Oscar Mania
The Academy Awards turns 79 this year. Yep, Oscar’s almost an octogenarian. But
unlike most 80-year olds – whose lives slow down and become increasingly
uneventful – this guy’s a regular party animal! Interest in and around the
Oscars has never been higher, continuing to reach fever pitch yearly with
renewed fervour. Like Pac Man, the industry of the red carpet must be fed with
celebrity watching, gossip about the after-parties, whose wearing what, which
celebrity couples are in attendance (the “Brangelinas” and the “Bennifers”),
and - oh yeah - how many Australians have been nominated.
This year there are four Australian “Oscar hopefuls” nominated in three
categories:
Dr. George Miller’s Happy Feet for Best Animated Feature,
Cate Blanchett for Best Supporting Actress in Notes On A Scandal, and
AFTRS students Peter Templeman and Stuart Parkyn for Best Live Action Short for
their student film, The Saviour.
Australian short filmmakers are on a bit of a roll with Oscar; it is the fifth
year in a row that an Australian short film has received recognition from the
members of “The Academy”, something Australian features can’t boast. Last year
Anthony Lucas’s animation
The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello was nominated
for Best Short Animation; in 2005 so was
Sejong Park’s
Birthday Boy. 2004 proved the BIG one with
Adam Elliot taking home a little a golden statuette in the same
category, won by his dear little claymation hero
Harvie Krumpet. But it was Inja in 2003 that started this streak of
short film success, nominated for Best Live Action Short, directed by AFTRS
grad,
Steve Pasvolsky
(Deck Dogz).
Australians have a long history with the Oscars stretching back to 1932.
Melbourne-born actress
May Robson became the first Australian to receive an Oscar nomination.
It was for Best Actress for her performance in Lady For a Day, directed by
Frank Capra. Next came Adelaide-born actress
Judith Anderson, who at the 1940 Academy Awards was nominated for Best
Supporting Actress for playing Mrs Danvers in
Alfred Hitchcock’s B&W masterpiece,
Rebecca.
Given all the glitz and glamour associated with the Oscars ironically the first
win for an Australian film was for a gritty journey into real life. In 1943
documentary
Kokoda Front Line! won the Best Documentary award, a chronicle of
Australia’s WWII campaign in Papua New Guinea. It has a tragic post-script:
co-directed by wartime documentarian
Damien Parer, he was killed in armed conflict in 1944 while filming
American troops in the Pacific.
One of the most-nominated Australians in Oscar history is costume designer
“Orry-Kelly” who went to work in Hollywood in the early 1930s, designing and
making costumes for some 300 films until his death in 1964. He was nominated
for four films and won for three:
Some Like It Hot (1960), Les Girls (1958) and
An American In Paris (1952). (Gypsy
was his sole ‘unsuccessful’ nomination in 1963, but who’s complaining.) Born in
Kiama NSW, Orry-Kelly originally set his sights on becoming an actor travelling
to New York to pursue his dream. Trained as a painter he found work as a title
designer and moved to Hollywood in 1932. He never looked back designing gowns
for some of the biggest actresses of the day, including
Bette Davis (Dark Victory),
Katharine Hepburn (Pat and Mike),
Shirley Maclaine (Irma La Douce) and of course
Miss Marilyn Munroe (Some
Like It Hot).
Director
Peter Weir also takes line honours for being one of Australia’s Most
Nominated, his name read out at the ceremony five times to date (four times in
Best Director category), beginning in 1986 with
Witness.
Dead Poet’s Society brought him further adulation in 1990, the film
nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture. (It won for Best
Original Screenplay, of which Weir was one of the writers). Then came
The Truman Show in 1999, a ‘zeitgeist movie’ about the ‘moral perils’
of reality television. Star
Jim Carrey didn’t get the serious acting recognition he so desperately
craved (he wasn’t even nominated for Best Actor), but it was Weir’s third
nomination for Best Director. (The award eventually went to
Stephen Spielberg for
Saving Private Ryan).
Although Weir hasn’t won a Best Director Oscar yet one thing’s for sure; he
only has to sneeze in a movie’s direction to have it wind up at the Oscars.
Perhaps The Academy should give him a posthumous gong for one of his best – and
most bizarre - films to date,
The Cars That Ate Paris (1974). Stranger things have happened: see
Jack Palance’s award for Best Supporting Actor for
City Slickers, one of Oscar’s most ‘unique’ and entertaining recipients
to date...
- Megan
Megan Spencer has spent way too much of her life in the dark, all for a good
cause though - watching movies as a professional film critic. For the last six
and a half years she has been serving the ever-increasing hunger for film and
DVD reviews as radio triple j's resident film critic, and a year ago joined the
new line up of long-running SBS-TV film review program, The Movie Show.
Every now and then she pops up into the light to make her own films,
documentaries (her latest is 'Fantastic Brutality', a documentary about an
obsessed wrestling fan, to be released next year). She has also written about
film for many publications including J-Mag, Limelight, Inside Film Magazine and
the Age Green Guide.
And the impossible question to ask a film critic: what's her favourite film?
"Blue Velvet would be at the top of the list, so would Fight Club... But then
again American In Paris makes me cry every time."
Megan has also been part of the Foxtel's Project Greenlight Australia as an
on-air panelist and judge.
