Alternate Oscars

Rating:
Summary: Candor, historic quest galvanizes movie interest&endearment
Review: Author uses care and dignity in a reevaluation of historical placement of the greatest actors, films, etc. This fascinating read is certain to spark the reader's interest in movie-going. Reader will find a happy challenge to revisit and rewatch movie classics to see if in fact Author's opinions substantiate. Surpisingly I found a change in some once-concrete viewpoints. Also serves as an insightful, historic chronicle of the Oscars. If you can't buy book, read a library's copy!

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Idea with Great Alternate Suggestions
Review: Have you ever watched an older movie and enjoyed it so much that you looked it up to see how many Oscars it won? How many times did you come away wondering why it wasn't even nominated for a single one? What makes a great movie great, what makes an over-rated movie over-rated, and what movies over the years have been most egregiously overlooked? "Alternate Oscars" is a book that explores these questions in a most enjoyable and enlightening way.

The author, Danny Peary, looked over the films of 1927 (the first year of the Academy Awards) through 1991 (the year he put the book together) and gave us his thoughts on who the real Academy Award winners should have been. He limited his choices to the awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress and many of the alternate award winners he came up with I whole heartedly agreed with. Mind you, Peary enthusiastically agrees with some of the Oscars awarded over the years and he discards some classic movies in favor of some obscure ones. He meets his critics head on because he writes an essay explaining each of his choices.

The format lists the original winner and other nominees followed by Peary's choice for winner and others that he felt worthy of nomination. The author gives himself the freedom of having one or two other nominees or seven to eight other nominees if he felt they were worthy. I the case of 1963, Peary determined that there was no winner for Best Picture because there was none worthy even of his nomination. One of the reasons that I enjoyed this book is because I had seen enough of Peary's more obscure choices to know that he was right on the money. For example, he cites with nominations for best actor, James Cagney in "One, Two, Three", Groucho Marx in "Duck Soup", and (as a co-winner for 1951) Alastair Sim in "A Christmas Carol". I was bothered by some of the great movies that he eliminated from competition but I was also pleased to see some greatly over-rated movies take the fall.

I enjoy good movies just like I enjoy good books. There are far too many books out there for me to read in my brief lifetime. Therefore I do my best to understand what are the better reliable sources for me to find the books I'm more apt to enjoy. Likewise with movies, I don't have time to watch everything that's shown on Turner Classic Movies nor, I've found, would I really enjoy most of them if I did. I have found several good guides for what movies are probably worth taking the time to see. I gave this book 5 stars because, from what movies I'm already familiar with, Danny Peary seems to be able to pick 'em.

Rating:
Summary: Awaken YOUR interest in movies
Review: I have never been a big fan of movies, or even television for that matter. When I was young, I didn't express it in quite so haughty a way, possibly because I was jealous and wished that I could watch the Banana Splits like everyone else. An actual movie required a car trip of ten minutes because the small town we lived in didn't have a theater; so it wasn't just the matter of begging the admission price. Books didn't really fulfill the entire need when I was young, either. I think most people need some sort of visual stimulation. Since TV and movies were unavailable, I turned to comics and "interactive" play (i.e., that running around with other kids in the neighborhood rather than being glued to the telly).

I can remember seeing movies as a kid, mainly because I can probably list them with 80% accuracy and completeness. The first one I remember was Love Story (which, as some would say, probably has something to do with my dislike for movies as well). My mother says that we saw Bambi earlier, but I just don't recall it. I recall a B-grade horror flick that I saw with my brother in the early 70s. I think it starred Doug McClure, and it was based around the Sargasso Sea (I still get the willies when thinking about some kind of trapdoor and a squid-like thing). Then there's Star Wars, which I remember seeing clips for on a local broadcast noon TV show, and which my brother and I had to see in the first week of screening based on that clip. In fact, I guess I went to movies with my brother a lot (mom was probably trying to get rid of us at the same time, as well as it just being easier logistically). Jaws II, Smokey and the Bandit (I remember the whole family went to that one), Cannonball Run, and Dirty Harry. We saw the popular stuff; my parents were not fans of movies or TV as well, but could be convinced every once and a while.

In high school, the town we moved to had a theater (actually a combination drive-in and walk-in), but because I had moved there "later" than most, I felt apart from the other kids in town, and so I never really "hung-out" at the movies like the majority of my classmates. What films I did see remained the more popular kind: E.T., Superman, Risky Business, the Star Wars sequels, the Star Trek movies. The only brief glimmer of hope in those days was the extraordinary effort I went to in order to see Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

So it wasn't until I went to college that I discovered the movies could be more than entertainment. But I never "fell" for movies like some people (reference Harlan Ellison's introduction to his collection of essays on media, Harlan Ellison's Watching). I was learning that books, which I had read up till now for their entertainment value also, could be more than simply entertainment as well, and that seemed much more exciting for me to explore.

