Tuesday, February 5, 2008

65th Academy Awards


The 65th Academy Awards were presented March 29, 1993 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. The show was hosted by Billy Crystal.

Unforgiven won four awards including Best Picture. Unforgiven 1992 is a Western film which tells the story of a retired gunslinger who takes on one more job. The film was directed by Clint Eastwood and the screenplay was by David Webb Peoples. A Western that deals frankly with the uglier aspects of violence and the myth of the Old West, it stars Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris, Jaimz Woolvett, Saul Rubinek and Frances Fisher. Eastwood dedicated the movie to former directors and mentors Don Siegel and Sergio Leone. The film won four Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Gene Hackman), Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Picture. Unforgiven was inducted into the United States National Film Registry in 2004.

Clint Eastwood, an American actor, film director, producer, and composer, has won an Academy Award five times - twice each as Best Director and as producer of the Best Picture; he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1995. While his work as a director, on recent films like Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers, have received a high degree of critical acclaim, Eastwood is best known for his tough guy, anti-hero acting roles typically in western films, most notably as the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's "Dollars trilogy" of Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, and Inspector 'Dirty' Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry series of the 1970s and 1980s. Eastwood, who stands at 6 ft 4 inches (193 cm), found lead roles as the mysterious Man With No Name in Sergio Leone's loose trilogy of westerns: A Fistful of Dollars / Per un pugno di dollari (1964), For a Few Dollars More / Per qualche dollaro in più (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly / Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966). In 1970, war movie Kelly's Heroes and Don Siegel directed western Two Mules for Sister Sara, costarring Shirley MacLaine, both combined tough-guy action with offbeat humor. In The Beguiled, again directed by Siegel, he played a cad - as close to an outright villain as he has come. 1971 proved to be a professional turning point for his career. His own production company, Malpaso, was new but gave Eastwood the control he desired, allowing him to direct and star in the thriller Play Misty for Me. But it was his portrayal of the hard-edged police inspector Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry that propelled Siegel's most successful movie at the box-office and arguably established Eastwood's most memorable character. The film has been credited with inventing the "loose-cannon cop genre" that is imitated to this day. Eastwood's tough, no-nonsense cop touched a cultural nerve with many who were fed up with crime in the streets. Dirty Harry led to four sequels: Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988), as well as sparking numerous imitators such as Charles Bronson's Death Wish (1974) and its four sequels.In 1979, Eastwood played yet another memorable role as the prison escapee Frank Morris in the fact-based movie Escape from Alcatraz, which was also his last collaboration with Don Seigel. Morris was an escape artist who was sent to Alcatraz in 1960, which was, at the time, one of the toughest prisons in America. Morris devised a meticulous plan to escape from "The Rock" and, in 1962, he and two other prisoners broke out of the prison and entered San Francisco Bay. They were never seen again, and although the FBI believes that the escapees drowned, to this day their actual fate is unknown.Eastwood rose to prominence yet again in the early 1990s. He revisited the western genre one final time in the self-directed 1992 film, Unforgiven, taking on the role of an aging ex-gunfighter long past his prime. The film, also starring such esteemed actors as Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, and Richard Harris, laid the groundwork for such later westerns as Deadwood by re-envisioning established genre conventions in a more ambiguous and unromantic light. A great success both in terms of box office and critical acclaim, it was nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Actor for Eastwood and Best Original Screenplay for David Webb Peoples. It won four, including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood. The following year, Eastwood played a guilt-ridden Secret Service agent in the thriller In the Line of Fire (1993) directed by Wolfgang Petersen. This film was a blockbuster and among the top 10 box-office performers in that year. Eastwood directed and starred with Kevin Costner in A Perfect World the same year. He continued to expand his repertoire by playing opposite Meryl Streep in the love story The Bridges of Madison County (1995). Based on a best-selling novel, it was also a hit at the box-office. Afterward, Eastwood turned to more directing work — much of it well received — including Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). In 2003 he directed Mystic River for which he garnered a Best Director nomination. In Space Cowboys, which also starred Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, James Garner, and James Cromwell, he plays Frank Corvin, a retired engineer NASA calls upon to save a dying Russian Mir satellite. He found critical acclaim with Million Dollar Baby in 2004, winning 4 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and Eastwood was nominated for Best Actor (the award went to Jamie Foxx). In 2006, he directed two movies about the battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. The first one, Flags of Our Fathers, focused on the men who raised the American Flag on top of Mount Suribachi. The second one, Letters from Iwo Jima, dealt with the tactics of the Japanese soldiers on the island and the letters they wrote to family members. Both films were highly praised by critics and garnered several Oscar Nominations, including Best Director and Picture for Letters from Iwo Jima. Eastwood, who has been married twice, has five daughters and two sons by five different women: Kimber (born 1964), with Roxanne Tunis; Kyle (born in 1968) and Alison (born on May 22, 1972), with ex-wife Maggie Johnson; Scott (born March 21, 1986) and Kathryn (born February 2, 1988), with airline hostess Jacelyn Reeves; Francesca Ruth (born August 7, 1993), with Frances Fisher, his co-star in Unforgiven; and Morgan (born December 12, 1996), with current wife Dina Ruiz.


