Oscar A to Z

Richard D. Zanuck

2009-06-03T12:19:00.000-07:00

Awards
Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award (1990).
Picture: Driving Miss Daisy (1989).
Nominations
Picture: The Verdict (1982).
Picture: Jaws (1975).

Born: December 13, 1934, in Los Angeles, California.

Famous for having been both hired and fired by his father, Darryl F. Zanuck, Richard Zanuck managed to overcome the stigma of nepotism and make his own name for himself as a producer of considerable distinction. After graduating from Stanford and serving in the Army, Zanuck went to work at the studio once headed by his father, 20th Century-Fox, as a production assistant. In 1959 he produced his first film, Compulsion. Four years later, Darryl Zanuck returned to Fox, and made Richard head of production. During his eight years in that role, Fox films won three best-picture Oscars, for The Sound of Music, Patton, and The French Connection. But conflicts with his father led to Richard's ouster in 1970. He went to work for Warner Bros., and in 1971 formed his own production company with David Brown. They produced, among other films, Steven Spielberg's first two features, The Sugarland Express and Jaws. When Zanuck and Brown went separate ways, Zanuck and his third wife, Lili Fini Zanuck, formed their own company, winning the best picture Oscar for Driving Miss Daisy. At the 1990 Oscar ceremony, Zanuck (and Brown) received the Irving G. Thalberg award -- an honor that Zanuck's father had won three times.

Other major awards:

Producers Guild of America: Lifetime Achievement Award in Motion Pictures (1993); Motion Picture Producer of the Year Award, Driving Miss Daisy (1990).

Other notable films:
Sweeney Todd (2007)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Big Fish (2003)
Road to Perdition (2002)
Deep Impact (1998)
Mulholland Falls (1996)
Rush (1991)
Cocoon (1985)
The Eiger Sanction (1975)
The Sugarland Express (1974)
Compulsion (1959)

Verna Fields

2009-06-02T19:49:00.000-07:00

Award
Film Editing: Jaws (1975).
Nomination
Film Editing: American Graffiti (1973).

Born: March 21, 1918, in St. Louis, Missouri.
Died: November 30, 1982, in Encino, California.

A veteran film and sound editor, Fields was the daughter of journalist-turned-screenwriter Sam Hellman. She worked for several years at 20th Century-Fox, where she met film editor Sam Fields. After his death in 1954, she became a sound editor for several TV series, such as "Sky King" and "Death Valley Days." She became a film editor in 1960 and went on to teach at her alma mater, the University of Southern California. She served as a mentor to the new generation of filmmakers that emerged in the 1970s, including Peter Bogdanovich, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg, earning the nickname "Mother Cutter."

The huge success of Jaws, which was accompanied by gossip that her skillful editing had "saved" it from the disasters that plagued its production, gave Fields a new power in Hollywood. "I was the liaison with the studio for Steven," she told interviewer Gerald Peary about her work the film. "When they thought of ditching the picture because the shark wasn't working, I told them, 'Keep doing it, even if you need to use miniatures.' " In 1976 she was promoted to vice president for feature production at Universal. She never edited another film.

Other major awards:

American Cinema Editors: Eddie, Best Edited Feature Film, Jaws (1976).

Other notable films:
Daisy Miller (1974)
The Sugarland Express (1974)
Paper Moon (1973)
What's Up, Doc? (1972)
Medium Cool (1969)
Targets (1968)
The Balcony (1963)
El Cid (1961)
Studs Lonigan (1960)

John Williams

2009-05-31T20:55:00.000-07:00

Awards
Original Score: Schindler's List (1993).
Original Score: E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1982).
Original Score: Star Wars (1977).
Original Score: Jaws (1975).
Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score: Fiddler on the Roof (1971).
Nominations
Original Score: Memoirs of a Geisha (2005).
Original Score: Munich (2005).
Original Score: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004).
Original Score: Catch Me If You Can (2002).
Original Score: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001).
Original Score: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001).
Original Score: The Patriot (2000).
Original Score: Angela's Ashes (1999).
Original Dramatic Score: Saving Private Ryan (1998).
Original Dramatic Score: Amistad (1997).
Original Dramatic Score: Sleepers (1996).
Original Dramatic Score: Nixon (1995).
Original Musical or Comedy Score: Sabrina (1995).
Original Song: "Moonlight" from Sabrina (1995).
Original Score: JFK (1991).
Original Song: "When You're Alone" from Hook (1991).
Original Score: Home Alone (1990).
Original Song: "Somewhere in My Memory" from Home Alone (1990).
Original Score: Born on the Fourth of July (1989).
Original Score: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).
Original Score: The Accidental Tourist (1988).
Original Score: Empire of the Sun (1987).
Original Score: The Witches of Eastwick (1987).
Original Score: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).
Original Score: The River (1984).
Original Score: Return of the Jedi (1983).
Original Song: "If We Were in Love" from Yes, Giorgio (1982).
Original Score: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
Original Score: The Empire Strikes Back (1980).
Original Score: Superman (1978).
Original Score: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
Original Dramatic Score: The Towering Inferno (1974).
Original Dramatic Score: Cinderella Liberty (1973).
Original Song: "Nice to Be Around" from Cinderella Liberty (1973).
Original Song Score and/or Adaptation: Tom Sawyer (1973).
Original Dramatic Score: Images (1972).
Original Dramatic Score: The Poseidon Adventure (1972).
Original Score for a Motion Picture (Not a Musical): The Reivers (1969).
Score of a Musical Picture (Original or Adaptation): Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969).
Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment: Valley of the Dolls (1967).

