OVP: Actor (2001)

OVP: Best Actor (2001)

The Nominees Were...

Russell Crowe, A Beautiful Mind

Sean Penn, I Am Sam

Will Smith, Ali

Denzel Washington, Training Day

Tom Wilkinson, In the Bedroom

My Thoughts: Outside factors oftentimes come into play when you talk about the Oscars.  As much as it shouldn't be, it is rarely just about the performance; instead, it is oftentimes about the politics.  For those who didn't live through it, Russell Crowe in 2001 was a whirlwind of a celebrity.  After Gladiator, he was an incredibly bankable name in Hollywood, and A Beautiful Mind clearing $300 million at the worldwide box office cemented that.  He was also persona non grata in the tabloids.  He had broken up the marriage of America's Sweetheart Meg Ryan on the set of Proof of Life, and was known as something of a bad boy offscreen, including getting into a fight at that year's BAFTA Awards, with producer Malcolm Gerrie after Gerrie cut off Crowe's speech.  All of this is to say-in 2001, the only thing that people were focusing on talking about this category was the personal life of Crowe, then one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, and whether that would hurt him in getting a second consecutive Oscar.

Crowe's performance, it should be noted, is definitely worthy of an Oscar (or at least a nomination).  Of all of the elements of A Beautiful Mind, he's the best (after the score), and delivers as John Nash.  This is not a Forrest Gump situation, where he is playing a man with mental health issues as comedic or a punchline.  Instead, he's played as someone wrestling with his own personal demons.  Most actors would've felt the need to skip some of the charisma & sexuality of the leading man (Crowe at this point of his career was, indeed, quite sexy & charming when he wanted to be), but that isn't stolen from Nash-instead it serves as a cover for why so many people struggled to see what he was compensating for underneath.  Crowe was on a role in 2001, and this is fine stuff.

His chief competition for the Oscar was Denzel Washington, who at this point it'd become something of a common refrain of "when is he going to win Best Actor?" (Julia Roberts spent months personally campaigning for him in a way that apparently is only a problem if you're cheering on Andrea Riseborough).  Washington is sensational in Training Day, giving us a charismatic villain that you almost find yourself rooting for despite him being increasingly violent the further you get into the movie.  Training Day isn't a great movie, but it's a good movie with a great performance, which used to be called a "star vehicle" and that's what happens here-Washington nails the lived-in pathology of a unique character, and definitely came to play against Crowe.

None of the other actors were really in the hunt for a nomination in 2001.  Will Smith was just starting what would be his own quest for a statue with Ali.  Smith, like Crowe, was a new A-list star in 2001 after a bunch of action blockbusters, and his nomination for Ali was a "welcome to the club" moment.  Unfortunately, it's not very good acting.  Smith looks the part (he is, as Ali might say "so pretty"), but doesn't give the role enough depth.  Ali was still alive in 2001, which is always a dangerous place to come from with a biopic, and that might be why we aren't seeing some of the downsides of Ali's personal journey, just the road blocks in his way.  This means Smith doesn't get to play with the most compelling aspects of the role, and we get a limited performance.

If Smith was being welcomed to the club, in 2001 Sean Penn was getting another down payment on his inevitable Oscar.  Unlike Crowe's Nash, Penn's role in I Am Sam is played for laughs, and is insensitive (to the point it would become a running joke in the movie Tropic Thunder seven years later).  It was criticized at the time (though not crucified the way Penn would be today), but even putting aside the inappropriateness of how Penn handles this role, it also isn't a good performance.  It's over-the-top, poorly-modulated, and inconsistent.  I wish Oscar had just skipped this entirely...it wasn't like we weren't aware Sean Penn needed an Oscar by 2001 without them nominating him for I Am Sam.

Our final nominee is Tom Wilkinson, getting the one "he's a character actor we'll nominate once" citation (though Wilkinson would go on to a second nomination six years later for Michael Clayton, proving that adage wrong).  Wilkinson is so good here though.  Sissy Spacek gets to play maternal grief, but he gets an even more difficult role-playing the father who encouraged his son, wanting to live vicariously through him as he pursued a woman that would've been out of his league.  The ending, where he has to come to terms with his own actions, and what it will be like after (spoiler alert!) his son has died & he will forever feel the pull of how his encouragement might've led to it is heartbreaking, and gives us a fulfilling, ambiguous close to the movie.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony.  The Drama statue went to Crowe, beating Smith, Washington, Kevin Spacey (The Shipping News), & Billy Bob Thornton (The Man Who Wasn't There), while Comedy/Musical went to Gene Hackman (The Royal Tenenbaums) against Hugh Jackman (Kate & Leopold), Ewan McGregor (Moulin Rouge!), John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), & Billy Bob Thornton (Bandits).  SAG went to Crowe as well, beating Penn, Washington, Wilkinson, & Kevin Kline (Life as a House), and BAFTA (as already mentioned) went with Crowe as well, here atop Wilkinson, Spacey, and two actors who were cited for supporting with Oscar: Jim Broadbent (Iris) and Ian McKellen (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring).  In sixth place, I think it was probably Gene Hackman.  I want to say there was some slight confusion over category placement for him at the time (I can't find evidence of this online, but it is in my head which means I don't think it's entirely made up), which may have hurt him, but this was considered a bit of a comeback for the actor and could've been the spot Penn got.  Kevin Spacey or Kevin Kline both had heat as well headed into the Oscars, but their films got totally ignored by AMPAS so I'll guess Hackman.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Sexy men and male leads in musicals both struggle when it comes to the Oscars, but given he was the lead in a Best Picture nominee and also given he has never been close to a nomination in the years since, Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge! was such a missed opportunity to come in instead of Sean Penn.

Oscar’s Choice: Had it not been for the Meg Ryan affair or the fight at the BAFTA Awards, I think Russell Crowe takes this-it was that close, and it was that big of a deal at the time.  But with those in place, Washington barely won his Best Actor Oscar.  It's worth noting Washington would be cited four more times to date after this, while Crowe has never been invited back to the Oscars.

