Comment Party: Best Actress, 1991

by Nathaniel R

Remember Bette's dream project "For the Boys"?

We've probably done TOO much 1991 before this next Smackdown! Apologies for those of you without a particular affinity for that year but you've only got one more day of this to get through. We thought it might be fun to briefly discuss the Best Actress race of that year before the Supporting Actress Smackdown event tomorrow.

OSCAR NOMINEES

• Geena Davis, Thelma & Louise
• Laura Dern, Rambling Rose
• Jodie Foster, Silence of the Lambs ★ 
• Bette Midler, For the Boys
• Susan Sarandon, Thelma & Louise

If I remember the year correctly this lineup was basically a done deal ahead of time but for the fifth slot...

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John Singleton made history

by Cláudio Alves

As previously explored in our 1991 pre-Smackdown ruminations, the 64th Academy Awards were marked by several first in the annals of Oscar history. The Silence of the Lambs became the first horror movie to conquer Best Picture, and it was also only the third flick to win the Oscars' Big Five (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay) after It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Among the other Best Picture contenders, Disney's Beauty and the Beast also made a splash, becoming the first animated feature to be nominated for that most important category. Still, more important even than that landmark for animation, we have the case of John Singleton who, in one fell swoop, became the first Black man to be in contention for the Best Director Oscar, as well as the youngest nominee in the category's history…

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Remembering Howard Ashman

by Cláudio Alves

On the morning of February 19th, 1992, the nominations for the 64th Academy Awards were announced. As always, the last category to be revealed was that of Best Picture and, just as Best Director lineup had done, it brought with it a historical event. Disney's Beauty and the Beast became the first animated feature to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, a momentous achievement that was applauded by the audience of journalists. It was the only Best Picture nominee to receive such jubilant cheer and it's easy to see why. While some had predicted the cartoon's glorious haul of nominations, the long-lasting prejudices of AMPAS against animation made its success seem impossible. Thankfully, even the Academy can get over itself from time to time, and honor truly deserving cinema. Beauty and the Beast is certainly deserving, being a masterpiece of American animation, as well as one of Disney's crown jewels.

Unfortunately, not everyone involved with its triumph was able to bask in the glory of the Oscar nominations. One of the men most responsible for the wonder of Beauty and the Beast was long gone by the time of the announcement…

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When Bening met Beatty

by Cláudio Alves

Barry Levinson's gangster biopic Bugsy was the most nominated movie at the 1991 Oscars, ten nods in total, including Picture, Director, and Actor. While most of the big categories were won by The Silence of the Lambs, Levinson's picture still took home two statuettes. They were for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Costume Design, rightful rewards for a glamourous recreation of 1940s Hollywood and the nascent Las Vegas. Unlike Dennis Gassner, Nancy Haigh, and Albert Wolsky, the movie's star left the Academy Awards ceremony with no new little golden man of his own. Nonetheless, Warren Beatty might have gotten a greater reward out of Bugsy than any of the Oscared cineastes.

After all, it was during the shooting of Bugsy that the man once considered to be Hollywood's hottest bachelor finally met his match and future wife, the one and only Annette Bening…

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The Furniture: Barton Fink and the Common Man's Wallpaper

Daniel Walber's series on Production Design. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

What is the wallpaper of the Common Man? It’s a strange question, but Barton Fink is a strange movie. The titular writer (John Turturro) is a man consumed by passion for the clichéd unsung hero, though he would never go so far as to actually ask a Common Man what he thinks. His obsession is really with the idea of the Common Man, abstract and waiting to be tossed onstage or slapped onto the blank canvas of a movie screen.

In his defense, the Common Man was not yet a cliche when Fink arrived in Hollywood, sometime in 1941. Henry Wallace’s famous “Century of the Common Man” speech wouldn’t be delivered until May of 1942, inspiring Aaron Copland to write his “Fanfare for the Common Man” soon after. Maybe someday the Coen Brothers will make a sequel, and Barton will take the opportunity to claim credit for both of those cultural landmarks.

But back to wallpaper. Barton Fink opens with a close-up of it, a pleasant sort of floral-Deco pattern in mild colors...

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