By John H. Foote To be clear, with my choices a Best Picture nomination comes automatically with a Best Director nomination, it just makes sense. The best directed film must be the years best film, how else can it go I ask? So here we go, my nominees for Best Director since 1970 with my…
By John H. Foote A notoriously difficult category for many reasons, but like supporting actor, stars are born from this one. Many of the winners or nominees go on to Best Actress nominations or wins, yet just as many are nominated once, even win once and then never are in the Oscar race again. The…
By John H. Foote Part III and again, same drill, no group doing the choosing just me. This is among my favourite categories because so many stars have been born out of it, just as so many one-win wonders have come and gone. I have no trouble nominating multiple actors from the same film, and…
By John H. Foote Again, no Academy, just me. What gives me the audacity and background to make these decisions? Thirty years as a critic and historian, hundreds on interviews with actors learning about their craft, I studied and taught Method Acting, and have directed 40 plus plays using the Method in each one. I…
By John H. Foote No Academy, just me. In some cases there were six deserving performances, so I broke protocol and nominated all six. I have seen all the films for each given year, so without further ado, here are my nominees for Best Actor. My winner is marked with an *. Part II will…
By John H. Foote When the Academy Award nominees for film excellence in 1967 were announced, there were some audible gasps when the Best Picture category was read. As expected Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and In the Heat of the Night were nominated, all richly deserved. But also among the five was Guess Who’s…
By John H. Foote They say most people cannot remember who won the Academy Awards a year later. I am not among those people, nor is Alan Hurst, a top notch movie historian writing for the site. We tend to remember everything. I mean everything, like Best Costume Design in 1939, or Best Song for…
By John H. Foote They won not because of a great campaign but because they so deserved to win. They were the towering top of their category and the Academy recognized this, which to be fair sometimes they do not. These are the most deserving winners I could narrow down. Purely indulgent, these are winners…
By Nick Maylor Having faces on money is an ancient tradition. Here in Canada, there has only been one face on the back of our coins for my entire lifetime, and that of my mother; Queen Elizabeth II. It’s just a reality of being Canadian. That’s the face on every coin (and a few paper…
By John H. Foote These are 10 extraordinary directing achievements that DID NOT win the Academy Award and, when you read them, discovering who they are you might be stunned. It is one thing to think that Kubrick or Pakula or Ashby never won an Oscar, it is quite another to realize Coppola lost for…