Born: February 8, 1932, in Floral Park, New York.

His 45 nominations are an Oscar record surpassed only by Walt Disney, and although Alfred Newman is the most-honored composer with nine wins to Williams' five, Williams has racked up more nominations than Newman. He has written music for everything from "Gilligan's Island" to the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, and in addition to his film and TV work has composed concert pieces for the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. In 1980 he succeeded Arthur Fiedler as the principal conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, a position he held until 1993.

The son of a jazz musician, Williams attended the University of California, Los Angeles, and Juilliard, and studied privately with the composer Mario Castelnuvo-Tedesco and the pianist Rosina Lhévinne. He began his film work as an orchestrator and pianist, working with Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein and Henry Mancini. His earliest work as a composer of scores, billed as Johnny Williams, was for such television series as "Lost in Space"and "Land of the Giants."

His Star Wars score for George Lucas is perhaps his most famous, but the central collaboration of Williams' career has been with Steven Spielberg, with whom he worked on the director's first theatrical feature, The Sugarland Express. Williams has gone on to compose scores for all of Spielberg's subsequent films, with the exception of The Color Purple and the director's installment of The Twilight Zone.

Other notable films:
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
War of the Worlds (2005)
Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith (2005)
The Terminal (2004)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
Minority Report (2002)
Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones (2002)
Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace (1999)
Seven Years in Tibet (1997)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Far and Away (1992)
Presumed Innocent (1990)
Always (1989)
Heartbeeps (1981)
1941 (1979)
Dracula (1979)
Midway (1976)
The Missouri Breaks (1976)
Family Plot (1976)
Earthquake (1974)
The Sugarland Express (1974)
The Paper Chase (1973)
How to Steal a Million (1966)
The Killers (1964)

Other major awards:

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films: Best Music, Star Wars: Episode III -Revenge of the Sith (2006); Lifetime Achievement Award (2004); Best Music, A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2002); Best Music, E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1983); Best Music, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982); Best Music, Superman (1978); Best Music: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars (1978).
BAFTA Awards: Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music, Memoirs of a Geisha (2006); Best Score, Schindler's List (1994); Best Score, Empire of the Sun (1989); Best Score, E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1983); Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music, The Empire Strikes Back (1981); Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music, Star Wars (1979).
Golden Globes: Best Original Score - Motion Picture, Memoirs of a Geisha (2006); Best Original Score - Motion Picture, E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1983); Best Original Score - Motion Picture, Star Wars (1978); Best Original Score - Motion Picture, Jaws (1976).
Las Vegas Film Critics Association Awards: Best Score, Angela's Ashes (2000).
National Board of Review: Career Achievement Award, for excellence in film music scoring (2001).

John R. Carter

2009-05-31T20:19:00.000-07:00

Award
Sound: Jaws (1975).

Born: October 22, 1907, in [?], Virginia.
Died: February 22, 1982, in Los Angeles, California.

Veteran sound technician who began his film career in the 1940s on B movies and graduated to major features in the 1960s. He spent much of his later career on such TV series as "Kojak" and "The Rockford Files."

Other notable films:
Rooster Cogburn (1975)
The Sugarland Express (1974)
Darling Lili (1970)
The Odd Couple (1968)
Hombre (1967)
El Dorado (1966)
A New Kind of Love (1963)
Come Blow Your Horn (1963)
Hud (1963)
Hatari! (1962)
The Star (1952)

Earl Madery

2009-05-31T19:53:00.000-07:00

Award
Sound: Jaws (1975).

Born: [information unavailable]

Sound re-recording mixer who was also nominated for an Emmy for his work on the TV series "Magnum, P.I."

Other notable films:
Zoot Suit (1981)
Somewhere in Time (1980)
Slap Shot (1977)
Car Wash (1976)
Midway (1976)
Family Plot (1976)
The Eiger Sanction (1975)
Airport 1975 (1974)

Roger Heman Jr.

