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Oscars 1993 – The Winners

One of my favorite things about the Oscars we don’t see any more is old timers getting their due. I appreciate that cutting the honorary awards makes the show move faster, but I miss the film clips and speeches from folks you don’t usually hear being heartfelt.

For example, Federico Fellini was finally given an honorary Oscar in 1993, which meant a crazy montage of women being whipped, clowns with giant fake boobs, and other assorted lunacy. And who was there to present it?

Hello, lower life forms.

Hello, lower life forms.



Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren. The kind of people they just don’t make any more. I’m not even sure they are people.

guilliettaFellini’s speech is rather adorable, like he’s your shy grandpa, and he even says he wasn’t expecting this sort of award for another 25 years. (He died eight months later.) He’s like a cute little accented troll doll who makes movies that are uncomfortable nightmares. Then he strikes comedy gold when he stops thanking people to ask his wife and frequent star, Giulietta Masina, to please stop crying. Cut to Giulietta, looking like your grandmother at every wedding.

Just let him give awards to whoever he wants.

Just let him give awards to whoever he wants.

There were three honorary Oscars in 1993, which helped slow the show down, but were all rather touching if you’re a classic movie fan. Besides the adorable Fellini family and their adorable antics, there was a posthumous humanitarian Oscar for Audrey Hepburn, presented by Gregory Peck, her costar in her first big movie. As we covered in the 1992 article, she died very suddenly from an aggressive cancer in January ’93, which is when the nominations came out. So either they already planned to give her the award, or rushed to include her when they realized how dumb it was they hadn’t done it yet.

Her son accepted and called Gregory Peck “Greg,” which I find too cute. Atticus Finch shares a first name with the oldest of the Brady Bunch!

Then these two broad show up.

We're here to see a man about a horse.

We’re here to see a man about a horse.



Yep, it’s Angela Lansbury presenting another humanitarian Oscar to Elizabeth Taylor. And yes, in that still from “National Velvet,” Lansbury’s the older sister. She’s been around…oh….a while. Liz’s getting the award for all the fund-raising and education she did to fight AIDS, which she was out in front on well before it was a cool thing to do. It’s a shame we tend to think of late-career Liz Taylor as…well…Michael Jackson’s slightly saner friend.

liztaylor

Lindsay Lohan was six years old. Just sayin’.


Taylor’s speech has a level of eloquence I’m not sure I ever associated with her before. I’m don’t know if she wrote it or someone else did, but it’s a poetic call to action.

“I call upon you to prove we are a human race. To prove our love outweighs our hate. That our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame. That our sensitivity to those in need is stronger than our greed. That our ability to reason overcomes our fear.”

Good stuff. But enough of all the old geezers, who was actually competing that year?

Oh.

Oh.



Yeah, it was one of the few years it’s tough to complain about Best Picture, because it was “Unforgiven,” which is a masterpiece. Clint Eastwood won for picture and director, and Gene Hackman won for Supporting Actor. No complaints there. But there was a winner that was controversial.

tomeiJoan Plowright – old, British, married to Olivier – was heavily favored to win best supporting actress, when all of a sudden, in swoops the white girl from “A Different World.” Rumors persist to this day that Jack Palance read the wrong name. True, it’s pretty rare for a comic performance to win, but when they do, it’s in supporting categories. And she’s proven since then she’s not a fluke (see “In the Bedroom.”) So let’s complain about something else.

pacinoLet’s give a guy an award for playing Foghorn Leghorn! Al Pacino was a great actor. Was. His career can pretty neatly be divided into “Brilliant” and “After Scent of a Woman.” 1993 is the line. He was also nominated that night for his supporting turn in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” where the last vestige of the Pacino who was in “The Godfather” gasps, withers, and dies. Then the bombast and the scenery chewing just became so easy. Every now and then, old Al will peak out – a scene, a few lines, and you’ll sigh and think…damn.

"'To be...or not to be.' Now my Hamlet has been seen by one billion people. Please, sit down."

“‘To be…or not to be.’ Now my Hamlet has been seen by one billion people. Please, sit down.”