My Choice: I'm going to split the difference and go with Tom Wilkinson, who gives the most well-paced performance of the three, and also gets the biggest payoff in the end.  Behind him (in order) would be Washington, Crowe, Smith, & Penn.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Does King Kong have nothing on you & Denzel, or do you want to go for a car ride with Tom Wilkinson & I?  Do you also think that Russell Crowe's offscreen behavior cost him a second Oscar?  And was it Hackman, Spacey, or Kline that nearly knocked out Sean Penn?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2001: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2001

Past Best Actor Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: Picture (2021)

 OVP: Best Picture (2021)

The Nominees Were...

Laura Berwick, Kenneth Branagh, Becca Kovacik, & Tamar Thomas, Belfast

Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi, & Patrick Wachsberger, CODA

Adam McKay & Kevin Messick, Don't Look Up

Teruhisa Yamamoto, Drive My Car

Mary Parent, Denis Villeneuve, & Cale Boyter, Dune

Tim White, Trevor White, & Will Smith, King Richard

Sara Murphy, Adam Somner, & Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza

Guillermo del Toro, J. Miles Dale, & Bradley Cooper, Nightmare Alley

Jane Campion, Tanya Seghatchian, Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, & Roger Frappier, The Power of the Dog

Steven Spielberg & Kristie Macosko Krieger, West Side Story

My Thoughts: We are officially finishing off 2021, the year that brought back the "ten-wide" rule (thank the lord...it should be ten or five, not this floating number each year), and the year where movies returned to theaters.  We'll get to the My Oscar Ballot tomorrow (where I pick my nominees), but for today, we've talked about all of the films for weeks (links to all past contests below)-let's crown a winner!

Dune is a movie that plays as a half of a film.  This isn't the first time this has happened (Empire Strikes Back and Back to the Future II come to mind), but even in a world where sequels are inevitable, I don't know that I love that it's not a complete vision, as it's hard to gage without seeing the second half.  That's really the only complaint I have about an otherwise magical film.  The effects, cinematography, and writing are all top drawer, playing with visual space onscreen by showing grandeur against a limitless nothingness on the planet of Arrakis, and featuring solid turns from Rebecca Ferguson & Charlotte Rampling.

Speaking of movies that feel incomplete, we have King Richard.  This has a solid lead performance from Will Smith, but it's too glossy for me.  This happens when you have portrayals of real-life figures, especially when those real-life figures still have a lot of power to shape their narrative (the Williams sisters are not signing off on a movie that makes their dad look bad).  As a result, you get an unrealistic look at a man who the film insists is always right, and late in the film tries to give you some of the complications of his parenting without actually articulating them.  The tennis scenes are well-edited & timed, but the film itself can't claim the same.

Licorice Pizza was marred in some critical debates by conversations about its content...largely from young critics who don't really understand that movies aren't supposed to be literal reflections of life.  The film itself is meant to be a suspension-of-reality, and it pays off.  We get Anderson's most cinematic movie yet, a dreamy look at the coming-of-age narrative, with terrific performances from Cooper Hoffman (very much doing his dad proud) and a star-is-born turn by rocker Alana Haim.  Throw in fun cameos by Bradley Cooper & Harriet Sansom Harris, and you've got yet another "W" in the PTA column.

The Power of the Dog is a slow-burn enigmatic tale that never stops surprising the audience.  That lack of expectation & the way that we don't know what's next is really a testament to Campion's ability, decades into her career, to come up with one of her best movies to date (have to clarify with "one of" when you made The Piano).  Benedict Cumberbatch's weird accent work and unusual delivery is somehow the perfect fit for his Phil, an enthralling, dangerous man who knows the best way to make all of the people in his life (ably played by Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee, & Jesse Plemons) on edge, and feeling like they have no way out.

Drive My Car got most of its press from its length and the shocking moment 40 minutes into the movie where they decided to start the credits, showing the audience they're in for the long haul.  But that's not a problem for the movie, whose in-depth story of grief & loss doesn't play as a dirge, but instead something you want to continue watching.  The movie overdoes it with the connections to Uncle Vanya and some of the side characters (specifically the owners of the theater company) feel a bit stilted, but overall it's a strong movie, and features a great lead performance from Hidetoshi Nishijima.

West Side Story is one of those remakes I insisted I didn't need...until I saw it and realized "this one gets a pass."  Of course Spielberg has possibly the greatest musical score of the 20th Century to play with, but he reinvents characters (Mike Faist comes out as a STAR in this), gives us unique takes on the film's original text (it isn't afraid to point out the racial politics at play that were underdone in the 1961 film), and during many of the musical numbers, you're reminded why he's one of the great filmmakers of all time (that scene at the dance!).  There are quibbles (the choreography is too repetitive, the cinematography feels a bit too heightened in some scenes), but overall this is Spielberg's best work in decades.

The films of Adam McKay have gotten increasingly off-track, and utterly ridiculous (giving a man an Oscar does not make him Quentin Tarantino).  That's more-than-true with Don't Look Up.  Listen, nothing in this film isn't true-the absurdity of the media, the inability of the political establishment to do anything about major issues without needing to be pushed to the brink...this is literally what is happening with climate change.  It's appropriately terrifying.  But it's broad as a barn, and with a call sheet that boasts five Oscar winners (not to mention Timothee Chalamet & Melanie Lynskey!), he does nothing with this godsend of a cast, making Mark Rylance & Meryl Streep give maybe the worst performances of their careers.  A sloppy, gross mess...that admittedly makes some decent points.

CODA is the sort of movie that if you take it out of the context of the Oscars, would age very well.  The movie is strong if formulaic, with a decent roster cast (best of the bunch is Daniel Durant as a sexy, sullen older brother caught in his sister's shadow), and it does what it is attempting to do well.  Simple is not always easy, and it plays at warmth & heart without feeling saccharine or like you're watching a third act speech on a 1990's sitcom.  Giving it the Oscar made it an easy target for potshots, but if we're being honest-it's a good movie, and better than a lot of its competition.