The Best Actor award went to Al Pacino. He made his first screen appearance in an episode of the television series N.Y.P.D. in 1968, and his largely unnoticed movie debut in Me, Natalie came the following year. It was the 1971 film The Panic in Needle Park, in which he played a heroin addict, that would bring him to the attention of director Francis Ford Coppola. Pacino's rise to fame came after portraying Michael Corleone in Coppola's blockbuster 1972 Mafia film The Godfather and Frank Serpico in the eponymous 1973 movie. In 1973 Pacino starred in the very successful Serpico and the less popular Scarecrow alongside Gene Hackman. In 1974, Pacino reprised his role as Michael Corleone in the very successful sequel The Godfather Part II, acclaimed as being comparable to the original. In 1975, he enjoyed further success with the release of Dog Day Afternoon, based on the true story of a bank robber John Wojtowicz. In 1977, Pacino starred as a race-car driver in Bobby Deerfield, directed by Sydney Pollock and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor – Drama, for his portrayal of Bobby Deerfield, but lost out to Richard Burton, who ultimately won for Equus. During the 1970s, Pacino had four Oscar nominations for Best Actor for his performances in Serpico, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, and ...And Justice for All. However, 1983's Scarface, directed by Brian DePalma, proved to be a career highlight and a defining role. Pacino earned a Golden Globe nomination for his performance in Scarface as a Cuban drug gangster. Pacino received an Oscar nomination as Big Boy Caprice in the box office hit Dick Tracy (1990) followed by a return to arguably his most famous character, Michael Corleone, in The Godfather Part III (1990). In 1991, Al Pacino starred in Frankie and Johnny with Michelle Pfeiffer, who also co-starred with Pacino in Scarface. He would finally win an Oscar for Best Actor, for his portrayal of the depressed, irascible, and retired blind Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in Martin Brest's Scent of a Woman (1992). That very year, he was also nominated for the supporting actor award for Glengarry Glen Ross, making Pacino the first male actor ever to receive two acting nominations for two different movies in the same year, and to win for the lead role (as did Jamie Foxx in 2005). Pacino has since turned acclaimed performances in such crime dramas as Carlito's Way (1993), Donnie Brasco (1997), the multi-Oscar nominated The Insider (1999) and Insomnia (2002).In 1995, Pacino starred in Michael Mann's Heat, in which he and fellow film icon Robert De Niro appeared onscreen together for the first time. (Though both Pacino and De Niro starred in The Godfather Part II, they did not share any scenes. The pairing drew much attention as the two actors have long been compared). In 1996, Pacino starred in his theatrical feature Looking for Richard, and was lauded for his role as Satan in the supernatural drama The Devil's Advocate in 1997. Pacino also starred in Oliver Stone's critically acclaimed Any Given Sunday in 1999, playing the team coach. The speech he performs in the film has become known world-wide as "the Al Pacino Speech" which is used to inspire many athletes around the world. With his box office earnings relatively modest of late, Pacino looks to be gearing up with several new projects. He starred in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean's Thirteen alongside George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Andy Garcia as the villain Willy Bank, a casino tycoon who is targeted out of revenge by Danny Ocean and his crew. While Pacino has never married, he has three children. The first, Julie Marie, (b. 1989) is his daughter with acting coach Jan Tarrant. He also has twins, Anton James and Olivia Rose (b. January 25, 2001), with ex-girlfriend Beverly D'Angelo, whom he was with from 1997-2001.