Did you know Jon Lovitz presented at the goddamn Oscars?. Seriously! He stole his scenes in “A League of their Own,” and apparently that qualifies him to give a sound effects editor a prize. I mention him because he has one of the funniest bits in the shortest amount of time I’ve ever seen on an awards show. Basically, he’s doing his Master Thespian schtick from SNL, which totally works in a room full of master thespians.

andydickA commercial break or two later, Lovitz’s nemesis Andy Dick appears for about 1/10th of a second in a tortilla chip commercial. This is weird because “The Ben Stiller Show” had only been cancelled two months earlier, so either this was an old ad, or he was taking any work he could get.

Still to come: Really awful musical numbers (no, seriously, really awful), and a brief word from our sponsor.

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Twenty Years Later – Oscars 1993

Celebrities and politics. Two great tastes that don’t really go so well together. For ever well-meaning, deeply involved celebrity who uses their status, money, and power to do something good (see: Audrey Hepburn, who we’ll be talking about later), there’s some starlet who has some half-formed idea that “the thing in Angola is bad…or something” and puts their well-manicured foot in their mouth and ends up trivializing the thing they wanted to help.

crystal

Help! I’m saluting women on a giant phallus!

The Oscars in 1993, for the films of 1992, are easily the most political show the Oscars ever did. Some of it planned, a lot of it not.

See, 1992 was “The Year of the Woman.” The best information I can find on where that label came from is that’s the year the U.S. Senate went from two women to seven. Out of 100. Yippee. The Oscars decided to get in on that sweet, sweet condescension and decided it was also Oscar’s Year of the Woman, so they padded out the show with film montage salutes to the women editors and actors and writers. And if that wasn’t good enough, there’s a song about it by Liza – see our coverage of the show’s musical monstrosities for that one. It’s not pretty.

Oscars Women Had Never Won (in 1993): Best Foreign Film, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Cinematography, Best Director. Only one had ever been nominated (and won) for Visual Effects. Just sayin’.

cryinggame

The secret is the microfilm is in those earrings.

Opening the show, our host (again) Billy Crystal really mines the secret of The Crying Game for jokes. It comes up a lot.They flirt with spoiling it repeatedly, but manage to not quite spill the beans. Billy Crystal’s best line: “The Crying Game proved one thing – white men CAN jump.”

This was probably the last great pre-internet spoiler, and people were great at not ruining the surprise. The secret wouldn’t make it past preview screenings now, and that’s a shame, because it’s a great movie, and a great shock that spins the movie off in another direction. (I’m just assuming you all know it, with Mayor Quimby having ruined it for you.)

The unscheduled politics show up only a few awards in, when presenters Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins break from the script to plead for Haitian refugees held at Guantanamo Bay and not let into the U.S. because they were HIV+. Law students and non-profits took up their case, and their detention was ruled unconstitutional later that year. sarandon_robbinsCommentators at the time were livid these dern liberals would derail the show for their pet cause.

Not long afterward, the Documentary winner goes past her allotted time lambasting the government for lying about bad things we did in Panama in the first Bush administration. I only mention this because the U.S. mission in Panama seems so very quaint now, and that’s sad.

The final great political interruption comes from Richard Gere, in the most notorious thing he actually, really did. Not what he was rumored to do, because he didn’t do that thing you’re thinking of. Gere also goes off script before presenting an award to talk about how many people are watching the show, and how all that energy could be focused into something good. Something like mentally sending Deng Xiaoping a psychic message to pull Chinese troops out of Tibet. Mentioning the cause you care about and have worked on for years is one thing, and Gere has certainly been committed to this issue before and since, but psychic messages instead of a call for political action? Especially since we had a new president to pester? God, it would have been hysterical is if Deng died right then, the victim of mass-psychic-murder, but the Chinese leader held on another four years.

It's what gifs are made for.

It’s what gifs are made for.

 

Up next: The winners! Weird TV ads! Production number hell!

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Bad Movie Sunday: ‘The Three Musketeers’ (2011)

There have been about 30 film adaptations of “The Three Musketeers” since film was invented. But you know what all of them, as well as Dumas’ beloved novel were all missing? Airships. Finally, this film has rectified this horrible oversight.

This movie is a damn mess, but the kind of unbelievably wacky mess that I have to encourage people to see it. You will sit confused and boggled people spent money to make it.