The same can be said for Belfast, a wonderful spin on the Cinema Paradiso trope that gains a lot of its strength through the casting department, as the entire team is working well here, particularly Jamie Dornan in the film that gets him out of his Grey doldrums and proves what a fine actor is underneath his chiseled-from-marble exterior.  In a different life, this would've been a feel good, word-of-mouth hit thanks to the way that it plays on the importance of family set amidst the tragedy of violence, and while it doesn't stick the ending...after a joyous ride it's hard to care that much.

The final nomination is for Nightmare Alley, arguably the big shocker of this slate, and like West Side Story, a remake I didn't really want but was happy to receive once it came on my doorstop.  Like WSS, the movie does things the original couldn't, particularly sticking to the original book ending (which I won't spoil here, but it's better than what we get in 1947), and playing with the nastiness of the darkest film noir of the Golden Age.  Bradley Cooper has never been better, and the ways the gothic cinematography play with space are super inventive.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their categories into Drama and Musical/Comedy (and in 2021, they separated their awards from an audience given the HFPA boycotts), so you have The Power of the Dog taking Drama over Belfast, CODA, Dune, and King Richard, while Musical/Comedy went in the predictable direction of West Side Story against Cyrano, Don't Look Up, Licorice Pizza, and Tick Tick Boom.  PGA goes ten-wide, and picked CODA atop Oscar's lineup save for Drive My Car & Nightmare Alley which were replaced with Tick Tick Boom and Being the Ricardos.  And BAFTA is still five-wide so while they went with Power of the Dog as well, it was only over Belfast, Don't Look Up, Dune, & Licorice Pizza.  Eleventh place has to be Tick Tick Boom, given its precursor run, lead actor citation, & (most crucially) a nomination for editing with AMPAS.

Films I Would Have Nominated: You'll find out tomorrow!

Oscar’s Choice: In a victory that I predicted but still shocked, CODA took it over the more critically-acclaimed Power of the Dog (I also wonder if in future years we'll think about this as the year Dune lost in the way we think of Star Wars losing in 1977, depending on that franchise's legs).

My Choice: In a pretty solid field, Power of the Dog stands on top as the champion.  Jane's look at the western is too strong to ignore, and I'm not going to make the same mistake as Oscar.  Following it will be (in order) Dune, West Side Story, Licorice Pizza, CODA, Nightmare Alley, Belfast, Drive My Car, King Richard, and Don't Look Up.

And there you have it-another OVP in the books.  Are you joining me in Jane's uncomfortable western or do you want the heartwarming tale that Sian brought with CODA?  What film was most vulnerable to an attack from Tick Tick Boom?  And overall-what is your favorite movie of 2021?  Share your comments below!

Also in 2021: Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2021

Past Best Picture Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

OVP: Actor (2021)

OVP: Best Actor (2021)

The Nominees Were...

Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos

Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog

Andrew Garfield, tick, tick...BOOM!

Will Smith, King Richard

Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth

My Thoughts: We have not yet gotten to an Oscars year where I didn't watch the actual ceremony live with the Oscar Viewing Project.  By the end of the year, that will not be the case; I started watching the Oscars in 1994/1995, and I've already finished watching a full OVP year from before then that we'll write about later this year, hopefully this summer at my current pace.  But as a result, it's sometimes impossible to separate the category from what I felt at the time, and when it's a category as infamous as this one, it's worth reminding people: we base who wins here solely on the performance at hand, not whether or not someone may have, say, ruined one of the most successful movie star careers of the past three decades with one simple slap.

We'll get Will Smith out of the way, and to this day I'm still not entirely sure what he was thinking.  But I do get what the Academy was thinking.  Smith is one of the last big movie stars of the 1990's (possibly the last) to not have a competitive Oscar who ended up getting one, and he's good here.  Richard Williams isn't a role that he'd be naturally the right choice for, but he does a strong job of combining the cool, assured persona that has made him a household name with against-type frustration on Williams' part as he tries to break down the barriers of the very segregated world of professional tennis.  Like his costar Aunjanue Ellis whom we talked about yesterday (links to all past contests at the bottom of the page), he is hurt by the screenwriters unwillingness to write Williams as a complicated, three-dimensional man rather than an always-right hero, and so it never feels like a complete performance, but he does well with what he has.

One could hardly say that Denzel Washington was handed a bad script, given that Joel Coen's adaptation of Macbeth is almost verbatim the original text from Shakespeare.  But he is aided in this version of the classic play by the cool, eerie ambience of this performance.  Even better for Washington are his scene partners (specifically Kathryn Hunter) who complement Washington's take on Macbeth quite well.  Washington plays the ill-guided king as a fool, but one who clearly has a confidence that is stripped by madness as the film goes.  It's a smart look at (honestly) the third most interesting character in a play despite him being the title character, and as a result, he outshines Frances McDormand, who has the better role.

Benedict Cumberbatch is a weird conundrum for me in that, before Power of the Dog, I'd never gravitated toward him.  I didn't like his oftentimes modernist takes on classic characters, and his screen persona was always a bit smarmy or (in his other Oscar-nominated film) scenery-chewing.  But this...this is fantastic.  His affected accent (not really western, clearly struggling behind his natural posh London accent) works really well for a character who is so much pretense, and he plays Phil as a dangerous character you can't help but stare at, and not just because Cumberbatch has never been so sexy onscreen.  There's a raw magnetism there, one that you can't deny as you're watching, and one that you're worried Smit-McPhee will fall into because, quite honestly, Cumberbatch is so good the audience is definitely headed that direction.

Andrew Garfield has been sexy (quite frequently) onscreen, but is looking more along the lines of "affably dorky" in Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tick Tick Boom.  Garfield's got a better script than his competitor Smith, in part because the script isn't shy about Jonathan Larson's faults as a self-involved genius, one incapable of the romance he wants to bring to his plays.  Garfield isn't a natural singer, but he holds his own, and puts so much assured personality into his vocals that what read as out-of-the-box casting before the film feels like inevitability when you're watching it onscreen.

