1982 Oscar Watch

1982 is a very special year for me because it was the year I was born.  As far as the Oscar year goes, it's not that great.  Gandhi wins a bunch of awards which is a pretty terrible decision.  I remember reading about this year in Inside Oscar and someone was quoted as saying that instead of voting for the Academy Awards people thought they were voting for the Nobel Peace prize.  It's a standard biopic of a great man, but did it need to be over 3 hours long?  Gandhi's win wouldn't be that horrible except for the fact that there were several truly great films this year and Gandhi just wasn't one of them.
You can see my GABBY winners and nominees HERE

BEST PICTURE

5. Gandhi - Quick, when's the last time you watched Gandhi?  Was it in 10th grade history class?  This is a textbook disguised as a movie.  It's over 3 hours long and boring as all hell.

4. Missing - A man goes missing in a foreign country for possibly political reasons.  His wife and father go looking for him.  His wife is a liberal and his dad is a conservative and they have to partner up together.  The movie does some interesting things with seeing different points of view but it's a very bleak movie with no moments of levity.  They are told it's a hopeless cause, they think it's a hopeless cause, turns out it's a hopeless cause.  Even in Sophie's Choice they went to a carnival.

3. The Verdict - Paul Newman stars in a courtroom drama written by David Mamet and directed by Sidney Lumet.  Newman is an alcoholic ambulance chaser who does anything he can to stay out of court.  His buddy gives him a case where a woman went to the hospital for an operation and fell into a coma.  He figures it will be a quick settlement situation but Newman sees a case of negligence and takes it to court.  The hospital is owned by a church and has a high profile lawyer on their side so we get a little guy versus the big guy story and the little guy is also a drunk so he's trying to win a case while battling his inner demons.  The movie is really great.  I love courtroom dramas usually and this is one of the best.

2. E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial - Steven Spielberg's family drama about an alien lost on Earth and how his new friends help him get home.  This movie was a game changer.  It became the biggest box office success of all time but more than that it's just magical and whimsical.  It spawned many emulators but nothing in this genre has come close to topping the original.

1. Tootsie - Dustin Hoffman is a temperamental and egotistical actor who has burned so many bridges that people have started to refuse to hire him.  He dresses up as a woman and auditions for a soap opera.  This is one of the best comedies ever made.  The comedy comes from honesty and character.  It's a movie that makes me jealous because it's so good.

First one off my list is Gandhi, it's long and boring.  Next off is Missing, it's a good film but not in that Best Picture territory.  That leaves The Verdict, E.T. and Tootsie.  All 3 of them are terrific films which makes the Oscar win for Gandhi simply egregious.  For me the vote comes down to Tootsie or E.T. and I could see going either way.  E.T. is one of the best family films ever made and Tootsie is one of the best comedies ever made.  I'm picking Tootsie just because I tend to like comedy movies more than sci-fi but either of them would have been incredible winners.

Oscar Winner: Gandhi

My Vote: Tootsie

GABBY Winner: My Favorite Year

BEST ACTOR

5. Ben Kingsley - Gandhi - Kingsley looks like Gandhi and sounds like Gandhi.  If that's worth an Oscar then he should have won.  I don't want to sound too culturally sensitive but does this constitute as blackface?  Kingsley is of Indian descent but he's not that dark.

4. Jack Lemmon - Missing - Lemmon plays a father looking for his son in a foreign country.  His son has very liberal ideals about saving the planet but Lemmon is a staunch conservative and that clashes with his daughter-in-law as they team up to find him.  Jack Lemmon is one of my favorite actors he just has this every man quality that makes you identify with him.  When Jack cries, you cry, when Jack smiles, you smile.  He won twice already and while this performance is good, it's not 3rd Oscar level good.

3. Dustin Hoffman - Tootsie - Dustin Hoffman is so good in this movie that placing him in 3rd place is a true testament to how good this category is this year.  He plays Michael Dorsey, an actor so difficult that he is forced to resort to dressing up as a woman to get roles.  He becomes Dorothy Michaels and he is almost as believable as a woman as he is a man.  The reason this performance works so well is because he takes the comedy seriously.  Hoffman never tries to land a joke, he just tries to be a realistic character in whatever situation he's in, which makes the comedy all the more funny.  In almost any other year he wins this category easily but he just won 3 years ago and he's up against 2 legends who have yet to win.

2. Peter O'Toole - My Favorite Year - This is a fantastic movie.  A young writer on a TV variety show gets the opportunity to meet his hero, an Errol Flynn like swashbuckler named Alan Swann, when he is scheduled to guest on the show.  The actor is a huge drunk though and the writer is given the task to babysit him while he's in town.  The actor is played by Peter O'Toole who is dryly hilarious here.  He demonstrates incredible physical skills in the scenes when he is stumbling around intoxicated but also exceeds in the heartfelt scenes like when he is looking at his estranged daughter from afar.