They stick to the bare basics of the classic story for the most part, but despite those 30 other adaptations, figure it still needed jazzing up with even more action that is all ridiculously modern and piled with bad CGI. For instance, there’s a scene where Milady DeWinter (Milla Jovovich) strips off her hoop skirts to do a “Mission: Impossible”-style wire stunt into the palace, and finds a hidden vault strung with invisible razor wire that look like freakin’ lasers that she has to jump and shimmy through. How are these wires de-activated when a non-thief needs to get to the jewels inside? I’m guessing Ye Olde Retinal Scan.

I’m not even going to bother talking about the four heroes, because the three musketeers all suffer from total lack of character. Athos and Aramis look and act identical – I often couldn’t tell them apart. (You can tell which one’s Porthos because he talks about eating and drinking more.) D’Artagnan (the kid from ‘Percy Jackson’) is beyond annoying. He’s not so much a brash young man as Shia LeBeouf with PMS. It’s been a long time since I rooted more for the bad guys, which isn’t a shock considering they’re Mads Mikkelsen and Christoph Goddamn Waltz. They’re also the two who retain their dignity.

Then there’s the airships. The film opens with the musketeers breaking into a vault in Venice housing the works of, duh, Leonardo Da Vinci, because he’s the only person who ever invented anything. Despite the room being filled with thousands of priceless manuscripts, they steal just the airship one and flood the place. Jerks. Then the evil Buckingham (Orlando Bloom) steals it from them, and we fast forward to a year later and the regular ol’ story starts.

I don’t know how to feel about Orlando Bloom’s performance, because it is bizarre. On the one hand, I feel like he gets that this movie’s a joke and dials the foppishness to 11, prancing and preening with Gary Glitter hair. On the other hand, he’s not a convincing villain in a movie already brimming with them.

So there’s the usual musketeering and such and Christoph Waltz makes some speeches about his evil plans that never make much sense, until finally the heroes have to steal some jewels back from Buckingham, because if they don’t, it’ll start a war between France and England. To accomplish this, they steal the airship Buckingham’s now built – which looks like a galleon attached to a blimp – and use its onboard flamethrower(!) and Gattling gun(!!) to attack the Tower of London. Yep, that’ll stop that war alright.

Then there’s an airship battle, with cannons and guns and that rips of “Wrath of Khan” of all things. The stupid escalates at a furious pace as we see the airships are so precise and maneuverable four people can crew them just fine, and they can come up alongside each other at 10,000 feet up and push a gang-plank between them and people can walk across it without much wind or swaying or whatever. Then they crash them into Notre Dame.

I really want to know who exactly the filmmakers thought they were making this movie for, because I can’t think of the market segment that was crying out for this except fans of the ridiculous.

A definite pick for a fun night of jeering with your friends.

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Bad Movie Sunday: ‘Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1’

Every Sunday, my buddy Toby and I get together and watch a terrible movie. It’s about time for me to share the suffering, so I’m going to start posting brief reviews of the crap we’ve watched. I know I should have done this years ago, but it wasn’t until last night’s movie – “Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1” – that I found myself bubbling with so much anger and so much confusion I felt like if I didn’t get it out of me I’d die a gruesome death (Hey! Just like in the movie! I can relate to Bella after all!)

It is a massive understatement to say I am not a Twilight fan. The story is perfectly crafted to feed into the worst instincts of adolescent girls, and I worry about what they’re taking away from it. I probably won’t review the first three movies, which we watched on Bad Movie Sundays past, because I have so little to say about 1 and 3, and so much burning feminist rage at 2. Plus, I think I cover a lot of what  I’d say below. This movie baffles me. I can’t remember the last time so little happening raised so many questions.