2009-05-31T16:28:00.000-07:00

Award
Sound: Jaws (1975).
Nomination
Sound: Coal Miner's Daughter (1980).

Born: March 28, 1932 in [information unavailable].
Died: November 13, 1989 in Sanibel, Florida.

The son of veteran sound engineer Roger Heman spent his career at Universal as a sound re-recording mixer.

Other notable films:
Weird Science (1985)
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Heartbeeps (1981)
Somewhere in Time (1980)
House Calls (1978)
Slap Shot (1977)
Car Wash (1976)
Midway (1976)
Family Plot (1976)
The Eiger Sanction (1975)
Airport 1975 (1974)

Robert L. Hoyt

2009-05-30T21:34:00.000-07:00

Award
Sound: Jaws (1975).

Born: [information unavailable]

Hoyt began his career as a sound recordist and re-recording mixer in the 1970s.

Other notable films:
Weird Science (1985)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
The Last Starfighter (1984)
The Sting II (1983)
The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981)
Jaws 2 (1978)
House Calls (1978)
Slap Shot (1977)
Car Wash (1976)
Family Plot (1976)
The Eiger Sanction (1975)
The Front Page (1974)
The Sugarland Express (1974)
The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972)
Play Misty for Me (1971)

Jaws

2009-05-29T21:26:00.000-07:00

Universal-Zanuck/Brown Productions; Universal. 1975

Awards
Sound: Robert L. Hoyt, Roger Heman Jr., Earl Madery, and John R. Carter.
Original Score: John Williams.
Film Editing: Verna Fields.
Nomination
Picture: Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, producers.

A great white shark turns up off a New England resort island at the peak of tourist season and it takes three men to get rid of it: landlubber police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), puckish ichthyologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and macho old salt Quint (Robert Shaw). Funny, scary blockbuster that gets into people's heads the way Psycho did, making possible the famous ad line for the sequel, Jaws 2: "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water."

The movie's huge success launched the phenomenal career of Steven Spielberg, although he was the only director of a best picture nominee that year not to receive a nomination. (His slot went to Federico Fellini for Amarcord.) This was the beginning of Spielberg's mysteriously troubled relationship with the Academy that would culminate a decade later when his film The Color Purple received eleven nominations, but none for its director.

In the case of Jaws, as with E.T. the Extraterrestrial, some observers believed that Spielberg was being punished for being too successful. There were also rumors that the film had been "saved" by its editor, Fields, particularly since there were plenty of stories about difficulties and disasters during the shoot. The mechanical sharks designed by special effects man Robert A. Mattey repeatedly malfunctioned, and one of the boats used in the film sank, taking cameras and footage with it.

Since Spielberg was a Hollywood newcomer, with only a few TV movies and the feature The Sugarland Express to his credit, it was easy to dismiss his achievement as beginner's luck aided by a skilled crew. Now that Spielberg's films from Jaws to Jurassic Park dominate the list of the biggest moneymakers of all time, and he's attained artistic stature as well as Oscars with Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, nobody's dismissing that achievement.

The screenplay is credited to Peter Benchley (adapting his own novel) and Carl Gottlieb, although one of the most famous scenes from the film, Quint's speech about suriving the shark attack on the crew of the Indianapolis, was written by Shaw himself, with help from Howard Sackler and John Milius.

The cinematography is by Bill Butler. The cast also includes Lorraine Gary and Murray Hamilton, with Benchley in a cameo as a TV reporter. The best picture Oscar went to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Other awards:

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films: Outstanding Film (1976).
American Cinema Editors: Best Edited Feature Film, Verna Fields (1976).
BAFTA Awards: Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music, John Williams (1976).
Golden Globes: Best Original Score -- Motion Picture, John Williams (1976).
National Film Preservation Board: National Film Registry (2001).

DVD

Robert A. Mattey

2009-03-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

Nomination
Special Effects: The Absent Minded Professor (1961).

Born: [information unavailable]

Mattey was chief of mechanical effects at the Disney studios, and was responsible not only for film work but for many of the animatronics -- such as the "Small World" ride at Disneyland -- for the amusement parks. He also supervised the wire-flying effects of Mary Poppins, but Mattey's chief claim to cinematic fame is perhaps not so much his work at Disney as for his less-successful work on the mechanical shark (nicknamed "Bruce") for Jaws. Although Mattey had been hired in part because of his work on another sea monster, the giant squid of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Bruce was the cause of some expensive delays because it frequently malfunctioned during the filming.