Our final nominee is Javier Bardem, and for me, it's the one dud in an otherwise good lineup.  Bardem was also out-of-the-box casting in a film brimming with it, and he's the one actor that doesn't work.  His Desi Arnez isn't charming enough, doesn't have enough chemistry with Kidman's Lucille Ball, and his character spouting the type of hyper-expositional dialogue that Sorkin is drowning his actors in here is the one least-equipped to make it believable given Arnez is meant to be more opaque about his feelings.  Sometimes casting a star for a role they aren't a good fit for works (Cumberbatch, Garfield, & Smith all did it), but Bardem is proof not every casting director is infallible.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony.  Drama went with Smith as the winner atop Bardem, Cumberbatch, Washington, & Mahershala Ali (Swan Song) while Musical/Comedy went to Garfield against Leonardo DiCaprio (Don't Look Up), Peter Dinklage (Cyrano), Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza), & Anthony Ramos (In the Heights).  SAG went verbatim with Oscar's lineup (winner included), and BAFTA also picked Smith, though they went for a totally different Best Actor roster, with Cumberbatch, DiCaprio, Ali, Stephen Graham (Breaking Point), and Adeel Akhtar (Ali & Ava) the other nominees.  For sixth place, at the time I predicted Nicolas Cage for Pig (which, honestly, still feels plausible...precursors ain't everything), though if you wanted to think DiCaprio was in sixth you'd likely have more company than me on the Cage ledge.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Overall, Oscar did well here and there's a lot of overlap with my personal list which we'll get to in the next few days.  But for sure I'd want at least one of these guys out, and the easy answer of who to throw in would be Dev Patel, who is (for me) finally fulfilling the promise of a swaggering, handsome movie star with his electric performance in The Green Knight.

Oscar’s Choice: Had they voted during the ceremony, I think Garfield or Washington might've gotten the statue, but with all ballots delivered pre-slap, this was Smith in a walk.

My Choice: Cumberbatch, by a healthy margin...in my opinion the least of these actors given the rest of their collective body of work, this is proof that you have to just give it by the performances at hand, as he's marvelous here.  Garfield, Washington, Smith, & Bardem follow (in that order).

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you going to go with the default coronation of Smith or do you want to join me in crowning the unlikely Cumberbatch?  Do we think that anyone will win an Oscar for Shakespeare again?  And am I crazy for still thinking it was Cage who was in sixth (rather than the more traditional DiCaprio)?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2021: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2021

Past Best Actor Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

My Thoughts on the 94th Academy Awards

One of my unspoken rules of 2022 (which has become far more spoken the longer I live by it) is that I don't have to have an opinion on everything.  In a world where we are basically required to constantly be angry, whether performative or genuine, or to be appalled, shocked, dismayed, saddened, and whatever emotions are most en vogue that particular day, I have found that that is not healthy for my mental health.  I have therefore allowed myself to not have a lot of opinions on things that in a past life I would have forced myself to invest more energy & time into.  I do this approach with a large amount of self-awareness.  Not having an opinion on everything does not mean not having an opinion on anything, and it does not mean only having opinions on things that directly impact me, because that's not self-help, it's just abusing your privilege.  But I have found, as occasionally awkward as it may be (I've literally said to people in conversations trying to make me take a side "I just don't care to have an opinion on that") that this is one of the healthiest decisions I've made in a while.

But I also know that in the coming week I'm going to have to have an opinion on Sunday night's Academy Awards, and most critically the infamous "slap" moment, new ethos be damned.  My personal brand is far too synonymous with the Oscars & movies to escape this particular pop culture hot potato. For those who missed yesterday's Oscars, during the presentation of the Documentary Feature category, Chris Rock made a joke about how Jada Pinkett Smith was auditioning for GI Jane 2, mocking her appearance and specifically that she came to the show with a bald head.  Pinkett Smith suffers from alopecia, which she made public a few years ago, a fact that it's not entirely clear Rock knew, but one might be able to infer he probably had an idea given he's familiar with the Smiths (he roasted Pinkett Smith the last time he was at the Oscars so this isn't a one-off situation), and because Rock himself did a documentary about Black women's hair in 2009 called Good Hair.  At best it was in bad taste, at worst it was deliberately cruel.  

Following the joke, an irate Will Smith walked to the stage and slapped Rock, in what initially seemed to have been a weird comic bit that was then confirmed to not be scripted as Smith yelled profanities at Rock after returning to his seat.  A visibly shaken Rock quickly presented the award, and got off-stage.  Photos show in the moments after that Smith chatted with Denzel Washington, Tyler Perry, and Bradley Cooper, before going onstage moments later to a standing ovation for his Best Actor trophy win for King Richard, during which he apologized to his fellow nominees & the Academy, but notably not to Rock.

This, I'll be honest, is the kind of thing I'm trying not to have an opinion on.  I'll provide some historical context here-as far as I can find, this is the first time someone has gotten into a visible fight on the stage at the Oscars.  The 1974 Oscars arguably came the closest, when Hearts and Minds producers made an anti-war statement about Vietnam, which culminated in stars as diverse as John Wayne, Shirley MacLaine, Frank Sinatra, Brenda Vaccaro, & Bob Hope all coming to blows backstage, with (according to reports), Hope pinning Oscars producer Howard Koch up against a wall until Sinatra said something countering the winning documentarians' views on the war.  But onstage, in front of everyone...no, this had never happened before.