100 or so Questions about Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1

  • Why doesn’t anyone have a problem with teens getting married?
  • Why doesn’t Bella’s mom think anything’s weird about the Cullens going through high school 50 times?
  • I still don’t get why they’d go to school at all. Why bother? It just attracts unwanted attention to them and puts them in contact with non-vampires who they promptly get into trouble.
  • Doesn’t Mom have a problem with her daughter marrying a guy Mom’s never met? My mom would go ballistic, call the cops, say I’d been brainwashed, and get arrested for abusing 911 if I married someone she never met and I’m 35.
  • Wait, did they send her dad an invitation, even though he lives in the same house as her?
  • Did she even graduate high school?
  • Does college not exist in their universe? No one has said a single thing about it EVER. Marrying Edward and going to college aren’t mutually exclusive. I guess “wife” is her job now. Forever.
  • What denomination was the minister who married them? Do the vampires go to church regularly? Do they know that minister? Does the minister know they’re blood-sucking demons outside God’s natural order?
  • Isn’t her dad worried about this considering he has been privy to hinky stuff Edward is apparently involved in? Like stalking his daughter?
  • Why does no one notice his family are vampires? Or at least “different”?
  • Doesn’t anyone find adopted siblings dating really creepy? Do the Cullens turn mortals they’ve fallen in love with into vampires, or are these vampire-arranged-marriages?
  • Why don’t the vampires sparkle anymore?
  • Why do vampires hold a wedding in the daytime?
  • Once Bella’s a vampire, is she going to have to go back to high school too? Because fuck that.
  • What’s a vampire bachelor party like?

Continue reading

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Oscar Podcast 2012

I made a return to the Lasertime podcast this week, this time to talk about Oscars and movies and my many, many grudges thus related.

If I tried to exhaust my feelings on the topic, it’d be Part 1 in a series of 11,892 of four-hour podcasts – more if I let other people speak – and I can imagine myself going hoarse and desperate and being buried under a mountain of telegrams begging me to stop like I’m Mr. Smith gone to Washington, but NO! I must tell the world that “Cavalcade” shouldn’t have won Best Picture 1932 because Frank Lloyd’s direction is inferior to Mervyn LeRoy’s.

Enjoy a wander through much more recent movies with: Oscar Grouchy!

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Oscars 1992 – Singin’ and Dancin’

I started looking at 20-year old Oscar shows in 2009, because the 1989 show marked the lowest moment in the show’s history – the Snow White number. Poking around the internet showed only brief references to it, and none about the Stars of Tomorrow number mid-show that is arguably worse. So I thought I’d carry on this tradition, even though the numbers in 1992 were below average, not horrible. Let’s take a look!

“Beauty and the Beast” had three of its songs nominated. First up, “Belle,” sung by the original voice actors (which is nice) on a set made of giant books, like they’re the Borrowers or something. My favorite moment: When Gaston throws a kid out of his way so he can preen and prance some more.

This is immediately followed by “Be Our Guest,” again sung by the original voice actor (Jerry Orbach) and done with the can-can dancers and kick-line it was meant to have. With his years and years on “Law & Order,” it’s easy to forget he was a song and dance man going way back. This number is the most purely entertaining, and it’s nice to see the song go this big instead of being whispered in the background of Disney Cruise commercials.

I didn’t even bother uploading the next performance, which is Bryan Adams singing “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)” from “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.” I remember betting this one would win, because a) it was played constantly that year and b) it’s cheesy. Up until very, very recently, the cheesiest, gooiest song would win.

It wasn’t worth grabbing the video because it’s just him and a band playing the song completely straight, sounding exactly like it does on every easy FM station every two hours. There are, like, vector triangles on the set to dress it up a little, but it’s not a production number.

The fourth nominee is “When You’re Alone” from “Hook.” Yeah, I didn’t remember it either. It’s a lullaby-ish song, sung by the child actor who sang it in the movie all wide-eyed and over-enunciating (and lip syncing). Amber Scott has literally done nothing else, unless you count aggressively Photoshopping her own photo on IMDB.In keeping with the Peter Pan thing, the dancing is mostly kids flying around and being whimsical. In other words, it’s pretty stupid. I remember a lot of weird stuff in the Peter Pan stories, but am I forgetting the giant purple butterfly people who wave back and forth a bunch, or is that an…original…..addition?

But at least it’s introduced by John Candy, and we miss John Candy.

 Finally, we have the eventual winner, the title song from “Beauty and the Beast.” It’s sung by Angela Lansbury, who sang it in the movie, along with Peebo Bryson and Celine Dion, who sang it as a single. It’s a little weird to see Celine with dark curly hair with a tiny bit of meat on her, since not long afterward she went to that straight and light and slightly sunken cheeked look she’s had ever since.

Of course, we couldn’t just have these talented people sing a lovely song, so we have an “interpretation” ballet going on behind them. Is there anywhere else besides awards shows that bother with this nonsense? It’s not like the dancing they did to this song in the movie was classy or anything, without all the frou-frou.