You would think that after moving to L.A., I couldn't help but get more into movies. It is, of course, the movie capitol of the world. But L.A. is a city of facades. Just like the always balmy summer days they foist off as the truth in TV and movies hides the fact that L.A. has something like 90% smog-filled days, so is the movie culture hidden beneath the physical monument of the studios. I went to one "special" screening while in L.A., for the movie Soapdish. Nice performances by Kevin Kline and Sally Field, but nothing substantial.

Colorado? Even though I was back in a college town, movies weren't something I hungered for, or even looked forward to. But here I am, in Radville, Washington, and, frankly, we're bored stiff out here. You'd think that I'd get more reading done, but the absence of other culture makes reading feel monotonous. There is one bright shining light--Battelle's employees started a film club years back, and it's still going strong. This past year's most popular feature was Like Water for Chocolate, which the Film Club sold out in three different showings, and which prompted the local discount theater to book it for a couple of weeks. Through the Film Club I've seen some movies that I can tell will be favorites for times to come (The Palm Beach Story, Strictly Ballroom, and Roger and Me), as well as films that are helping to fill in the gaps of my video eduction (La Dolce Vita), and modern foreign-language films such as Raise the Red Lantern and Europa Europa.

What does all that have to do with Danny Peary's Alternate Oscars? It should explain why, after all these years, I'm suddenly interested in film, and, specifically, the history of the medium. Peary's book provides that history in excellent page-long essays, as well as catching me up on the critical classics of the medium. Perhaps not its intended use, but that's the thing with art--once it is finished, it rarely remains the artist's.

Rating:
Summary: The Power of Hindsight
Review: Is 1979's Manhattan artistically better than 2001's Joe Dirt? That's easy. Almost any film is artistically superior to the bottom-feeding Joe Dirt. But is Manhattan superior to the same year's Norma Rae? That's hard to decide. Both are credible candidates for awards from that year. I would select Norma Rae over Manhattan; on the other hand, Danny Peary prefers Manhattan. The point is that in such matters as artistic awards, the best that can be hoped for is credibility, not the finality of a Joe Dirt. Danny Peary's alternate Oscars have more credibility, in my view, than the Academy's.

I'm concluding this on the basis of his selections from the 1940's, 50's, and 60's, the era I'm most famitiar with. This is also an era of studio domination, when the five major studios and the two minors engineered selections based on the money side of the industry, not the artistic. For example, big budget, prestige films dominated the nominations of 1956, including the syrupy The Ten Commandments, the Broadway hit musical The King and I, the over-produced Giant, and the eventual winner, the highly mercandised and gimmicky Around the World in 80 Days. Except for James Dean in Giant, how many of those films are remembered today. Yet anyone who has seen Peary's picks--The Searchers, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Killing-- remembers them distinctly. Because of both theme and handling, these films register at a deeper, more lasting level than the passing spectacle of the former, a good indication of superior artistic merit.

This is not meant to extrapolate into a theory of merit nor a blanket dismissal of Academy selections. Some years the picks were more credible than others. But it does point up the reigning dichotomy of that era between A-movies on one hand and B-movies on the other, with B-films by dint of their inferior budget deemed unworthy of Award consideration. Yet in retrospect, the lowly B-budgeted Body Snatchers and the independently produced The Killing have proved a staying power far beyond the A-budgeted, highly merchandised nominees of that year. And Danny Peary is dead-on in trying to right this historical wrong. Other examples of grievous B-movie neglect could be cited.

My reasoning here applies only to the studio era when B-movies were produced. Nonetheless, the decline of that centralised system into today's more decentralised system doesn't mean that engineering the Awards has given way to artistic merit. I expect the mechanics are just as venal now as then, but because the industry has spread out, are harder to generalise about. Anyway, Peary's is a good, thought-provoking book that should provide plenty of grist for anyone interested in the movies. He rates in three categories: Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress, explaining his choices in each, and wisely avoiding the convoluted minefields of Best Director. He not only has an appreciation of film, but a feel for movies that affect the audience. After all, in retrospect, how could the Best Film Award of 1960 have gone to any movie other than the B-budgeted Psycho. Thanks Mr. Peary for paying that long overdue bill.