1. Paul Newman - The Verdict - Paul Newman had been in film for about 30 years to this point and built a resume that included 6 Oscar nominations and films like The Hustler, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Cool Hand Luke, Hud, Sweet Bird Of Youth and Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid.  How he doesn't win an Oscar here for quite possibly his greatest role is unfathomable.  He plays an alcoholic lawyer who takes a case that is supposed to be an easy out of court settlement but he takes it to trial on moral grounds.  Newman is simply incredible here, this is a redemptive story for an unsympathetic character.  We root for him even as he's destroying his life.

Tough call but it's between Newman and O'Toole.  Hoffman and Lemmon already won so they're out and Kingsley doesn't contend at all for a vote from me.  I think Ben Kingsley is a tremendous actor but him winning here may be my least favorite Best Actor decision of all time.  Newman and O'Toole were so overdue by this point and this was Kingsley's breakout role he could just have easily faded into obscurity rather than become a respected actor.  Knowing that Newman is going to win in 1986 makes me want to vote for O'Toole, that way they can both get Oscars.  Not knowing the future, I gotta vote for Newman because his performance is downright brilliant.  I also voted for O'Toole in 1968 and 1980 which doesn't really mean anything but I'm also using that as a reason to vote for Newman.  There's really no reason why you shouldn't vote for Newman, he gave the best performance and was abnormally overdue for a win.  This reminds me of 2002 when you had Michael Caine, Jack Nicholson, Daniel Day-Lewis and Nicolas Cage and the win went to Adrien Brody.  My theory in both of these cases is that the respected actors cancelled each other out and the newbie slipped in as the winner.  The alternative to this theory is that, for some unknown reason, people really liked the film Gandhi, and that just makes no sense to me.

Oscar Winner: Ben Kingsley

My Vote: Paul Newman

GABBY Winner: Paul Newman

BEST ACTRESS

5. Debra Winger - An Officer And A Gentleman - Calling Winger the lead is a bit of a stretch.  She's got a fair amount of screen time but this movie is about Richard Gere and she plays the stock supportive girlfriend role.  She's good in the part and brings something to the role that not every actress could, mostly a natural on-screen charm and great chemistry with Gere.  It's a perfectly fine performance but not quite Oscar level good.

4. Sissy Spacek - Missing - Spacek just won for a better performance so there is no reason to consider voting for her but she gives a very solid performance here.  She plays the wife of a man who disappeared in a foreign country.  They had very liberal ideals and when her conservative father-in-law comes to help with the investigation, their values clash.  She has really good chemistry with Lemmon and would probably rank higher if she hadn't won so recently.

3. Julie Andrews - Victor/Victoria - Andrews plays a woman who gets a job as a female impersonator.  So she's a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman.  I never really understood how people were confused.  To me she looks like a beautiful woman but in the reality of the movie she takes off her wig to show short hair and everyone gasps.  I feel like a more homelier actress could have pulled this part off more realistically.  Still, Andrews can sing the paint off a barn and is one of the most charming women on the planet.  I'm not voting for her because she won already but she definitely deserves to be here.

2. Jessica Lange - Frances - I remember in the book Alternate Oscars by Danny Peary, one of the books that inspired my love of the Academy Awards, he said that Lange should have won this year.  I completely agree that she's good but there is no way she's better than Meryl.  She plays Frances Farmer, in a very fictitious biopic, an actress in the 30s who had mental issues and eventually became committed to an insane asylum.  In this movie she gets lobotomized but apparently that never happened.  Lange is really great and the only reason to watch the movie.  The film is a standard biopic but Lange makes it work.

1. Meryl Streep - Sophie's Choice - It's hard to argue with this one.  Meryl plays a Polish immigrant whose parents were killed in the holocaust.  She lives with Kevin Kline, a mentally unstable man who abuses her, and we see in flashback the titular choice which was to decide which one of her children went to the gas chamber in Auschwitz and which one went to the labor camps.  It's an emotionally devastating performance and Streep's accent work is amazing.  There wasn't a second in this movie where I didn't absolutely believe her.

Normally having Debra Winger, Julie Andrews, Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek in a category would be the best category ever.  Here they all seem like filler nominees just taking up space next to Meryl Streep.  That's how good Meryl is in this movie, there is absolutely no way you could convince me that someone else deserved this.

