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Re: Best Picture and Director - 1998

Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2013 3:58 pm
by Jim20
Saving Private Ryan and Spielberg.

Re: Best Picture and Director - 1998

Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2013 11:21 am
by mlrg
voted for Saving Private Ryan and Spielberg

Best Picture and Director - 1998

Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2013 8:41 am
by Big Magilla
Here we go - back to the beginning as we rehash those years we've done here in real time.

My favorite film of the year was, and remains, Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters back when I had no idea who Bill Condon was. I had him mixed up with Carl Franklin who had directed that year's Meryl Streep starrer, One True Thing. Damien had to actually tell me that Condon wasn't black!

Gods and Monsters started off well, winning first out of the gate National Board of Review's top award and Best Picture nominations from the Broadcast Film critics; (Golden) Satellites; Golden Globes and PGA (Producers Guild of America) in only their second year of nominating five films prior to their winner announcement. The PGA's nominations this year were more to my liking than Oscar's with winner Saving Private Ryan; Shakespeare in Love; Life Is Beautiful and Waking Ned Devine filling in the other slots. I would have replaced only the engaging but slight Ned Devine with Walter Salles' Central Station.

Oscar did nominate Ian McKellen and Lynn Redgrave and gave the Best Adapted Screenplay award to Condon, but failed to nominate Gods and Monsters for either Best Picture or Director. They also passed on Waking Ned Devine, but endorsed the PGA's selections of Saving Private Ryan; Shakespeare in Love and Life Is Beautiful. Added to Oscar's list were (Golden) Satellite winner The Thin Red Line and Golden Globe nominee Elizabeth.

Of the actual nominees I preferred Spielberg's epic Saving Private Ryan slightly over Shakespeare in Love and Life Is Beautiful.

Shakespeare in Love's Best Picture win over Saving Private Ryan is generally attributed to Harvey Weinstein's aggressive Oscar campaign and the preferences of female voters. I'd add another thing. Originally scheduled for release the year before, the year-long delay gave prognosticators the idea that the film wasn't very good. The film's near rapturous reviews caught voters by happy surprise.

The Thin Red Line was the film I had been most looking forward to all year, but found Malick's confusing, stop and watch the birds in the trees, voice-over narrated film to be a missed opportunity at best. I found Elizabeth despite its stellar cast to be a wan and historically inaccurate version of a story done much better on TV nearly two decades earlier as Elizabeth R with Glenda Jackson and would be done equally well almost a decade later in the same medium as Elizabeth I with Helen Mirren.

I found Peter Weir's direction of The Truman Show to be competent, but I found the film itself to be no more than a pumped up version of an old Twlight Zone show, the venerable series that told such stories better in an economic half hour.

My votes go to Saving Private Ryan and Spielberg.