Best Adapted Screenplay: 2004

Miles Raymond: Come on, man. You know. Hemingway, Sexton, Plath, Woolf. You can’t kill yourself before you’re even published! Jack: What about the guy who wrote Confederacy of Dunces? He committed suicide before he was published. Look how famous he is!

My Top 10

1. Sideways
2. A Very Long Engagement
3. Closer
4. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
5. Finding Neverland
6. Million Dollar Baby
7. Shrek 2
8. The Motorcycle Diaries
9. Baadasssss!
10. Spider-Man 2

note:  A solid Top 5 but a much weaker second 5.  The rest of the list is down below with none of them among the award nominees that are fully reviewed.

 

Century of Film: The Top 1000 Films (#800-751)

All of these films except the last one is an 88.  The last one is an 89.  All are low ****.  The introduction is here.

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 2004

The DiCaprio side of the DiCaprio-Scorsese collaborations takes a quantum leap.

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films (or directors) in olive are links to earlier posts that I don’t want to have show up in blue and be mistaken for a nominee.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 20 in the categories but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. The Aviator  *
2. A Very Long Engagement
3. Sideways  **
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind  *
5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
6. House of Flying Daggers
7. Closer
8. The Incredibles
9. Kill Bill Volume 2
10. Silver City
11. Hero
12. Hotel Rwanda
13. Million Dollar Baby  *
14. Spider-Man 2
15. Kinsey
16. Bad Education
17. Finding Neverland  *
18. Vera Drake
19. Shrek 2
20. Mar Adentro

Analysis:  Ray and Eternal Sunshine actually tied for the 5th Consensus nominee spot.  Million Dollar Baby, with a third place finish, is the first Oscar winner not to be #1 or #2 at the Consensus Awards since 1995, and no film has finished below 2nd since (through 2016).
All 20 of these films are **** and there are no other **** films.  It’s a magnificent Top 10 and the third best Top 20 to-date.

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 2002

The best film in what is one of the best years in film history.

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films (or directors) in olive are links to earlier posts that I don’t want to have show up in blue and be mistaken for a nominee.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 20 in the categories but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers  *
2. Gangs of New York  *
3. Spirited Away
4. Talk to Her
5. The Pianist  **
6. The Hours  *
7. Minority Report
8. Y tu mamá también
9. Chicago  *
10. Adaptation
11. Road to Perdition
12. Solaris
13. The Quiet American
14. Catch Me if You Can
15. 8 Women
16. Heaven
17. Lilo and Stitch
18. 24 Hour Party People
19. Spider-Man
20. Sunshine State

Analysis:  This year is a bit of an oddity.  First, for the first time in five years, the five Oscar nominees are also the five Consensus nominees.  But, much more strangely, for the only time after 1965, the Consensus winner (The Pianist) doesn’t have the highest raw total, but its weighted total turns a 20 point deficit to Chicago into a 10 point advantage.  The Pianist has three wins (BAFTA, NSFC, BSFC) among six total noms (Oscar, Globe, BFCA) while Chicago wins four awards (Oscar, Globe, PGA, BFCA) and earns one other nom (BAFTA).  It will be another decade before the second place film is even within 100 points of the 1st place film.  This is also the first time we have two films that go 0 for 5, earning nominations from all five awards groups (Oscar, PGA, BAFTA, Globe, BFCA) and winning none: Gangs of New York and Two Towers.  There won’t be another year with two such films until 2008.

 

10 Comic Book Deaths That Meant Something to Me

Still one of the greatest covers in comic book history.  Art by George Perez.

Every now and then I write a post about comic books for a few reasons.  First of all, they were really important to me for a really long time.  Second, this site is actually named after a comic book character that I adopted as my own: Nighthawk (Kyle Richmond), a Marvel character who was originally created as a Batman counterpart.  There were two versions of Nighthawk – the Squadron Sinister villain who would eventually become a hero and a member of the Defenders before dying (it would be his costume that I really loved), but it would be the second Nighthawk – the Squadron Supreme member, who I would really like.  He would also die, in a dramatic event that was unlike almost anything Marvel had ever published before, loaded with death.  Which brings me to this list.

 

Some pictures to fill the space

The family is still on the mend from varying degrees of bronchitis and pneumonia, so here are a few Thomas pictures. The Spider-man ones are from a party last weekend (pre-coughing fits). We are hoping to make it out tonight for a street or two of trick or treating, but won’t be doing much.