Oscar Winner: Meryl Streep

My Vote: Meryl Streep

GABBY Winner: Meryl Streep

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

5. Charles Durning - The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas - This is a very silly movie.  A whorehouse is operating out in the open, everyone in the town loves it but then a TV journalist wants to shut it down to earn publicity for himself.  It's also a musical and the songs all feel like a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical from the 50s but the movie is shot like an 80s movie.  I didn't like it at all really.  There's a scene where the football team dances with a bunch of whores like it's supposed to imply they are having sex.  I was never sure if the movie was trying to be quaint and innocent or dark and dirty.  Anyway, I haven't mentioned Charles Durning yet because he's literally in like 2 scenes.  He's the governor who never speaks his mind.  When he's asked a question he either changes the subject or asks another question, that's how he stays in office.  He has a song and dance number about just that called "The Sidestep".  This is the only part of the movie I liked.  Durning's number was fun and funny.  But that's all he does in the film and it's so late into the movie.  Durning was really good in Tootsie this year and should have been nominated for that.

4. Robert Preston - Victor/Victoria - Preston basically plays the gay best friend to Julie Andrews but he does it with class.  He has some really fun musical numbers in the film but the part isn't really that great.  Preston makes the most of it though and steals most of his scenes.  At first I thought there wasn't much special about Preston in the role but then I remembered that this was 1982 and gay characters in film and television were little more than stereotypes and cheap jokes.  Preston plays this character honestly and with dignity which is a breath of fresh air for a movie of this time.

3. John Lithgow - The World According To Garp - Much like with Preston this might sound like faint praise but my favorite part of Lithgow's performance was how subtle it was and how he didn't go for a stereotypical portrayal.  Lithgow plays Roberta Muldoon who used to be a tight end in the NFL but is now a woman living at Garp's mother's compound.  If you're familiar with Lithgow you know that he has the tendency to be a very big and sometimes hammy actor.  He's always great but he goes for broad more than subtle sometimes.  Here he plays Roberta with a quiet dignity and never for laughs.  This had all the potential to be a comic relief part, especially in the 80s, but Lithgow, for lack of a better term, plays it straight.

2. Louis Gossett, Jr. - An Officer And A Gentleman - The military drill sergeant character has become a bit of a cliche ever since R. Lee Ermey defined it in Full Metal Jacket.  This movie came before though so Gossett's character was still fresh at the time.  Richard Gere wants to be a marine so he goes to boot camp.  His biggest obstacle is himself but his second biggest obstacle is Gossett.  When he's first introduced he lines up the recruits and dresses them down, the famous "steers and queers" speech.  Then he continues to be a powerful stumbling block and as Gere leaves near the end of the film he overhears Gossett giving the same speech to a group of new recruits.  I loved this bookending to his character, you realize that Gere's story wasn't special at all, he was just another cog in the machine and Gossett was just doing his job.  The other great thing about this role is that there is nothing specific in the script that he needs to be played by a black actor.  We're in 1982 now but black actors are still bound to playing stereotypical roles or roles in movies about racism.  This is just a powerful man played by a black actor and that's inspiring to see.

1. James Mason - The Verdict - Paul Newman is a drunk lawyer who takes a case to court.  The defense is a catholic church and they are represented by James Mason.  The movie is basically a David vs. Goliath story where Newman is the little guy, going through law books in a seedy office, and Mason is the big guy, he's got a team of young law minds working underneath him.  Mason makes a terrific adversary without being a villain.  He's just trying to win his case and for most of the movie Mason seems to be the more qualified lawyer.  Every time Newman comes up with a point, Mason cuts him down.  If it hadn't been for the key piece of evidence discovered near the end of the movie, Mason would have (and probably should have) won.

This is a category where I have to use process of elimination because I could see any of these actors winning.  First off is Charles Durning, his part is too small and the movie isn't that good.  Then I gotta take off Preston, unfortunately.  If the vote comes down between Preston and Lithgow, I'm picking Lithgow so might as well get rid of Preston now.  That leaves Mason, Lithgow and Gossett and out of those 3 I gotta take Lithgow out.  He's so good in the movie but his part is just there to be a person the main characters can talk to in transition scenes.  That leaves Mason and Gossett and I like both of their performances so I gotta vote for the actor.  James Mason deserved an Oscar more than Gossett so he gets my vote.  I condone the Gossett decision 100% though.  He was the first black actor since Sidney Poitier in 1963 to win so it was sort of an "it's about damn time" decision.  His performance also stands up even if Gossett never had a performance close to this level again.

Oscar Winner: Louis Gossett, Jr.

My Vote: James Mason

GABBY Winner: James Mason

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

 

5. Kim Stanley - Frances - Like I said in the Best Actress category, Jessica Lange is the only reason to watch Frances, so if I'm not voting for her I sure as hell can't vote for the lady who played her mother.  Stanley is perfectly fine in the movie there just isn't enough to this character or performance to warrant a nomination.