In terms of my thoughts-violence is never the answer, and while Rock was seriously out-of-line & arguably deserved being heckled or booed (attacking a woman's medical condition, particularly in such a public way in front of her family was tacky & gross), Smith took it a step too far by physically accosting him.  I honestly don't have more to say than that, both because Smith won't face any legal ramifications (Rock won't press charges because that's how Hollywood works, a fact Smith was well aware of when he got to sit back down afterward), and because it's difficult to say how all of us would've reacted in that same scenario given the struggles that Pinkett Smith has gone through in the past few years as a result of her medical diagnosis.  I want to believe I'd be super enlightened in that scenario, but if someone I'd love had something that had caused them mental anguish to be mocked in such a public way...I'd be angry too.  I will say that this will become a permanent mark on Smith's star persona-when he dies, it'll be in his obituary that he ruined the biggest night of his career through violence, and one of the last big stars of the 1990's to still feel relevant to today's movies arguably saw a huge chunk of his career go up in flames last night.  He'll always work, but he'll never be able to get the universal appeal star position he had going into last night back again, no matter how much his press agent tries to mend fences (there's at least a 50/50 shot that Rock & Smith will end up presenting together next year in hopes of Hollywood trying to cover its glossy veneer in a rare break to an increasingly over-produced star system).

Smith's actions cover up the rest of the night (this will forever be known as the "Will Smith Oscars"), which had some good, but quite a bit of bad in what I'll admit was the least-anticipated Oscars of my lifetime (had I not been going to spend the weekend with my parents like I do most years, I was seriously considering not watching the ceremony in protest).  Let's start with the hosts, who I think did pretty well all-things-considered.  The opening monologue was well-done, with Amy Schumer coming off arguably the best of the three (something I wouldn't have guessed in a thousand years as her brand-of-humor felt like such a poor fit for a night as staid as the Oscars).  The bit with Sykes and the Oscars museum was good, Regina Hall's "find a man through Covid testing" bit was good in theory even if it didn't actually work, and I love when the hosts get into costumes, so the costume interlude was great.  Not everything worked, particularly the jokes about the movies being "too elitist" (more on that in a second) and the seat-filler bit from Schumer at the end of the show (with Kirsten Dunst), but they brought an energy to the show that was lacking last year.  I know this criticism is frowned upon, but I don't think the Oscars work well if they don't have some humor or visual splendor, and last year was a dud.  You need the audience to feel like they're having fun, and while that doesn't require crudity or even being all-that-accessible (inside baseball jokes usually land well because you want to laugh along with movie stars), you need humor.  So for me, the hosts get a thumbs up-it's a tough job, and they largely landed the plane.

The presenters were more of a mixed bag.  I loved the tributes to Pulp Fiction, White Men Can't Jump, and Juno-I am enthused with reuniting stars & reminding the audience at home why they love going to the movies (I'm not including The Godfather reunion both because it would've been more impactful if they'd gotten Keaton, Duvall, Shire, & Caan-if you're at the Oscars, go big-and because they didn't really do anything except stand for a second & then leave).  I also was great with some of the newer faces of Hollywood (excellent use of Jacob Elordi & Rachel Zegler)-the best way to invite the next generation of filmgoers is to make sure their matinee idols are seen, so more of that please.  The musical performances, for the most part, worked, with all of the nominated songs selling well, though "We Need to Talk About Bruno" elicited "wait, why are they singing that if it's not nominated?" questions from my house (and I suspect we weren't the only one) and it was choreographed horrendously (easily the night's worst number).  The night's best moment was the "save it for last" duo of Lady Gaga & Liza Minnelli.  I am not a fan of Gaga as an actress, which I've shared here many times, but I admire her as an entertainer, and it was super classy of her to present on a night she was expected to be a nominee.  Even better, she brought out screen legend Liza Minnelli to join the pantheon of people presenting Best Picture, and in the process honored Cabaret & one of the last living links to Classical Hollywood in the process.  More of that please-more, more, more of that (also, I saw on Twitter a proposal to have Lady Gaga serve as host & I'm totally onboard with that-someone hire her immediately).

But other aspects of the night's presenters were terrible.  What, exactly, was Shawn Mendes (who is neither an actor nor someone who has had his music play a large part in films) doing up there (I never object to looking at Shawn Mendes, but come on)?  Worse, though, was having three athletes, including antivaxxer Kelly Slater, showing up for no apparent reason to introduce a segment about James Bond when Judi f-ing Dench was in the audience. Stupid, absolutely stupid, and proof positive that it's not the hosts who deserve any of the blame for last night, but the producers.

Because even if you subtract the Will Smith incident, the producers and writers of last night's show had no handle on what to do.  The show lacked flow.  The comedy was never stemming from the night, but felt entirely (save for Schumer's ad-lib about Smith's incident, which a comedian of Schumer's ability could do in her sleep) like it was written before.  Gone are the days where Billy Crystal would do bits throughout the night about Jack Palance's pushups or Cuba Gooding's effusive thankfulness.  Here, we have a tightly plodded show that felt like you were stuffing as much in as possible without it ever feeling organic.  

This was driven in large part by cutting eight categories from the night.  I will admit, to be forthright, that I didn't entirely notice the difference the first 1-2 categories they did it for.  It felt disjointed, but someone who wasn't entirely paying attention or thinking too hard would be forgiven for not realizing that these weren't being awarded in real-time.  However, three problems occurred in this situation.  One, you couldn't go on social media if you didn't want these awards ruined for you (I learned that the hard way when Sound was announced prominently on my Twitter feed & I realized I needed to get off of social media to not have winners spoiled, which is exactly what the Oscars didn't want us to do in a year where mentions are a key indicator of how important an event is).  Two, it was clear after a while that these weren't the actual speeches, perhaps most so when Oscar-nominated actor Riz Ahmed won and there was too little time for it to register at home for audiences that someone they knew had just won an Oscar.  And three, it didn't shorten the show.  The ceremony was considerably longer than last year, running forty minutes over the initially-promised three hours, and thus cutting these categories did nothing but insult the artists and fill the show with endless, idiotic pablum.  In a show where Power of the Dog and Drive My Car were insulted for being too high-brow & out-of-touch, movies with minimal mainstream pop culture cache like Minimata and Army of the Dead were given high-profile moments, and somehow the producers said with a straight face that Justice League contained the most "cheerful moment" in movie history.  Pathetic, honestly, it felt pathetic...you spend hours insulting great movies and then try to gloss by the fact that a bunch of Reddit fanboys made you honor two completely disposable blockbusters.

