2019 award season notes

This is starting earlier than ever and there are several people to blame for that.

• Me.
• Disney
• F.T.
• MUAHSG
• Comic Book Resources

I’ll get to all of those in a minute.  But I’ll reiterate what I have done the past few years.  This post will go up now and whenever I update it, I will post it “sticky” so that it goes to the top of the blog (though that’s not a repost and I don’t know how that works with notifications).  Anything major that I want to make certain people read (usually having to do with comments or an announcement) I’ll stick in bold at the top.  And a reminder that all comments have to be approved so just sit tight after you post and I’ll get to them (it takes longer on workdays).

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 1995

“His words were echoed with unspeakable astonishment by all but Elinor, who sat with her head leaning over her work, in a state of such agitation as made her hardly know where she was.”  (p 335

My Top 10

1. Sense and Sensibility
2. Les Miserables
3. To Die For
4. Leaving Las Vegas
5. 12 Monkeys
6. Get Shorty
7. Richard III
8. Clockers
9. An Awfully Big Adventure
10. Il Postino

note:  It’s a decent (but not great) Top 5 and a more solid Top 10.  My own list is much longer and continues down at the bottom though Dead Man Walking (my #12), Apollo 13 (#15) and Babe (my #24) are reviewed because of award nominations.

 

A Century of Film: Editing

A Century of Film

Editing

The very first films didn’t have editing.  But it didn’t take long for a filmmaker such as George Milies to discover how important editing was – his entire concept of special effects was built around what could be done with editing.  When films started to come out at feature length, it was the D.W. Griffith films that showed how editing could craft a great picture, followed just a few years later by the masterful work in the Sergei Eisenstein films.

 

A Century of Film: 1994 – an in-depth look – the films

A Century of Film

1994

The Films

Each film will have the following information:

• Line 1:  the title, as it appeared on oscars.org for the first three parts of the list
• Line 2:  alternate titles, including original language title if applicable; if a title on the alternate list is in bold, it means it’s the title I generally use, including on the full ranking at the bottom
• Line 3:  U.S. release date (BoxOfficeMojo as primary source, IMDb as secondary, any other source if available – my list is based on the Oscar list which was based on L.A. release date, so some BOM release dates may be from 1993), length (as listed on the IMDb), MPAA rating, genre (my decision unless I wasn’t able to see it, in which case I go with the IMDb), U.S. distributor (if available / applicable), original country (if not the U.S. with original language in parenthesis if not English)
• Line 4:  director, as listed on the IMDB – for the list and the next two lines, I use just the first initial and last name for space and time considerations and I list it as listed on the IMDb which is why certain Asian names might not fit listings for how they appear elsewhere
• Line 5:  writers, as listed on the IMDB with source in parenthesis following if applicable
• Line 6:  primary actors as listed on the IMDB; because I can’t remember who all the people are in a film, I generally go with the first three names as listed on the IMDb, but because the IMDb goes by credit order (which is sometimes in appearance or alphabetical order), sometimes that might not be the main people
• Line 7:  my review of the film – these reviews were written over the course of a year and many reference specific events that often ironically happened around the time I wrote that specific review
• Line 8:  my rating (four star scale), metacritic rating (with link), Rotten Tomatoes rating (with link), Ebert rating (with link), IMDb voter rating with total number of voters in parenthesis following (IMDb rating and votes pulled on 9 October 2019); if any of those parts aren’t there it means that film isn’t listed with that particular group
• Line 9:  the U.S. box office gross followed by the world box office gross, all from Box Office Mojo unless noted; if the box office is in bold that means that some of that money was mine
• there will also be a poster for some films; because I didn’t want to overwhelm with over 300 posters or have to track them all down (the ones I use I got from IMPAwards) or have the page, which is already quite long (over 30,000 words) take a long time to load, the posters are selective, based mostly on them actually being visually interesting as opposed to just a picture of one or two main actors – there is no connection between quality of the film and the choice of whether or not there is a poster

 

A Century of Film: 1994 – an in-depth look – the critics

A Century of Film

1994

The Critics

Apologies for the quality of the video above – it was what I could find as a good symbol for Siskel and Ebert in this year.

Top 10 Films – TSPDT Top 1000

1. Pulp Fiction  –  #76
2. Satantango  –  #103
3. Red  –  #261
4. The Shawshank Redemption  –  #420
5. Forrest Gump  –  #509
6. Hoop Dreams  –  #514
7. Vive L’Amour  –  #712
8. Crumb  –  #746
9. Leon  –  #868
10. To Live  –  #896

 

A Century of Film: 1994 – an in-depth look – the awards

A Century of Film

1994

The Awards

A quick note about the BAFTAs.  Their eligibility is based on the release of films in Britain so some Oscar eligible films are eligible in 1995 instead.  If they earn nominations or win awards in 1995, it will be a note after the BAFTA list in that category.

A second quick note about the Consensus awards because there are awards listed down below that are not taken into consideration for the Consensus awards.  Except for Director (see note below), I don’t consider festivals, critics runner-up, the Indie Spirits or my own Nighthawk Awards when I calculate the Consensus awards.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 1994

This didn’t come straight from the book but neither did anything else in the film.

My Top 10

1. Ed Wood
2. The Shawshank Redemption
3. Quiz Show
4. Nobody’s Fool
5. Grave of the Fireflies
6. The Madness of King George
7. Little Women
8. Death and the Maiden
9. Vanya on 42nd Street
10. To Live

note:  There will be more to say about this in the Awards post which comes next.