Other notable films:
Jaws 2 (1978)
Jaws (1975)
The Love Bug (1968)
Mary Poppins (1964)
Babes in Toyland (1961)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)

Edward Colman

2009-03-28T21:55:00.000-07:00

Nominations
Color Cinematography: Mary Poppins (1964).
Black-and-White Cinematography: The Absent Minded Professor (1961).

Born: January 25, 1905, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Died: January 24, 1995, in Newport Beach, California.

Colman began as a camera operator and emerged as a director of photography on the "Dragnet" television series in the early 1950s. He began his work for Disney as a second-unit cinematographer on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and as a camera operator on "The Mickey Mouse Club," and worked on many of the studio's live-action films until 1968.

Other notable films:
The Love Bug (1968)
The Happiest Millionaire (1967)
The Ugly Dachshund (1966)
That Darn Cat! (1965)
Son of Flubber (1963)
Babes in Toyland (1961)
The Shaggy Dog (1959)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)

Hal Gausman

2009-03-28T21:50:00.000-07:00

Nominations
Art Direction-Set Decoration: The Untouchables (1987)
Art Direction-Set Decoration: The Island at the Top of the World (1974)
Art Direction-Set Decoration: Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).
Color Art Direction-Set Decoration: Mary Poppins (1964).
Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration: The Absent Minded Professor (1961).

Born: [information unavailable]

Gausman began as a television set decorator, and his work on the "Disneyland" TV series led to film work, starting with his first nominated movie, The Absent Minded Professor. He worked for Disney into the mid-'70s, then for other studios and for TV series such as "Falcon Crest" before his retirement in 1988.

Other notable films:
Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
Back to the Future (1985)
The Sting II (1982)
The Blues Brothers (1980)
Same Time, Next Year (1978)
Animal House (1978)
Swashbuckler (1976)
Gable and Lombard (1976)
Escape to Witch Mountain (1975)
Herbie Rides Again (1974)
The Million Dollar Duck (1971)
The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969)
The Love Bug (1968)
That Darn Cat! (1965)
The Parent Trap (1961)

Emile Kuri

2009-03-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

Awards
Color Art Direction-Set Decoration: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).
Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration: The Heiress (1949).
Nominations
Art Direction-Set Decoration: Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).
Color Art Direction-Set Decoration: Mary Poppins (1964).
Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration: The Absent Minded Professor (1961).
Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration: Executive Suite (1954).
Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration: Carrie (1952).
Black-and-White Art Direction-Interior Decoration: Silver Queen (1942).

Born: June 11, 1907, in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
Died: October 10, 2000, in Woodland Hills, California.

Kuri's Lebanese parents moved to Los Angeles after his birth. He began his career as a domestic interior decorator, and his work on producer Hal Roach's home led to his hiring as a set decorator on Topper. After a few years of toiling on B-movies like the Hopalong Cassidy Westerns, he began working with such prominent directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra and George Stevens. Although he decorated many films with contemporary settings, his Oscars -- for the claustrophobic Victorian home in The Heiress and for the "steampunk" fittings of the Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea -- reflect his interest in nineteenth-century decor. He was hired by the Disney studios as chief decorator in 1952, and turned his talents to the Disneyland and Walt Disney World parks as well. He won an Emmy for his work on the TV show "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color."

Other notable films:
The Love Bug (1968)
The Happiest Millionaire (1967)
Pollyanna (1960)
The Shaggy Dog (1959)
Old Yeller (1957)
The Trouble With Harry (1955)
The Actress (1953)
War of the Worlds (1953)
Shane (1953)
Detective Story (1951)
A Place in the Sun (1951)
Rope (1948)
Duel in the Sun (1946)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Spellbound (1945)

Carroll Clark

2009-03-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

Award
Scientific and Engineering Award: For the design and construction of a moving cloud and horizon machine (1942).
Nominations
Color Art Direction-Set Decoration: Mary Poppins (1964).
Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration: The Absent Minded Professor (1961).
Black-and-White Art Direction-Interior Decoration: Step Lively (1944).
Black-and-White Art Direction-Interior Decoration: Flight for Freedom (1943).
Art Direction: A Damsel in Distress (1937).
Art Direction: Top Hat (1935).
Art Direction: The Gay Divorcee (1934).

Born: February 6, 1894, in Mountain View, California.
Died: May 17, 1968, in Glendale, California.

Trained as an architect, Clark worked as a commercial designer before entering the film industry in the mid-1920s. In 1932, he joined RKO, where he designed some of the studio's most memorable films, including King Kong and the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals. When RKO shut down, he went to work for Disney as supervising art director.

