first nomination – and tell me they don’t deserve better than one golden man every sixteen years. If the drought is as depressingly long this time as it was between Kerr and Bacall, it can be 2025 before we see another lady take home an honorary Oscar!

Deborah Kerr in 1993 and Lauren Bacall in 2009 and a great chasm between them

We know all too well that complaining about the Academy’s decision doesn’t get us anywhere, but since we found recently that they do have a listening ear, we’ve decided to do our part and help them correct this injustice. Let’s give voters the benefit of the doubt and assume that all they really needed all these years was a list of suggestions. So, here is ours: the top ten women who most deserve an honorary Oscar, under the following three criteria: they need to be alive, above the age of 55 and Oscar-less.

 GIVE THESE WOMEN THE HONORARY! 

[tie] 10. Marni Nixon
You may not know what Marni Nixon looks like, but I guarantee you know what she sounds like. If you've seen Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Secret Garden (1949), The King and I, An Affair to Remember, West Side Story, or My Fair Lady, you have heard Nixon's golden voice coming from the mouths of some of Hollywood's most legendary actresses. As if it isn't hard enough work to try to make your voice sound just like someone else's, in some instances Nixon had to do so in secret, the studios wanting to hide the dubbing from their big stars. Nixon's onscreen credits may number only in the single digits (her role as Sister Sophia in The Sound of Music being the most famous by far), but had she actually performed the roles she dubbed onscreen, she would have had at least two Oscar nominations by now. She's an indelible part of film history, and she never received any onscreen credit for her most famous work. If that isn't cause to give someone an Honorary Oscar, then I don't know what is.
-Daniel Bayer

10 more legends to honor after the jump!  

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Top Ten 1960s

I still have a lot more to see from the 1960s but this top ten, more than most apart from the 1980s is a combination of films I fell for as a child on television in the 70s and 80s and films I love now as an adult. I'm bookending with two Natalie Wood features -- the first actress I ever loved -- though I recognize that they are more personal favorites than perfect films. That caveat aside I do find Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice to be grossly undervalued since it's essentiall a comedy about its time and therefore "light" and "dated" . Still, I absolutely insist, it's a wonderful wonderful light and dated thing. At the top of the list West Side Story has been my favorite film of all time for as long as I remember being conscious of movies so it'll just have to keep on being so -- it's fundamentally part of who I am -- flaws and all (and yes, I can see its flaws).

Natalie & Deneuve, the greatest of the 60s screen beauties

top ten
01 West Side Story (1961)
02 Persona (1967)
03 Psycho (1960)
04 The Sound of Music (1965)
05 Bonnie & Clyde (1967)
06 Hud (1963)
07 They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)
08 [Cheating w/ a Deneuve Double] The Umbrellas of Cherbrough (1965) & Belle de Jour (1967)
09 The Manchurian Candidate (1962) 
10 Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)

pick a film, any film

i'll only be satisfied with a top 17
11 Rosemary's Baby (1968)
12 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
13 Splendor in the Grass (1961)
14 La Dolce Vita (1960)
15 Mary Poppins (1964).... coming up soon on "Hit Me..."
16 Playtime (1967)
17 Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

and affectionate nods to... 
Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), Breathless (1961), Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962), My Fair Lady (1964), 8 ½ (1963), Darling (1965), The Apartment (1960), Bay of Angels (1963), and Rachel Rachel (1968).

Which films define you and which films can't you live without... from the subcategory of the 1960s of course?

Previous Top Ten Quickies
1930s | 1950s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2010s (thus far)  
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Kidman in Cannes. Part 1.

Jose here. The Cannes Film Festival starts today and I think we all can agree that the most important thing about it this year is the fact that Nicole Kidman is on the jury. Right?

This year's Competition Jury, as Nathaniel has already pointed out, might very well be the real life equivalent of The Avengers, with Nicole being reigning Queen of them all I know Spielberg's the President, shut up...  so during the next eleven days, we'll cover Nicole sightings, as we watch her fiercefully conquer the world of auteurship and wonder what some of her most beloved characters would think about what she's up to... 

The first Nicole sighting took place Tuesday evening as she showed up to the Jury dinner. 

Who She Wore: Dior (hmm is she trying to steal the spotlight from the damoiselles de Dior?)
Which Director She's Trying to Lure: When I first saw this, I immediately thought David Lynch, because I thought it was blue…turns out everyone else rightfully saw it as black and now I keep thinking Wong Kar-wai because this dress screams In the Mood for Love.
What Suzanne Stone-Maretto would think of this: "I'm on TV! Let me shine!"

Two more Kidman looks after the jump...

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