 

Then it gets worse. Much worse. Here’s the show’s low-point, and the epitome of awards show nonsense. Because apparently there wasn’t enough dancing and/or spectacle during the show, or maybe just to wake people up after the sound awards, they also have a dance number during a medley of the original score nominees. These random “wake the audience up” numbers are funny in how tenuous the link is between what they’re doing and who’s doing it. If I keep doing these articles, in a few years I’ll reach the salute to film editing starring the cast of Stomp.

Here we have goofy modern dancing thanks to Debbie Allen. I guess it’s a good thing they’re not literally dancing the plot or themes of the movies, because how exactly do you dance “JFK”? (Says my husband: “You dance back and to the left.”)

As fun as it’d be for them to mime shooting each other with tommy guns for “Bugsy,” “Prince of Tides” could get pretty rapey. Although there are plenty of drag queens who can do a fierce Streisand.

But at least it’s introduced by Patrick Swayze, and we miss Patrick Swayze.

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Oscars 1992 – The Winners

If there’s one image people know from the Oscars in 1992, it’s this one:PalanceJack Palance doing one-arm push-ups right after winning Best Supporting Actor. It was the first award of the night, and immediately became the perfect gag for Billy Crystal to run with. Jack Palance had a weird career – great start, OK foreign stuff, terrible cheapo foreign crap, a lucky break – and he seriously did not care about what people thought. That made it awesome. Yesterday, we covered the monologue and the weird combinations of presenters. Today, it’s the rest of the show. Let’s take a look back 20 years and talk about the more interesting parts of the show.

LewisMercedes Ruehl won Best Supporting Actress for “The Fisher King,” but the much, much bigger story in this category is nominee Juliette Lewis‘ hair. Everybody made fun of that shit. Sadly, I couldn’t get a good screenshot of her with her then boyfriend, Brad Pitt, who broke out that year in “Thelma and Louise,” but he was sporting a straggly beard on his first trip to the big show. Maybe they were still filming “Kalifornia”? This was HER breakout role, and instead of looking like the next big thing, she looks like Betty Boop just back from Cabo.

Irving G. Thalberg award: George Lucas
I’m going to skip saying anything about George Lucas and the evil he was planning to talk about Steven Spielberg’s introduction. First, his hair is magnificent. Check out that volumizing mousse action. Second, and I can’t believe this happened, in his voiceover for the film segment, he calls Indiana Jones an adventurous anthropologist. I shit you not – anthropologist. He is SO lucky the internet wasn’t big yet, because it. would. have. exploded.

atlantisAt the end of Lucas’ speech, he gets a special live greeting from Space Shuttle Atlantis. Of note on-board are the mission’s commander, Charles F. Bolden, who became the head of NASA in 2009; Kathryn Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space; Michael Foale (far right), who, thanks to his later time on Mir, has spent over a year in outer space; and Dirk Frimout (second from right), who was a massive hit in his home country as the first Belgian in space. Also, he’s a viscount.

The next special award was a lifetime achievement Oscar to Satyajit Ray, director of the Apu Trilogy. You can keep your Quikimart jokes to yourself, because they’re amazing movies and you should rent them, you uncultured heathen. Ray was literally on his deathbed, so he spoke via satellite from the hospital, rambling about how he wrote a fan letter to Deanna Durbin as a kid. It’s kind of cute, but it doesn’t really tell you anything about him as a filmmaker. He actually still sounds pissed at the stars that didn’t write him back.

Audrey HepburnThe lady presenting him the award? Oh, nobody. Just Audrey Hepburn. Looking fabulous at 62, few, including her, would have guessed how close she was to the end. Six months later, she suffered abdominal pain during one of her many UNICEF trips to Africa, which turned out to be a rare abdominal cancer. She passed away January 1993.

In other depressing news, a big deal was made at the Oscars about these new-fangled ribbons everyone was wearing. Billy Crystal even had to explain it – the red ribbons were for AIDS awareness. Since then, every cause has had to fight every other cause over who gets what ribbon, with purple representing everything from animal abuse to hidradenitis suppurativa, a skin disease marked by non-contagious chronic abscesses.