Other notable films:
The Love Bug (1968)
The Happiest Millionaire (1967)
That Darn Cat! (1965)
The Incredible Journey (1963)
The Parent Trap (1961)
Pollyanna (1960)
Old Yeller (1957)
The Blue Veil (1951)
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)
I Remember Mama (1948)
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)
Notorious (1946)
Suspicion (1941)
Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)
Carefree (1938)
Stage Door (1937)
Shall We Dance (1937)
Swing Time (1936)
Mary of Scotland (1936)
Follow the Fleet (1936)
Roberta (1935)
Of Human Bondage (1934)
Flying Down to Rio (1933)
King Kong (1933)
A Bill of Divorcement (1932)
What Price Hollywood? (1932)
Holiday (1930)
Hell's Angels (1930)

George Bruns

2009-03-28T16:16:00.000-07:00

Nominations
Original Song: "Love" from Robin Hood (1973).
Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment: The Sword in the Stone (1963).
Scoring of a Musical Picture: Babes in Toyland (1961).
Scoring of a Musical Picture: Sleeping Beauty (1959).

Born: July 3, 1914, in Sandy, Oregon.
Died: May 23, 1983, in Portland, Oregon.

Bruns' greatest claim to fame -- at least where baby boomers are concerned -- isn't his four Oscar nominations, but his composition of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" (lyrics by Thomas Blackburn). He had a career as a jazz musician, including work with Jack Teagarden, before attracting Disney's notice for his jazz tuba score of the UPA cartoon "Little Boy With a Big Horn" in 1953. He was hired to do the adaptation of Tchaikovsky's ballet music for Sleeping Beauty, which earned him his first Oscar nomination. He remained with Disney, working on TV shows as well as features, until his retirement in 1976.

Other notable films:
Herbie Rides Again (1974)
The Aristocats (1970)
The Love Bug (1968)
The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit (1968)
The Jungle Book (1967)
The Absent Minded Professor (1961)
101 Dalmatians (1961)

Sleeping Beauty

2009-03-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

Walt Disney Productions; Buena Vista. 1959

Nomination
Scoring of a Musical Picture: George Bruns.

The wicked fairy Maleficent (voice of Eleanor Audley) puts a curse on the Princess Aurora (voice of Mary Costa): On her sixteenth birthday, the princess will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die. Despite the efforts of the good fairies Flora, Fauna and Merryweather (voices of Verna Felton, Barbara Jo Allen and Barbara Luddy), the curse is fulfilled -- although the fairies are able to mitigate its severity, putting Aurora and her kingdom into a deep slumber. But Prince Philip (voice of Bill Shirley) comes to the rescue.

This handsome animated feature failed at the box office, marking the end of the golden age of Disney animation that began a little over two decades earlier with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Animated features had become secondary products for the studio for much of the fifties, as the company moved into live-action films, television and theme park development. Sleeping Beauty was an ambitious attempt to reenter the field, with the biggest budget and longest production schedule of any of the cartoon films. It was presented in a wide-screen process with stereophonic sound, using elaborate production design and a complex blend of "rotoscoping" (basing the cartoon images on live-action footage) and conventional animation.

There's a terrific final battle in which Philip contends with Maleficent, who has turned herself into a dragon, but the rest of the film lacks the comedy of the early features -- the plump little fairies are only mildly amusing. Disney animation would not fully recover from the failure of Sleeping Beauty until three decades later, when The Little Mermaid launched a new era of Disney supremacy.

The musical score supervised by Bruns was based on Tchaikovsky's ballet music, and a variety of lyricists worked on the songs. The scoring Oscar went to André Previn and Ken Darby for Porgy and Bess.

DVD

2008

2009-03-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

Awards presented February 22, 2009

PICTURE

Award

Slumdog Millionaire, Christian Colson, producer.

Nominations

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Ceán Chaffin, producers.
Frost/Nixon, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Eric Fellner, producers.
Milk, Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, producers.
The Reader, Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack, Donna Gigliotti and Redmond Morris, producers.

ACTOR

Award

Sean Penn in Milk.

Nominations

Richard Jenkins in The Visitor.
Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon.
Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler.

ACTRESS

Award

Kate Winslet in The Reader.

Nominations

Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married.
Angelina Jolie in Changeling.
Melissa Leo in Frozen River.
Meryl Streep in Doubt.

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Award*

Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight.

*Presented posthumously

Nominations

Josh Brolin in Milk.
Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder.
Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt.
Michael Shannon in Revolutionary Road.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Award

Penélope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Nominations

Amy Adams in Doubt.
Viola Davis in Doubt.
Taraji P. Henson in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Marisa Tomei in The Wrestler.

DIRECTOR

Award

Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire.

Nominations

Stephen Daldry for The Reader.
David Fincher for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Ron Howard for Frost/Nixon.
Gus Van Sant for Milk.

