It’s Oscars’ season and you know what it means… I’m not quite breaking the Oscar post tradition yet… So here we are! This time I’ve come up with a different type of post, more like 2018’s Oscar’s first times. We’re going back to the craziest moments, some of the most emotional ones and a couple of funny stories. I think we all remember that Monlight/Lalaland moment at the 89th Academy Awards… Probably the craziest Oscar plot twist ever…. Can you remember any other crazy situations? What’s the longest standing ovation of the Acdemy Awards? Has there ever been two winners for the same category?
It’s a tie!!!!!
What happened with Moonlight and Lalaland had never happened before in the story of the Academy. It was just a human mistake that resulted in the craziest Oscar night ever. There has only been one, not similar, but also very exceptional situation for a major category award. Remember Katharine Hepburn is The Queen of the Oscars, the only performer (male or female) to win 4 Oscars at the main category. Well, as I already mentioned in that post, in 1969 a beloved Katharine Hepburn was nominated for the 11th time as Best Actress together with a 26 year old Barbra Streisand. And they both won, which means they both gained exactly the same amount of votes. When Ingrid Bergman was presenting the award for Best Actress she was shocked, there was a tie, there were two names on the envelope!!!!! How did this happen????!!!
Well there are many explanations… Let’s go with the main answer:
Since 1967 Gregory Peck was the President of the Academy with one goal: refresh, renew and attract a new generation of film professionals. Gregory Peck updated Academy membership. To help balance the votes he introduced new rules letting not only Academy Award winners, participants in at least three major nominated films, or three time nominees vote but also exceptional talents. The latter is not a common use, not even nowadays. Well, in 1968 Gregory Peck introduced Barbra Streisand as a member of the Academy, before Funny Girl was even screened, causing a big controversy at the time. Gregory praised Streisand’s performance like he campaigned for his young co-star Audrey Hepburn back in the Roman Holidays times but he had a lot of the elder Academy members against his renewal ideas.
And so, the votes were split and divided between Katharine Hepburn and her traditional and «old school» devotees and Barbra Streisand and her fresh spark. If Barbra Streissand used her recent Academy membership to vote for herself (or maybe voted for Katharine), that one vote might have been the decisive vote for her and Katharine to tie as Best Actress. The fact is they both deserved their wins…: Katharine Hepburn is probably the best actress in cinema’s history right there with the greatest Meryl Streep and Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl… just WOW she was so young and her musical performance gives everything from comedy to drama, just marvellous (you can watch Funny Girl on Netflix and enjoy!).
When everything changed for foreign language films
Another crazy moment was when Roberto Benigni won for best actor and became the first non-English speaking male performance to win at this category. At 1999’s ceremony, Life is Beautiful changed the foreign film spectre for good. For a foreign film, it won big, sorry, not big, it won huge. After last year’s Parasite huge Oscar night we may think it’s «easy» for a foreign film to walk out with more than a Best Foreign Language Film win. There were cases of a foreign film going home with Best Original Screenplay and Best Foreign Language Film before 1999. Only Sophia Loren had won Best Actress for a foreign language performance in 1961 for Two Women but it was the sole Oscar win for the film.
Everything changed in 1999’s ceremony: Life is Beautiful won three Oscars: Best Foreign Language Film, Best Original Score, for its soundtrack. and Best Actor. Three out of its 6 nominations, that included Best Picture and Best Director. To be honest, I don’t blame Roberto Benigni for his enthusiasm and for climbing over and standing on the back of the Dolby theatre seats when he won Best Foreign Language Film. He probably thought that was all he was going to get. Little did he know he was going to win Best Actor. In his Best Actor speech he said: «This is a terrible mistake because I used up all my English!» Thanks to this incredible night, the Oscars started to appreciate foreign films for their quality more and more till Parasite’s historic night. Let’s hope this foreign film appreciation only grows bigger each year. That’s the magic of cinema: it’s a universal language.
The longest standing ovation ever
The last crazy moment I want to talk about is the longest standing ovation anyone has ever received for an Oscar. Charles Chaplin was rightfully granted the Honorary Award at 1972’s Oscars. I think today no one will question his talent and contribution to cinema but he was blacklisted and rejected by Hollywood and by the United States for more than 20 years.
Chaplin was a star back in the silent film days. One of the best and most remarkable comedians in cinema history. Born in London, he lived in the United States during the peak of his career (most of his films are in Amazon Prime, if you want to watch them) but his films and his views started to become too political… After The Great Dictatorship (1940) which satirised Hitler, his popularity declined rapidly. In the 1950’s he was investigated by the FBI for his communist views and the witch hunt forced him to permanently leave the United States and settle in Switzerland. When the Academy announced he was receiving the Honorary Award Chaplin didn’t know if he wanted to return to the US or even accept it. He returned to the US for the first time in 20 years and he was given the longest standing ovation in history. In 1972 Hollywood «made amends» with the icon for «the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century».