Ashman partnerThe red ribbons tied in with another Oscar first. When “Beauty and the Beast,” from the movie of the same name, won Best Song, Alan Menken was joined onstage by the boyfriend of his cowriter, Howard Ashman. Ashman had died of AIDS the year before, and his boyfriend accepting his award  was a first.

Now, to lighten the mood, I should probably mention the ads. This is a three and a half hour show, but there are fewer ads each break than I was expecting. Few were that funny or interesting, but it is an interesting little window into the time.AT&T

First up, AT&T. They ran several ads touting their flexible plans for small businesses. Remember, this is pre-internet, and long-distance carriers were in a massive war much the way cell-phone providers are now. AT&T wanted to show businesses they can get a company all the phone lines it wants so it can do business – even in foreign countries! Incredible! If you make a lot of calls to just a few area codes, they can make that area code at a special rate, and even help if you have more than one location. Amazing!

CrawfordLiterally half of the ads contained this lady right here: Cindy Crawford. The then-Mrs. Richard Gere appeared in an ad EVERY commercial break for Revlon or Pepsi or whatever. She was unavoidable in 1992. Not that anyone was complaining – I’d take a statuesque chemical engineering major over a bored-looking starvation victim any day.

There were a few car ads – Chevy and Ford mostly showed off their trucks, which, to be honest, don’t look much different that a mid-size truck today. Toyota, however, showed off their models and they are true early ’90s – boxy and boring. Not much to differentiate the outside of their models except their size. It was not a good time for design – the late ’80s and early ’90s are sort of their own decade when it comes to ugliness.

jcpennyFor instance, the girl in the middle is wearing bike shorts under high-waisted denim shorts with folded edges. For the time, that was a conservative fashion statement.

Would it surprise you to learn this girl is doing the Roger Rabbit? Because it shouldn’t.

Patterns and colors like this made us blind, which meant we wore bad patterns and colors. It was a vicious cycle.

Finally we have this ad. This Gap ad ran for goddamn years, and it was stupid. GapMaybe it wasn’t even years, but it ran so often I still remembered every line 20 years later. Click on Mr. Tuxedo here for a beat-ish poem about Gap jeans, intercut with that one chick from Twin Peaks’ butt and a motorcycle.

I have an irrational hatred for this ad. In case you didn’t notice. This one and a Nissan ad that had a lady shout-singing intercut with a car going fast on a dry lake bed played over and over and over when I was up late watching Mystery Science Theater. Also, Zima.

Let’s go back to the awards show and end on a happy note. After over two-and-a-half hours of no one mentioning it and it not being nominated for anything, we get to the end of the show and “Silence of the Lambs” sweeps. It wins screenplay, actor, actress, director, and picture – something only done twice before and has never been done since. A horror film, released in February of that year, manages to crush Oscar bait like “Bugsy” and “The Prince of Tides,” sentimental fare “Beauty and the Beast,” and brilliant-but-controversial “JFK.” Completely insane.

Oh, and check out the Best Picture presenters.

That’s right, lower life forms, it’s Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, looking as regal as shit.

This is the sort of glamor we don’t have that much any more.Here and there, I guess, but seeing as there are whole publications dedicated to showing celebrities doing normal, mundane, and embarrassing things….I don’t know. Maybe it was the studio system and their training. But these two, besides being great actors, were interesting people and great humanitarians. And looked fucking gorgeous while giving an award to the guys who made the movie where a psycho is making a human suit out of fat chicks.

Up Next: Pointless Production Numbers!

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Twenty Years Later – Oscars 1992

A president running for re-election in the midst of a recession. Billy Crystal. Some things don’t change much, I guess.

The Academy Awards are such a big deal every year, but the show themselves disappear from memory. The academy doesn’t release the shows on video or DVD, they don’t repeat on TV, and they patrol YouTube like you wouldn’t believe. Let’s take a look back 20 years ago and see what’s happened to the participants…and make fun of the production numbers.

Billy CrystalBilly Crystal – For his third year hosting the Oscars, Crystal announced there wouldn’t be a dumb opening production number, garnering an embarrassing amount of applause. But really, it was just a lead-in for his parody of the bad opening numbers, singing songs about the Best Picture nominees.