WRITING, ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Award

Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Millionaire.

Nominations

David Hare for The Reader.
Peter Morgan for Frost/Nixon.
Eric Roth and Robin Swicord for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
John Patrick Shanley for Doubt.

WRITING, ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Award

Dustin Lance Black for Milk.

Nominations

Courtney Hunt for Frozen River.
Mike Leigh for Happy-Go-Lucky.
Martin McDonagh for In Bruges.
Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon and Pete Docter for WALL-E.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Award

Anthony Dod Mantle for Slumdog Millionaire.

Nominations

Chris Menges and Roger Deakins for The Reader.
Claudio Miranda for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Wally Pfister for The Dark Knight.
Tom Stern for Changeling.

ART DIRECTION-SET DECORATION

Award

Donald Graham Burt and Victor J. Zolfo for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Nominations

Michael Carlin and Rebecca Alleway for The Duchess.
Nathan Crowley and Peter Lando for The Dark Knight.
James J. Murakami and Gary Fettis for Changeling.
Kristi Zea and Debra Schutt for Revolutionary Road.

SOUND EDITING

Award

Richard King for The Dark Knight.

Nominations

Ben Burtt and Matthew Wood for WALL-E.
Frank Eulner and Christopher Boyes for Iron Man.
Glenn Freemantle and Tom Sayers for Slumdog Millionaire.
Wylie Stateman for Wanted.

SOUND MIXING

Award

Ian Tapp, Richard Pryke and Resul Pookutty for Slumdog Millionaire.

Nominations

Lora Hirschberg, Gary Rizzo and Ed Novick for The Dark Knight.
Chris Jenkins, Frank A. Montaño and Petr Forejt for Wanted.
Tom Myers, Michael Semanick and Ben Burtt for WALL-E.
David Parker, Michael Semanick, Ren Klyce and Mark Weingarten for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

MUSIC, ORIGINAL SCORE

Award

A.R. Rahman for Slumdog Millionaire.

Nominations

Alexandre Desplat for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Danny Elfman for Milk.
James Newton Howard for Defiance.
Thomas Newman for WALL-E.

MUSIC, ORIGINAL SONG
Award

A.R. Rahman (music) and Gulzar (lyrics) for "Jai Ho" from Slumdog Millionaire.

Nominations

Peter Gabriel (music and lyrics) and Thomas Newman (music) for "Down to Earth" from WALL-E.
A.R. Rahman and Maya Arulpragasam (music and lyrics) for "O Saya" from Slumdog Millionaire.

FILM EDITING

Award

Chris Dickens for Slumdog Millionaire.

Nominations

Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Elliot Graham for Milk.
Mike Hill and Dan Hanley for Frost/Nixon.
Lee Smith for The Dark Knight.

VISUAL EFFECTS

Award

Eric Barba, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton and Craig Barron for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Nominations

Nick Davis, Chris Corbould, Tim Webber and Paul Franklin for The Dark Knight.
John Nelson, Ben Snow, Dan Sudick and Shane Mahan for Iron Man.

COSTUME DESIGN

Award

Michael O'Connor for The Duchess.

Nominations

Danny Glicker for Milk.
Catherine Martin for Australia.
Jacqueline West for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Albert Wolsky for Revolutionary Road.

MAKEUP

Award

Greg Cannom for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Nominations

John Caglione Jr. and Conor O'Sullivan for The Dark Knight.
Mike Elizalde and Thom Floutz for Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Award

WALL-E, produced by Andrew Stanton.

Nominations

Bolt, produced by Chris Williams and Byron Howard.
Kung Fu Panda, produced by John Stevenson and Mark Osborne.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Award

Departures (Okuribito) -- Japan.

Nominations

The Baader Meinhof Complex (Der Baader Meinhof Komplex) -- Germany.
The Class (Entre les murs) -- France.
Revanche -- Austria.
Waltz With Bashir (Vals Im Bashir) -- Israel.

JEAN HERSHOLT HUMANITARIAN AWARD

Jerry Lewis

Joe Hale

2008-08-10T16:58:00.003-07:00

Nomination
Visual Effects: The Black Hole (1979).

Born: [information unavailable]

A layout artist for Disney since the 1950s, Hale began his career working on animated shorts and the "Disneyland" TV show. He was also a producer and co-screenwriter for the feature The Black Cauldron (1980).

Other notable films:
The Fox and the Hound (1981)
Pete's Dragon (1977)
The Rescuers (1977)
Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974)
Robin Hood (1973)
Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)
101 Dalmatians (1961)
Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Harrison Ellenshaw

2008-08-10T16:58:00.001-07:00

Nomination
Visual Effects: The Black Hole (1979).

