Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 21, 1992 TAG: 9202210324
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Chris Gladden
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
OSCAR PICKS LOOK SHORT ON DIRECTION
The Oscar nominations are not for those who like order and symmetry in their lives.When it comes to picking the candidates for the coveted golden statue, logic does not apply.
Common sense dictates that Best Picture and Best Director go hand in glove. We know that movie-making is a collaborative art. Writers, art directors, actors, producers, cinematographers, film editors and a host of others shape a picture. But the director generally gets the credit or the blame for the result. The director oversees the daily shooting, supervises the performers, decides where the camera goes and makes the final decisions.
At the film festival in Charlottesville last October, Charlton Heston said there was no movie - only a shapeless mass of film strip - until the director, with the aid of an editor, went into the editing room. There, he said, the movie was created.
This year, only three directors of the five pictures nominated received best-director nominations - Barry Levinson for "Bugsy," "Oliver Stone for "JFK" and "Jonathan Demme" for "Silence of the Lambs." John Singleton and Ridley Scott were nominated, respectively, for "Boyz N the Hood" and "Thelma and Louise" - movies not nominated for best picture.
Perhaps the biggest snub was the omission of Barbra Streisand, who directed "The Prince of Tides," which was nominated for best picture. She has fallen into the Steven Spielberg syndrome.
We can attribute such inconsistencies to the voting rules of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Members of the 13 arts and crafts guilds vote on the nomination in their categories then the Academy at large votes on the best-picture nominations.
Generally, the nominations made sense, with some glaring exceptions. For my money, "The Prince of Tides" is not an Oscar-quality picture, though Nick Nolte's performance is an Oscar-quality effort. Laura Dern and Diane Ladd were nominated for best supporting actress for their work in "Rambling Rose" but Robert Duvall was ignored. His performance in the movie was one of the outstanding acting jobs of the year. I would like to have seen "Rambling Rose" nominated for best picture instead of "The Prince of Tides." Bette Midler's brash performance in "For the Boys" was over-the-top in an over-the-top movie that flunked critically and at the box office.
Look at the best-actor nominations. Three out of the five actors nominated played sociopaths - Robert De Niro in "Cape Fear," Warren Beatty in "Bugsy" and Anthony Hopkins in "The Silence of the Lambs."