Rating:
Summary: Not my choices, but WHO CARES?
Review: This book, as the title states, is a compilation of the author's choices for Best Picture, Actor, and Actress from 1927-1991. It's not on the same level as Peary's "Guide for the Film Fanatic," because cult films aren't included (obviously) and it's Peary's love for more obscure, curious films that I feel rates his books higher than Ebert's or Kael's. I don't think the book is meant to degrade the Academy as much as it is to expose readers to some lesser-known or underappreciated performances (I can only assume he's a big fan of Chaplin). Whatever Peary's reason for writing it, his analyses of the films and of the performances that he cites as best in every year are well-written and thorough, and this book is a treat for anyone who enjoys reading about film.

Rating:
Summary: Not my choices, but WHO CARES?
Review: This book, as the title states, is a compilation of the author's choices for Best Picture, Actor, and Actress from 1927-1991. It's not on the same level as Peary's "Guide for the Film Fanatic," because cult films aren't included (obviously) and it's Peary's love for more obscure, curious films that I feel rates his books higher than Ebert's or Kael's. I don't think the book is meant to degrade the Academy as much as it is to expose readers to some lesser-known or underappreciated performances (I can only assume he's a big fan of Chaplin). Whatever Peary's reason for writing it, his analyses of the films and of the performances that he cites as best in every year are well-written and thorough, and this book is a treat for anyone who enjoys reading about film.

Rating:
Summary: A revised opinion on Alternate Oscars
Review: When I wrote my previous review for this book, I was writing from memory. I also was influenced by some opinions from other reviewers. But after reviewing the book, I have to say that it isn't that bad. It depends upon who is reading.

When they were originally founded in the late 1920's, the goal of the Academy Awards was to honor films and actors/actresses on the grounds of merit. This was difficult enough to achieve with a group of about a dozen voters, considering especially that they had power and influence. But overtime the academy grew to hundreds and even thousands of members. With such a large group of different people and personalities, it's safe to say that many have been influenced in their decisions by other reasons beside merit: Sentimentality, politics, consolation for a previous defeat and, most importantly, an obsession with prestige. In addition, silent movies were ignored during the transition to sound movies and certain film genres (Comedies and Westerns predominately), as well as independent and foreign films have been largely ignored over the years. If these factors did not exist in the minds of the academy voters, the results would be far different.

Author Danny Peary has realized this. As a result, he has gone back through Oscar history and rewritten the results, awarding Alternate Oscars to different winners, occasionally giving them to the actual academy choices. While some choices are the predictable ones ("Citizen Kane" or "Casablanca"), Peary mostly tries to surprise us as much as possible in his selections, providing reasons for his choices and analyses of the films. In addition, so has to honor the contributions of others, "Award Worthy Runners Up" are included for every year (Although there are sometimes none).

Another area the book works at is in the disagreement with the decisions. For example, I like the much-acclaimed union drama "On the Waterfront". But Mr. Peary took away it's 1954 Best Picture Oscar and awarded it to "Salt of the Earth", another film about labor workers. While I may disagree, I have not seen "Salt of the Earth" and am now intrigued at watching it. If I hadn't read this book, that might not have happened.

There are a few complaints with the book, though minor. A few of your favorite stars (Burt Lancaster for example) might not have received Alternate Oscars. But the author apologizes for this at the book's introduction. Also, no Best Picture selection is made for 1963 (The author citing a lack of great films). Finally, the selections only go up to 1991. Hopefully, a second edition is in the works. It would be fascinating to see what Peary would have to say. Or who knows? Maybe another critic could share their two cents on the Academy. How about several critics on the same book? But one thing is for certain: for as long as the Academy continues to blunder, there will always be a place for critics like Danny Peary. Thank you very much.

(I would also like to make a correction on my previous review. Mr. Peary's selection as 1976's Best Picture was Woody Allen's "The Front", not "The Accused".)

Rating:
Summary: Better title - "The Big Book of Stuff I Like"
Review: Yes, 2001 was a better film than Oliver! Yes, Singin' in the Rain is better than The Greatest Show On Earth. Yes, It's a Wonderful Life is better than The Best Years of Our Lives. But they didn't win. Why not? Because they weren't as highly regarded on their intitial release as they are now. It's as simple as that. Each year can only be looked at as a snapshot of that moment in time, not the be-all and end-all of opinions.

And opinions is really all this book is about. Peary feels the need to state his loud and clear, preferring it to the AMPAS voters and expecting us to the same. Thanks, but no thanks.

That being said, many of the short essays on films are very good. This would be much better as a book of criticism. But "Alternate Oscars" is a bad idea.