Born: July 20, 1945, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Peter Ellenshaw Jr. majored in psychology at Whittier College, and planned to go into business administration before his father asked him to help out on a project at the Disney studios. He stayed in the business of visual effects -- mostly at Disney, but briefly at Industrial Light and Magic -- working primarily as a matte artist. He changed his name to Harrison -- adapting it from the town where he was born -- to avoid being confused with his father. He also directed the 1989 feature Dead Silence.

Other notable films:
Escape From L.A. (1996)
Dave (1993)
Honey I Blew Up the Kid (1992)
Ghost (1990)
Dick Tracy (1990)
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
Tron (1982)
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Pete's Dragon (1977)
Star Wars (1977)
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

Danny Lee

2008-08-10T16:57:00.003-07:00

Award
Special Visual Effects: Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).
Nomination
Visual Effects: The Black Hole (1979).

Born: [information unavailable]

Lee's résumé is heavy with work for Disney studios, where he became head of the special effects department in 1971. But as a specialist in mechanical effects -- as opposed to ones created in the camera -- the former Lockheed employee had worked on films since the 1950s, including Around the World in Eighty Days. And perhaps his most famous work was designing and executing the hundreds of explosives for the end of Bonnie and Clyde.

Other notable films:
Dragonslayer (1981)
Herbie Goes Bananas (1980)
The Cat From Outer Space (1978)
Pete's Dragon (1977)
Freaky Friday (1976)
Escape to Witch Mountain (1975)
The Island at the Top of the World (1974)
The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969)
The Love Bug (1968)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
The Great Race (1965)
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
Swiss Family Robinson (1960)

Eustace Lycett

2008-08-10T16:57:00.001-07:00

Awards
Special Visual Effects: Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).
Special Visual Effects: Mary Poppins (1964).
Nominations
Visual Effects: The Black Hole (1979).
Special Effects: The Absent Minded Professor (1961).

Born: December 21, 1914, in Stoke-on-Trent, England.
Died: November 16, 2006, in Fullerton, California.

Lycett's father was a mining engineer, and the family lived in Chile for many years before moving to California. Eustace graduated from CalTech with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1937, and went to work for the Disney studios, where he became a protégé of Ub Iwerks. Among his earliest projects at the studios was work on the multiplane camera, the device that by photographing images on various layers of glass allowed for greater depth in animated cartoons. Lycett also became a specialist in films that combined live action and animation, such as the Disney features The Three Caballeros, Song of the South and So Dear to My Heart. He succeeded Iwerks as head of the studio's special processes department in 1953, and again in 1971 when he was named head of research and development at Disney after Iwerks' death. He retired in 1979, after completing work on The Black Hole.

Other notable films:
The Cat From Outer Space (1978)
Pete's Dragon (1977)
Freaky Friday (1976)
Herbie Rides Again (1974)
The World's Greatest Athlete (1973)
Rascal (1969)
The Love Bug (1968)
The Happiest Millionaire (1967)
That Darn Cat! (1965)
Son of Flubber (1963)
Babes in Toyland (1961)
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)
Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959)

Art Cruickshank

2008-08-10T16:56:00.001-07:00

Award
Special Visual Effects: Fantastic Voyage (1966).
Nomination
Visual Effects: The Black Hole (1979).

Born: December 17, 1918, in [information unavailable].
Died: May 22, 1983, in Los Angeles, California.

Cruickshank worked in the special effects department of 20th Century-Fox before moving to the Disney studios in 1970.

Other notable films:
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
The Watcher in the Woods (1980)
The Cat From Outer Space (1978)
Pete's Dragon (1977)
Freaky Friday (1976)
Escape to Witch Mountain (1975)
The Island at the Top of the World (1974)
The Great White Hope (1970)
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
Myra Breckinridge (1970)
Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)
Patton (1970)
MASH (1970)
Hello, Dolly! (1969)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
The Boston Strangler (1968)
Star! (1968)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Valley of the Dolls (1967)
Doctor Dolittle (1967)
The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)

Peter Ellenshaw

2008-08-10T16:55:00.001-07:00

Award
Special Visual Effects: Mary Poppins (1964).
Nominations
Visual Effects: The Black Hole (1979).
Art Direction-Set Decoration: The Island at the Top of the World (1974).
Art Direction-Set Decoration: Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).

Born: May 24, 1913, in London, England.
Died: February 12, 2007, in Santa Barbara, California.

