Prezzie Awards: 1998

The year 1998: John Glenn became the oldest man in space around the same time Viagra started offering happy pills to old men. Brolin married Streisand, Uma married Ethan, Exxon married Mobil, El Nino came and went, and J.K. Rowling quietly released her first book. Jesse Ventura wrestled with the Minnesota government while the President of our United States claimed he "did not have sexual relations with that woman".

American grandmothers got "Jiggy Wit It", while the teenagers thought they were unique listening to Marilyn Manson. Hipsters in Los Angeles brought back Swing music during which Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa enchanted the public with their own swings. Children trained their Furby dolls while watching Teletubbies, while their siblings found their sensitive side on Dawson's Creek and their parents said goodbye to Seinfeld. Backstreet's back, alright.

At the box office, Titanic, despite being released the year before, still cruised at the top of charts for months to come. America found out there WAS something about a girl named Mary. The public couldn't get enough of seeing their towns and cities destroyed, with Deep Impact and Godzilla, and of course they didn't want to miss a thing in Armageddon.

Bugs invaded the big screen as Pixar released its long awaited follow-up to Toy Story with A Bug's Life, preceded by DreamWorks' Antz. We fought the future with The X-Files, got spun right round like a record with The Wedding Singer, and talked with the animals in Doctor Dolittle.

Saving Private Ryan was the year's most critical and commercial hit, gathering up $226 million, 11 Oscar Nominations and 5 wins. But the Academy in 1998 went crazy for Roberto Benigni, and fell into a passionate but short romance with Shakespeare In Love.

Here are the retrospective awards for 1998:

Top Ten List
1. American History X
2. The Truman Show
3. Pleasantville
4. Rushmore
5. Saving Private Ryan
6. There's Something About Mary
7. The Wedding Singer
8. A Simple Plan
9. The Big Lebowski
10. Shakespeare In Love

The Academy Award voters had a sweeping approval of Shakespeare In Love, and within a few short years most would rethink it. It's a good film, rated #10 here, but originality strikes true in films such as The Truman Show, Pleasantville, Rushmore, and The Big Lebowski. Comedies were well-served with two classics in There's Something About Mary and The Wedding Singer, while A Simple Plan was very much a Coen Brothers inspired drama. Saving Private Ryan should have been the big winner in the political sense.

Controversy aside, American History X is my top film of 1998. Whether or not director Tony Kaye's claims of editing by Edward Norton is true, whoever had the final cut made a masterful film. It is hard-hitting without being preachy, and we come to develop a complex hate yet affection for the mixed up characters who occupy the story. American History X derides the subject of white supremacy more than it condones it, but it also gives good reason to why some lost soul might believe in it, giving the film a powerful argument that something like Shakespeare In Love just doesn't quite have.

Bottom Five List
1. The Avengers
2. Godzilla
3. Psycho
4. Lost In Space
5. Ringmaster

All of these films are terrible, make no mistake. Ringmaster was Jerry Springer's vanity project right in the middle of America's fascination with cheating transvestite midget whores. Godzilla was a lame attempt at disaster franchising by master of terrible disaster movies Roland Emmerich. Psycho featured a shot-by-shot color remake of an original classic, starring Vince Vaughn as a serial killer and Anne Heche as a sexy vixen. Lost In Space was only 1998's SECOND worst film based on a sixties television classic.

The Avengers win the crown. First they take respectable actors such as Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman and Sean Connery, and change a quintessential British show into an American blockbuster. Then they attempt to make Thurman, never a prototypical "sexy" actress, into one of the UK's long favored characters, Emma Peel. Add Sean Connery in a terrible villain role (leading up to more suckitude in 2003's worst nominee The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and a pathetic excuse for a plot, and The Avengers is the worst film of 1998.

Best Actor:
Carrey, Jim (The Truman Show)
Norton, Edward (American History X)
Hanks, Tom (Saving Private Ryan)
Depp, Johnny (Fear & Loathing)
Benigni, Roberto (Life Is Beautiful)

With respect to the chair-hopping Benigni, this category is neck and neck between Carrey and Norton, for two wildly different roles. Carrey ekes out the win with his touching performance as the titular Truman, coming at a time when Ace Ventura 2 and The Cable Guy was still fresh on his resume. Norton, meanwhile, gives an amazing performance as a reformed white supremacist skinhead, but ends up losing the nod because in essence his character post-reform is still very much Norton.

Best Actress:
Allen, Joan (Pleasantville)
Blanchett, Cate (Elizabeth)
Paltrow, Gwyneth (Shakespeare In Love)
Linney, Laura (The Truman Show)
Diaz, Cameron (There's Something About Mary)

Blanchett and Paltrow would continue to catapult themselves into the strata of go-to dramatic actresses after their performances of mid-2nd millennium English women, but I've always had a low tolerance for Victorian era royal dramas. Instead, Allen, who has 3 Oscar nominations but was overlooked here, wins with a superb performance as the stereotypical 1950s American housewife who begins to develop her independence, courage, and inquisition.

Best Supporting Actor:
Daniels, Jeff (Pleasantville)
Harris, Ed (The Truman Show)
Thornton, Billy Bob (A Simple Plan)
Duvall, Robert (A Civil Action)
Del Toro, Benicio (Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas)

This is probably the toughest category to choose of the year. All five nominees were very good in their roles, but none of them truly stood out above any other. I've always been a fan of Jeff Daniels, so with his sweet and caring persona as sensitive soda shop jerk, he gets the nod over equally adept performances by Harris and Thornton.

Best Supporting Actress:
Williams, Olivia (Rushmore)
Dench, Judi (Shakespeare In Love)
Fonda, Bridget (A Simple Plan)
Berry, Halle (Bulworth)
Bates, Kathy (Primary Colors)

If Supporting Actor was the toughest to choose, Supporting Actress was the weakest crop to pick from. The Academy was criticized for giving Dench the win despite the minuscule role, but really there is not much to branch out on. I thought long and hard and went with Williams, as Rushmore was pretty much shafted by the end of the year. Williams gave a fine performance as the teacher who must contend with a precocious student, his wealthy mentor, and her recently deceased husband.

Best Director:
Spielberg, Steven (Saving Private Ryan)
Weir, Peter (The Truman Show)
Malick, Terence (The Thin Red Line)
Beatty, Warren (Bulworth)
Gallo, Vincent (Buffalo '66)

Saving Private Ryan was absolutely brutal to watch the first time around. The violence is more jarring than any slasher horror film, and for that I suppose it paints an accurate portrait of war. Weir crafted a film basically about the nature of the human race, but the overall direction wasn't as stunning as Spielberg's vision. Beatty and Gallo made good films about gritty times and characters, and Malick made almost as good a war picture as Spielberg but was lost behind in the accolades.

Best Screenplay:
McKenna, David (American History X)
Ross, Gary (Pleasantville)
Niccol, Andrew (The Truman Show)
Frank, Scott (Out Of Sight)
Rodat, Robert (Saving Private Ryan)

All of these films are tightly packed with juicy lines both comedic and dramatic. But for his script that digs its nails into the potboiler of racial hate not just as a one-sided argument, David McKenna's American History X wins. Ross and Niccol both highlight the frailness and aptitude of the beauty of everyday life, which make for outstanding films. Frank probably best adapts an Elmore Leonard novel (Jackie Brown, Get Shorty, Be Cool, The Big Bounce), and Rodat puts a powerful story in place for Spielberg to envision on screen.

Best Foreign Film:
Life Is Beautiful (Italy)

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