This gets at the biggest problem for the Oscars-they have no sense of what makes them special, and I'm not entirely certain if they know how to get that back.  What makes the Oscars special isn't that they honor movies, it's that there are 94 years of honoring them.  Tradition is a valuable tool, and the Oscars run roughshod over it last night without getting any gain.  Ratings will be up, but that was inevitable given that box office on these movies was better than last year (and honestly that there were more movies that people could see), but nothing was gained.  The show was filled with no surprises from the envelopes...literally the only category where the frontrunner didn't win was Animated Short Film, which was presented off-screen.  Twenty years ago, the Oscars were relevant not necessarily because they were honoring a lot of really famous films (movies like The Hours and The Pianist were not huge box office bonanzas), but because we genuinely weren't sure who would win.  If the Oscars can't figure out a way to make it so that anyone who pays attention can get 20+ predictions right simply by guessing the frontrunners, the show will go extinct.

One of the best ways they can do that is by giving Animated Feature Film to another studio.  Last night, Encanto, which admittedly was my personal choice, won, and as a result, 90% of the last ten winners of this category were Disney or Pixar product (the sole exception is 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which nearly lost to Incredibles 2).  This is wrong-one studio should not have this kind of a stranglehold on a category no matter how good their movies are.  I do a lot of OVP articles on this blog, and I'll admit that in those ten years I'd give Disney a few of the trophies (about half), but even I would've voted for The Mitchells vs. the Machines last night just in hopes of someone upsetting Disney.  Particularly in a year where ABC (owned by Disney) totally screwed over half of the Academy by moving eight categories to the commercials so that Disney could keep a tribute to one of its movies and a trailer for one of its upcoming properties in the show, it says a lot about how little the Academy truly cares about those artists that they didn't take the chance to send the Mouse House a message.

Is Will Smith the last 1990's Movie Star to Win His First Oscar?

There are so many sites on the internet that talk about the immediate Oscar race that I generally steer clear of it outside a few key articles every season, but that doesn't mean I don't think about the Oscar race constantly.  I have avoided talking about the biggest controversy right now (the heinous, unforgivable sin of moving a bunch of the categories off of the main broadcast to allow for a Twitter poll that's going to, I don't know, make people see the clip of The Matrix slow motion for the 1000th time?), mostly because I'm on record as saying this is a terrible idea (the way to "fix" the Oscars is to lean into the traditions, not exorcise them).  But I have realized recently that a strange phenomenon that has been happening intermittently over the past twenty years may well be coming to an end this season, and so I couldn't let this observation go by without commentary.

Barring something truly insane, Will Smith is going to win his first Oscar on March 27th for his work in King Richard.  I remember basically saying this was a done deal after seeing the movie, and despite some protestations that Benedict Cumberbatch or Andrew Garfield might sneak into the upset position, there is virtually no evidence that Smith is going to lose.  It's exactly the kind of role that Oscar loves-a biopic Best Picture nominee from a movie star actor who is doing his level-best to infuse some drama without losing any of his natural charisma as a performer.  Is Smith the best nominee of this bunch?  No, he is not. Is it possible that this win will age poorly, in a similar vein to, say, Gary Oldman's victory for Darkest Hour?  Possibly, especially if Andrew Garfield & Benedict Cumberbatch continue to go Oscar-less.  But this is a done deal-Smith has won every precursor for a reason, and is going to win this trophy.

Part of that is because the Academy loves giving trophies to movie stars.  Despite some people's complaints that the Oscars are an elitist organization, that doesn't really track.  Most Oscar winners are not Glenda Jackson or Peggy Ashcroft...they're John Wayne & Gregory Peck & Joan Crawford & Paul Newman.  They're big-name, marquee-headlining performers who have made everyone in that room rich and everyone at home shell out for tickets.  Smith is not unusual in this regard.

What is unusual about Smith is that he comes from a different generation of movie stars, some might argue the "last" generation of movie stars.  While we still have headliners in movies today, and so I don't love when people say "there are no movie stars anymore," it's fair to say that the last time that movie stars reigned supreme in a significant way in Hollywood, where a name launched a film's box office more than franchise, was the 1990's, which is when Smith hit his peak (albeit in the late 1990's).  Oscar has been milking the nostalgia for that decade, the last decade where movie stars (and not franchises or IP) ruled Hollywood, for over twenty years.

It's to be expected during the actual 1990's movie stars of that era would win, and indeed you see people like Tom Hanks & Gwyneth Paltrow armed with statues.  But it was in the decades that followed, where true Grade-A movie stars largely disappeared, that it became apparent that Oscar couldn't let go.  Since the end of the 1990's, by my count at least a dozen big-name stars of that era have won their first Academy Award.  You can quibble if one or two of these names don't deserve to be on here (or if I'm missing 1-2) but Julia Roberts, Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, Kate Winslet, Sandra Bullock, Russell Crowe, Sean Penn, Morgan Freeman, George Clooney, Matthew McConaughey, Leonardo DiCaprio, & Brad Pitt all got their start in the 1990's as splashy, People Magazine-style stars, and in most cases reached their peaks.  Will Smith qualifies for this list, and continues that trend.

The question I have here, though, is if this is the end of such a trend.  Smith is not someone who, even a year or two ago, seemed inevitable to win an Oscar, certainly not in the way that DiCaprio or Pitt or Winslet did.  So it's possible we're underestimating a star of the 1990's.  Certainly there are still stars that work regularly from this era that could sneak in.  Tom Cruise is the name that comes most readily to mind.  Though Cruise was also a big star in the 1980's, his star shone the brightest in the 1990's, which was also when he seemed to genuinely want an Oscar (he scored three nominations in a ten-year span).