Emma Thompson is an Emmy-, BAFTA-, Golden Globe- and two time Academy Award-winning English actress, comedian, and screenwriter. Thompson's first major film role was in a romantic comedy, The Tall Guy. Her career took a more serious turn with a series of critically acclaimed performances and films, beginning with 1992's Howards End (for which she received an Oscar for Best Actress), the part of Gareth Peirce, the lawyer for the Guildford Four, in In the Name of the Father, The Remains of the Day opposite Anthony Hopkins, and as the British painter Dora Carrington in the film Carrington. She won her next Oscar in 1996, for Best Adapted Screenplay for her screenplay adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, a film in which she also played the Oscar-nominated lead actress role. Most recently, Thompson appeared in supporting roles in films of a lighter nature, including her role as Sybill Trelawney in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. She has also appeared in the comedy Love Actually. Thompson married Kenneth Branagh, with whom she appeared in Fortunes of War, on August 20, 1989. They appeared together several times, in hit films such as Dead Again, Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing, but were eventually divorced in October 1995. In 2003, Thompson married actor Greg Wise (who starred with her in Sense and Sensibility) with whom she has a daughter, Gaia Romilly, born in 1999.

Marisa Tomei is an Academy Award-winning American film and stage actress. Tomei followed up As the World Turns in 1987 with a role on the sitcom A Different World. Her breakthrough performance came in My Cousin Vinny (1992), for which she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. After her Oscar win, she received a Screen Actor's Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Female Supporting Actor for Unhook the Stars. Next, she received an American Comedy Award nomination for Funniest Supporting Actress for Slums of Beverly Hills. She was nominated for a Satellite Award as Best Supporting Actress for What Women Want. She received a second Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for In The Bedroom (2001). Tomei has also done substantial work in the theater, including taking lead roles on Broadway In the early 1990s, Tomei dated Robert Downey, Jr. (her co-star in Only You). In 1999, she dated actor Dana Ashbrook and had a relationship with Frankie Pugliese. She tends to keep her personal life away from the media.

Indochine is an 1992 Academy Award winning French film that tells the story of a young Indochinese woman named Camille. The title refers to the colony of French Indochina, of which modern Vietnam was once a part. The screenplay was written by Erik Orsenna, Louis Gardel Catherine Cohen and Régis Wargnier. It was directed by Wargnier. It stars Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Perez, Linh Dan Pham, Jean Yanne and Dominique Blanc.The movie won the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Catherine Deneuve received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film.

"A Whole New World" was the featured pop single from the soundtrack to the 1992 Disney movie Aladdin. It was composed by Alan Menken with lyrics by Tim Rice. The song is a ballad between the primary characters Aladdin and Jasmine about the new world they're going to discover together. The single version was performed by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle and is heard over the end credits. The version heard during the narrative of the film was performed by Brad Kane and Lea Salonga, the singing voices for Aladdin and Princess Jasmine, respectively. They also performed the song in their characters at the 65th Academy Awards. "A Whole New World" won the 1992 Academy Award for Best Original Song, giving Alan Menken his third win and second consecutive after his 1991 award for "Beauty and the Beast". The song also won the 1992 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, also succeeding "Beauty and the Beast" in the award.

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