References:
The Lion in Winter (1968)
Funny Girl (1968)
How Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn Tied for Best Actress
Life is Beautiful (1997)
The story gets crazier, funnier and more entertaining as the plot goes on. Based on the 1949 novel: Lottie and Lisa, it is a feel-good family movie you can jump back-in during these days. In the 1961 version, Maureen O’hara and Brian Keith are the fooled parents. And the girls ( both played by Hayley Mills) switch places, moving one to Boston and the other to California. The distance between them is much smaller than in the 1998 version. The Parent Trap ,1961, was a huge success. For generations, this family film entertained children and adults equally. In 1998, Disney decided to do a remake. This is the film, that, if you are a 90s kid like me, you have probably watched countless times. 
The Parent Trap, 1998, with Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson as the divorced couple was Lindsay Lohan’s film debut. They put an ocean of distance between the twins and the almost identical plot took place this time in London and in California.
portrays an obssessive compulsive man who takes interest in the waitress that works at the restaurant where he has his breakfast every day. Jack Nicholson is one of the most brilliant actors of his generation. He does great in all kinds of film comedies, horror films or dramas. This film will make you laugh and will show you Nicholson’s most heart-warming and strange romantic side. What I love about Nicholson and Helen Hunt’s performances is how naturally they capture the essence of their characters.
Shout out to Greg Kinnear’ s role and his dog in the film. Don’t ask questions about this last statement, if you wanna know what I’m talking about, just whatch the film.
If the fact that a leopard is one of the main characters of a romantic comedy doesn’t make you wanna go and watch this film immediately I should add that you will be laughing non-stop for 1 hour and 30 minutes. When you think the film has reached its peak of absurdity something even more crazy happens. If you want to have a good laugh this is a film you must watch. Here are some of its hilarious fragments:
Jane Fonda plays a free-spirited, woman and Redford a less-spirited man who, despite their differences, are absentmindedly in love with each other . Their new apartment is small and crumbled and many absurd and crazy sitations will put their love at stake.
Trying not to drop any spoilers, you should know that this film is a beautiful metaphor of life and how to enjoy it. Here’s to a future dancing around like crazy barefoot in the park , making beautiful new memories with our loved ones.
It always makes it into whatever shortlist, book, or expert critic opinion related to cinematography you may find. Robert Krasker’s expressionist cinematography literally gives you chills. When you bring up The third man in a conversation everyone starts to talk only about: those final scenes were they chase each other… Oh! and when they only show you his shadow in the street… And the spiral staircase… What about the ferring wheel… ? The fact that there are so many pictures and scenes that quickly come to mind when you talk about The third man makes its cinematography iconic.
Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster melt into each other while the ocean crushes into them. It’s impossible not to remember the frame Burnett Guffey captured them in. From here to eternity will always be remembered for this kiss. In 2002, From Here to Eternity was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry as being «culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant». An aesthetic mainly achieved thanks to its cinematography.
horn-rimmed glasses that combined perfectly with his nose, thick brushy eyebrows and a mustache. These exaggerated features were linked to an exaggerated posture and even more extravagant gestures.
They both were talented musicians: Chico played the piano and Harpo played the harp in most films.
They each developped their own stage persona. The films they starred-in were based on a script that had usually been written with them in mind, then they came up with their own sketches and, for the scenes in which they all appeared in, they put into practice their brainstormed ideas. Maybe this was the secret to their success, they all knew they needed each other and never discredited their work.
) was an American composer whose carreer as motion picture composer started almost when the Oscars added the category of Best Original Score back in 1934. Bernard Herrmann paired with Orson Wells to direct the life music of Well’s famous radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds and worked for him again to write his very first film score for Citizen Kane (1941). That same year, Herrmann wrote the score to All That Money Can Buy (1941). Hermann was nominated for the Academy Award of best original score for these two movies, at the same time. He won his only Oscar, out of four nominations during his long carreer, for All that Money Can Buy.
He first worked as a jazz-pianist for the Glenn Miller Orchestra, then joined the Universal Pictures music department in 1952 which gained him the recognition that permited him to work as an independent composer and arrenger since 1958. Mancini found his best partner in Blake Edwards. He composed the score for 30 Blake Edwards’ films. All four Academy Awards for best original score and best song won by Mancini came from his collaborations with Blake Edwards.
His been nominated six times to the Academy Awards but he has only won once. He finally won the Oscar, in 2016, for the score of Tarantino’s Hateful Eight, at the age of 88. His win took place ten years after receiving the Academy Honorary Award. He has worked with Sergio Leone in all of his films. This means Morricone is the mind behind the Spaghetti Western themes.
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