4. Lesley Ann Warren - Victor/Victoria - Warren plays a gangster's moll.  It's a stock character but Warren has some fun moments.  She gets her own song and dance number which she excels at.  She really amps up the nasal whine in her voice which makes her character extra annoying, but that's exactly how the part should be played.

3. Jessica Lange - Tootsie - Lange plays a single mother working as an actress on a soap opera.  She's also having an affair with the director.  When Dustin Hoffman gets a job on the soap as a woman he immediately falls for her putting Lange in a bizarre love triangle she doesn't even know she's in.  She has a couple of nice moments but not enough to warrant an Oscar win.

2. Teri Garr - Tootsie - Teri Garr has always been one of my favorites, she was one of the most beautiful and funny women of her time.  Here she plays a perpetually out of work actress who is hopelessly in love with Dustin Hoffman and takes acting lessons from him.  She ends up sleeping with him under bizarre circumstances and turns into the jilted lover.  She's so good that I wish the movie developed her character a little more.  She has so many good little moments in the film, like when she's stealing hors d'oeuvres from a party and slipping them in her purse.

1. Glenn Close - The World According To Garp - Close plays Garp's no-nonsense mother.  She's a nurse and sees the world very literally while Garp sees the world in a more imaginative way.  She doesn't like to sugarcoat things, she tells her son the truth about his father at a young age.  He was a soldier in the war, he was dying from injuries but his penis would still get erect.  Close climbed on with the intent to get pregnant and not be tied down to a man.  She's also a very strong character.  She writes a book about women for women that pisses off men.  She gets into politics and starts a commune for wayward women.  Close is damn near perfect here, all the more impressive that this is her first film.

Normally I don't like voting for someone in their first movie but I'll make an exception in Glenn Close's case.  She was already an established stage actress before transitioning to film so this isn't a Tatum O'Neal or Jennifer Hudson style win.  If Close wasn't so good I would be voting for Teri Garr who is funny and sympathetic in Tootsie.  Jessica Lange doesn't really enter the equation at all.  The only reason she won this category is because she was also nominated for Best Actress and they didn't want her to go home empty handed.  There was no way she could beat Meryl Streep so they gave her the supporting Oscar.  At the time it wasn't a horrible decision but 30 years later it feels like a waste.  Lange ended up winning a lead Oscar in 1994 and Glenn Close still hasn't won anything.  Teri Garr never got another nomination after this year, which is also a shame.

Oscar Winner: Jessica Lange

My Vote: Glenn Close

GABBY Winner: Glenn Close

Best Director

I think I've already mentioned that I don't like the film Gandhi, the man was good, the movie was dull.  Richard Attenborough wins which I guess isn't bad in hindsight.  He beat out Steven Spielberg who would go on to win twice in this category and Sydney Pollack who would win in 3 years.  He also beat out Sidney Lumet who never won, despite one of the most impressive filmographies of any director ever.

Best Original Screenplay/Adapted Screenplay
Okay, I can understand respecting the visual spectacle of Gandhi but you can't convince me that the script to this is better than Tootsie or E.T. or Diner or even An Officer And A Gentleman.  Over in the Adapted category Missing wins which isn't a terrible decision but this is a category that should have gone to The Verdict

Best Original Score/Song Score Or Adaptation Score/Song
John Williams rightfully wins Best Original Score for E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial.  The competition wasn't too shabby either including Poltergeist, An Officer And A Gentleman and Gandhi (I'll admit that the music in Gandhi was impressive).  Victor/Victoria wins the now defunct Song Score category over the irritating Annie and One From The Heart, a Francis Ford Coppola failure that is only memorable for the Tom Waits soundtrack.  An Officer And A Gentleman wins Best Song for Up Where We Belong which is used quite effectively at the end of the film.  It beat out two songs from Tootsie, Eye Of The Tiger from Rocky III and some piece of garbage from the Luciano Pavarotti vehicle Yes, Giorgio.

Best Sound/Sound Effects Editing
E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial wins both categories.  No complaints from me.

Best Art Direction/Costume Design/Editing/Cinematography
The Gandhi trains rolled through the technical categories winning all 4 of these categories.  I'll grant it Costumes and Cinematography but Art Direction should have gone to Blade Runner and Gandhi should have won the Oscar for least editing as I think they kept every piece of footage they shot.

Best Makeup
Gandhi finally scores a loss and it's to, of all movies, Quest For Fire a movie even more unwatchable.  It's about cavemen, there's no dialogue, it's laughably bad.

Best Visual Effects
E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial wins a tough category that also included Blade Runner and Poltergeist.

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1993