The monologue covered the big stories of the Oscars and some politics, since it was an election year. Some of the things he talked about include:

Warren Beatty had a great year. His film “Bugsy” had the most nominations (10) and was the likely best picture winner. His penis’ reign of terror over Hollywood had just been thwarted by Annette Benning, and they got married and had a kid.
Now: Has only made three movies since then. One (“Bullworth”) is excellent, two (“Love Affair” and “Town and Country”) are not.

Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas had bowed out of the race two weeks earlier, and won six states overall. Eventual nominee Bill Clinton and (then former) California governor Jerry Brown fought for another two weeks until the New York primary, where Brown’s considering Jesse Jackson for VP cost him Jewish voters. (Jackson has had a problem with anti-semitic remarks.)
Now: Tsongas died from lymphoma in 1997, and Jerry Brown is governor of California again.

OrionDespite having a strong record with Oscar, including having the night’s eventual best picture winner, Orion Pictures was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Despite big hits like “Dances With Wolves,” it had too many other expensive flops, like “The First Power” and “Cadillac Man.”
Now: Bankrupt that year. It was pretty much liquidated, with MGM now owning a lot of its catalog.

BarbraThere were two mini-scandals coming out of the nominations that year. Whether Anthony Hopkins was really more of a supporting role in “The Silence of the Lambs,” and that Barbra Streisand was shut out of the best director category for “The Prince of Tides.” There was talk she wouldn’t show up, but in the end, she did, with crimped hair for some reason.
Now: Has only directed one movie since, “The Mirror Has Two Faces,” and has only acted in that and (sigh) “Meet the Fockers” and its sequel.

John SingletonWho grabbed that spot away from Babs? John Singleton was the first minority best director nominee, as well as the youngest ever, for “Boyz n the Hood.” He was only 24! But while presenting the documentary awards, he and Spike Lee just would not stop slouching. Stand up straight, youngster!
Now: Makes well-made but slight actiony fare. His “Shaft” remake is surprisingly good, while “Abduction,” with Taylor Lautner, really, really isn’t.

Besides the dated jokes, watching old Oscar telecasts is fun for the odd combinations of presenters (see above – Spike Lee and John Singleton together is pretty damn cool, slouching or not). Some of them are, frankly, strange and random pairings. For instance:

Lloyd De MornayChristopher Lloyd and Rebecca De Mornay presenting Best Makeup. Seriously – I don’t know where they came up with this.
In 1992: she had been in “Backdraft” and “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.” Around this time, she dated Leonard Cohen – bet you didn’t know that. Lloyd had just done “Addams Family” (in fact, a remote controlled Thing brings them the envelope.)
Now: She popped up in “Wedding Crashers,” but is basically not acting anymore. Lloyd has been doing two things – charming guest spots on shows like “Fringe” and “Chuck,” and terrible things that are beneath him, like “Santa Buddies” and “Knights of Bloodsteel.” And some voiceover work.

Banderas StoneAntonio Banderas and Sharon Stone presenting Best Sound Effects. Stone’s big break, “Basic Instinct” had opened the week before, so she was obviously quite the center of attention. He is introduced as “The Mambo Kings’ Antonio Banderas,” because no one knew who he was outside of Almodovar fans and Spanish people (which are usually the same thing). It was another three years before he got a lead role in an American movie.
Now: He’s goddamn “Puss in Boots”. She’s done nothing of note except some “Law and Order: SVU” since 2006, when she made the god-awful “Basic Instinct 2.”

KidmanNicole Kidman. I don’t really have a joke, I just miss Nicole Kidman’s old face.

 

 

 


Olmos HannahEdward James Olmos and Daryl Hannah presenting Best Sound. I think they just put names in a hat, because these two really, really, REALLY have nothing to do with each other (note: OK, they’re both in “Blade Runner,” but not together.) In fact, it’s kind of mean, because she just makes him look shorter and lumpier. I actually wonder if she was a replacement for somebody, because she hadn’t done anything of note since “Steel Magnolias” two years earlier. But she looked good. He was promoting his film directorial debut, “American Me.”
Now: Daryl’s been doing character-actor stuff here and there, plus “Kill Bill” back in 2006. Olmos moved back to TV with “Battlestar Galactica” and “Dexter.”

Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey presenting Best Live Action Short Subject. Really Academy? Really? They were backstage with Audrey Hepburn and Liz Taylor?

Up Next: The Winners! The Dumb Dance Numbers!

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