But Cruise doesn't make the kinds of movies that Oscar loves anymore, and hasn't really "acted" in at least a decade.  The rest of the 1990's stars of any caliber don't seem to factor.  Jim Carrey, Hugh Grant, & Adam Sandler are all people who might've gotten an Oscar nomination at some point, but don't really make the kinds of movies that Oscar notices, frequently leaning into paychecks more than stretching their talents.  Johnny Depp was definitely going to win an Oscar at some point, but that seems next-to-impossible at this juncture given the state of his public reputation.  A lot of stars from that era work infrequently (Demi Moore, Meg Ryan) or appear in film projects that aren't seen in the light of Oscar (Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone, John Travolta).  Some have shifted their focus to television (Winona Ryder, Uma Thurman, Drew Barrymore) while others weren't stars whose acting was taken all-that-seriously to begin with (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves).  A few actors of note from the 1990's could get an Oscar (I'm thinking specifically of Annette Bening), but were really more "serious actors" more than they were ever thought of as more traditional "open a picture" movie stars.  And then there are a few actors who might still win Oscars, but whose stardom really belongs more to a previous decade (Harrison Ford, Glenn Close).

So I'm going to be honest here-the answer of if Will Smith is the final 1990's movie star to win his first Oscar probably lies with the last person who I think is a serious, true bet to someday win their first Oscar: Michelle Pfeiffer.  Pfeiffer was a three-time Oscar nominee, and you could quibble to a slight degree over whether her stardom belongs more to the 1980's or not, but I'd argue most of her commercial work as a movie star happened in the 1990's, so she qualifies.  Pfeiffer is a good actress, someone who still clearly has the goods to get a nomination.  She works infrequently, but not so much anymore that the right project couldn't come along in the same matter as Smith (she's not Meg Ryan, basically hibernating off-screen at this point).  As she gets older, it's not entirely clear if Pfeiffer, always apprehensive about celebrity, even cares if she's going to win or not.  But if there's still one more 1990's movie star left who could pull it off, she's the glaring example of someone who probably should have an Oscar by now but doesn't.  Without her, I have to wonder if Smith might truly be the last great 1990's star to get to hold a golden statue for the first time.

OVP: King Richard (2021)

Film: King Richard (2021)

Stars: Will Smith, Aunjanue Ellis, Saniyya Sidney, Demi Singleton, Tony Goldwyn, Jon Bernthal

Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green

Oscar History: 6 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Actor-Will Smith*, Supporting Actress-Aunjanue Ellis, Original Screenplay, Original Song-"Be Alive," Editing)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Having watched 20+ Oscar seasons from beginning to end, I know how certain films will play.  It becomes clear based on the way a studio is positioning a picture or the way it's being marketed, the stars involved and the studio's slate that year which films are being pushed toward Oscar glory and which movies are going to have to work hard for that honor.  King Richard quickly showed itself to be an obvious contender for Will Smith.  Despite some initial questions about whether Smith was the appropriate casting choice, that has been put to rest in the weeks since King Richard first came out, as Smith not only seems assured a nomination, but given his A-list celebrity (one of the few indisputable, scandal-free industry "movie stars" who doesn't have his own gold statue) & the picture's positive reception, this feels about as strong of a lock to win Best Actor as you can get the week after Thanksgiving.  But, the question becomes-is the movie any good (Oscar isn't always as concerned about that question)?  Let's take a look.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie, despite a long run time, doesn't feel particularly tedious and moves briskly through the adult life of Richard Williams (Smith) as he moves to make his daughters Serena (Singleton) and Venus (Sidney) into two of the greatest tennis players of all-time.  A lot of the movie is focused on Williams' unconventional approach to his daughter's future.  Living in a violent Compton neighborhood while continually strapped-for-cash, Williams has an uphill battle to try to get into the predominantly white world of competitive tennis.  He achieves that through a combination of luck, skill, and people being genuinely impressed with his daughters' insane tennis ability.  We see them coached first by Paul Cohen (Goldwyn), whom Richard eventually drops once it becomes clear that he wants his daughters to have a traditional education (rather than having them go through the normal juniors competition), and then by Rick Macci (Bernthal), who at the time had just launched Jennifer Capriati into tennis superstardom.  The film ends with Venus Williams' spectacular debut at the Oakland Best of the West Classic tournament, where she lost but still managed to take a set from Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, who that year would take the French & US Open and just months later would become World No. 1 for Women's tennis (i.e. Venus Williams was clearly a superstar in the making).

The film is a strange conundrum.  I genuinely enjoy watching tennis, and while I'm not as well-practiced in following it now as I would've been a few years back (when my favorites started to skip tournaments, so did I), I know a lot of the backstory of the Williams sisters, two of American athletics all-time great champions.  Smith is solid in the lead role, playing a bit against-type (though not entirely-there is a bit of the loose, cool persona that has made Smith a household name the past thirty years), and never understating (even when it might be uncomfortable for the audience) the truly racist institutions that Richard Williams had to break down to give his daughters, now arguably the definitive names in their sport, even a chance at getting through the door.

But the problem with King Richard is that it it is far too glossy.  Obviously the Williams sisters are still alive, but so is Richard and his (now ex)-wife Oracene Price, and making biopics of living figures is always a touchy subject, particularly when those figures are involved with the production of the film because it always feels too one-sided.  Richard Williams in the film is always right, and somehow knows everything that will happen in the future, which feels a bit two-dimensional even for a prescient man.  It's not necessary to always imbue a film with realism and to keep to the facts (I'm fine with cutting out parts of a biopic in service to a film), but he's played like a superhero here, and it feels a bit of a loss for a much better film that might have tackled some of Williams' more complicated personal biography (his fraught relationships with his other children, his divorce from Price for a much younger woman) which is basically ignored save for one giant speech which felt more inclined to ensure that Aunjanue Ellis would get an Oscar nomination alongside Smith rather than to help the story.  That they introduce this aspect of Richard's life/marriage and then just ignore it...it makes for sloppy filmmaking, and the kind of movie that wants to have its cake & eat it too.  It's probably going to be a serious contender for the Oscars this season, but it's a pity that it couldn't have found a way to uplift while also feeling authentic to the stories of two pioneering athletes.

OVP: Actor (2006)

OVP: Best Actor (2006)

The Nominees Were...

Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond

Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson

Peter O'Toole, Venus

Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness

Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

My Thoughts: We are not keeping track of which acting lineups are the worst, though maybe someday I'll go back & give out that prize.  Best Actor of 2006, while probably not the worst, is definitely one of the least-inspired lineups in Oscar history.  There were better choices even in a weak year (we'll get to them next week when we conclude our 2006 run with a My Ballot post), but Oscar didn't take them.  The men of this lineup, several of them have given truly seismic, film-defining performances, but here we are at best getting to the adequate.

We'll start with the winner of the trophy, and the only man of this bunch to be a one-and-done Oscar nominee (honestly, a rarity for Best Actor), Forest Whitaker.  Whitaker has spent most of his career either directing or taking on supporting parts, but here he is central stage as Idi Amin.  This is a showy role, one that Whitaker cannot seem to ground, playing him to the hilt.  He gets some points for being able to convey a realistic madness through the character, particularly toward the end when his paranoia's scope sets in, but there's too much scenery-chewing and not enough back-and-forth chemistry with James McAvoy.  This is kind of a textbook definition of Oscar getting enamored with a biopic without really standing back to see if the movie has any merit.

Whitaker, though, brings that madness to his character that I found interesting even if it didn't ultimately work.  I have nothing really redeemable to say about Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness.  The picture itself is schmaltzy garbage (and that deliberate typo in the title is maddening), and Smith is the kind of actor who will lean into the schmaltz rather than elevate it.  His work here as a man about to be evicted from his home who eventually becomes a millionaire brokerage firm manager is the kind of uplifting story that makes for great Today Show copy, but rarely can transform into intriguing acting, and Smith mines it for easy tears without ever giving us a complicated look at our principle character.

Peter O'Toole, at least, is trying.  In his last of eight nominations, O'Toole plays a dying lothario who is romancing a young woman through wooing her since he has been rendered impotent by his prostate cancer.  O'Toole is saddled with a very weird film, one that doesn't quite gel (Jodie Whittaker's Jessie is underwritten & Whittaker can't fix that), but he makes it work.  O'Toole is a fine actor, and this is a solid bit of character study in a strange film.  O'Toole occasionally veers into coasting on his film legend status, perhaps because even he doesn't know what to do with this atypical approach to a cancer drama, but this isn't entirely a "legend getting in for being old situation"-O'Toole is genuinely good in the movie.

This is not something I can say for Leonardo DiCaprio.  DiCaprio gave a complex, fascinating look at privilege, crime, & loyalty in The Departed, which was nominated for Best Picture & would've been among his best citations from the Academy...so of course Oscar decides to reward him for a film & piece-of-work that is every bit The Departed's inferior.  It's difficult to believe, considering this is his signature as an actor, but DiCaprio's work here is without charm, unable to gain chemistry with Jennifer Connelly & he falls flat in the final hour of the movie once his opportunity for banter has left.  Leo DiCaprio is a great actor, but similar to Rosalind Russell & Spencer Tracy, he was too often-cited for work that didn't play to his strengths, which is light comedy & soapy romance (Blood Diamond is neither of those things).

Our final nominee is Ryan Gosling, who was graduating here from The Notebook heartthrob into a very serious actor; it's hard to remember, but there was once a time when Gosling's ability in front of the camera wasn't yet proven.  His work as an unorthodox teacher is, like all of the men in this category, in a movie that doesn't quite work.  Half Nelson is the best of these movies, but it's still a cliched education drama with familiar beats.  Unlike DiCaprio or Smith, though, Gosling elevates the work & makes it a much better movie.  He gives a subdued, informed performance as Dan Dunne, someone who is both an authority figure but also a bit lost in his own maturity.  That juxtaposition feels solid for Gosling's wheelhouse, and I'm glad Oscar was paying attention to such a small movie.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes of course break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony.  Drama gave us most of the Oscar lineup, with Gosling out and Leo DiCaprio (double-nominated) in for The Departed (Whitaker won), while Comedy/Musical went to Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) over Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean 2), Aaron Eckhart (Thank You for Smoking), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Kinky Boots), & Will Ferrell (Stranger than Fiction).  SAG went exactly for Oscar's lineup (winner & nominees), while BAFTA totally did its own thing-Whitaker won, but beat Leo (for The Departed), O'Toole, Daniel Craig (Casino Royale), & Richard Griffiths (The History Boys).  In terms of sixth place, the only logical answer is Sacha Baron Cohen, which would've been a mind-bend kind of nomination-you could make an argument for Greg Kinnear (Little Miss Sunshine) or Ken Watanabe (Letters from Iwo Jima) since they are in Best Picture contenders, but as someone who lived through this Oscar race, there was real talk about Baron Cohen getting the spot.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Well, I would've cited DiCaprio for the right movie, that's for darn sure.  I also know I'm sounding like a broken record here, but two years after the Academy invited Clive Owen to the club with his (deserving) work in Closer, why exactly did they skip out on nominating him for the best performance of his career in Children of Men?

Oscar’s Choice: Easy win for Whitaker.  A bit perplexing in hindsight, but like I said above, sometimes Oscar just gets the biggest crush on a biopic performance & the fever doesn't break until it's too late (and hey, Whitaker is better than Rami Malek).

My Choice: I'm going to go with Gosling over O'Toole, since he does a bit better with incorporating his performance into the film in question.  Behind them would be Whitaker, DiCaprio, & Smith.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you joining the stampede for Whitaker or will you stay in detention with Ryan Gosling & I?  Would Maria Bakalova's bizarre awards run earlier this year have felt so strange if SBC had gotten the fifth slot here?  And what is the weakest ever Oscar acting lineup?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2006: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2006

Past Best Actor Contests: 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019