As a young man in England, Ellenshaw became assistant to W. Percy Day, a portrait painter who was also one of the pioneers of matte painting for the movies. With Day, Ellenshaw worked on some of the most distinguished British films of the 1930s and 1940s, including those of Alexander Korda, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. In 1948, Walt Disney, looking to branch out into live-action features, came to England to commission British-made features, which at that time were less costly than the ones made in Hollywood. Disney was impressed with Ellenshaw's matte paintings, and brought him back to California, where Ellenshaw became a mainstay of the studio's design and special effects departments. His son, Harrison Ellenshaw, followed in his footsteps as a Disney matte artist.

Other notable films:
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)
The Love Bug (1968)
Blackbeard's Ghost (1968)
The Happiest Millionaire (1967)
The Absent Minded Professor (1961)
Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
Pollyanna (1960)
Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks With a Circus (1960)
Third Man on the Mountain (1959)
Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959)
The Sign of Zorro (1958)
The Light in the Forest (1958)
Old Yeller (1957)
Perri (1957)
The Great Locomotive Chase (1956)
Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue (1953)
The Sword and the Rose (1953)
The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952)
Treasure Island (1950)

Frank V. Phillips

2008-08-10T16:54:00.000-07:00

Nomination
Cinematography: The Black Hole (1979).

Born: April 7, 1912, in ?Illinois.
Died: April 29, 1994, in Los Angeles, California.

Phillips worked as a cameraman at MGM and on TV series like "Hawaii Five-O" before becoming a regular director of photography at the Disney studios during the heyday of the live-action family feature.

Other notable films:
Herbie Goes Bananas (1980)
Return From Witch Mountain (1978)
Pete's Dragon (1977)
The Shaggy D.A. (1976)
The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975)
Escape From Witch Mountain (1975)
The Island at the Top of the World (1974)
Herbie Rides Again (1974)
The World's Greatest Athlete (1973)
Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)
The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969)

The Black Hole

2008-08-10T16:52:00.000-07:00

Walt Disney Productions; Buena Vista. 1979

Nominations
Cinematography: Frank V. Phillips.
Visual Effects: Peter Ellenshaw, Art Cruickshank, Eustace Lycett, Danny Lee, Harrison Ellenshaw, and Joe Hale.

The crew of the Polaris discovers a black hole with another spaceship, the long-missing Cygnus, hovering near its event horizon. When they go to investigate the Cygnus, they discover that its sole human inhabitant is the scientist Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell), who proposes to take the ship into the black hole. Gary Nelson directed this busy, gimmicky movie, essentially a remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in outer space. Though the Disney studio actually began work on The Black Hole before Star Wars revived sci-fi as a film genre, it looks like a copycat, right down to its cute robots, which have voices by Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens. But despite earning the studio's first PG rating -- for a few hells and damns and some violence -- it failed to attract adult audiences, which flocked instead to Alien and Star Trek -- The Motion Picture. The score is by John Barry, and the cast also includes Anthony Perkins, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, and Ernest Borgnine.

The cinematography Oscar went to Vittorio Storaro for Apocalypse Now. The visual effects award was won by Alien.

DVD

Robert Forster

2008-08-09T21:54:00.001-07:00

Nomination
Supporting Actor: Jackie Brown (1997).

Born: July 13, 1941, in Rochester, New York.

After graduating from the University of Rochester with a degree in psychology, Forster pursued a career as an actor with some success, including a Broadway run in a two-character play opposite Arlene Francis. He landed a five-picture contract with 20th Century-Fox in 1967, and made a memorable debut in Reflections in a Golden Eye as the young soldier with whom Marlon Brando's character becomes obsessed. The peak of his early career was as the photographer who gets caught up in the 1968 riots in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention in Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool -- a film that unaccountably received no Oscar nominations.

And then ... nothing happened. Roles in major films seemed to elude him, and he signed up for a short-lived TV series, "Banyon," in 1974. The next two decades consisted of some TV work, secondary roles in movies like The Black Hole and The Delta Force, and leads in a string of B-movies, the most notable of which is Alligator, a spoofy creature feature with a screenplay by John Sayles.

But B-movie enthusiast Quentin Tarantino took notice of Forster, who maintained a kind of dogged integrity through many bad movies, and cast him as the bail bondsman Max Cherry in Jackie Brown, a role that earned him glowing reviews and an Oscar nomination. That he was the only actor singled out by the Academy from a cast that includes Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro is noteworthy.

Forster's career hasn't exactly skyrocketed, but he's moved from "where've I seen him before?" to "oh, yeah, the guy in Jackie Brown" where public recognition is concerned. He had another short-lived TV series, playing Carla Gugino's father in "Karen Sisco," but this time the critics took notice.

Other notable films:
Cleaner (2007)
Lucky Number Slevin (2006)
Firewall (2006)
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003)
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Me, Myself & Irene (2000)
Supernova (2000)
Psycho (1998)
The Delta Force (1986)
Alligator (1980)
The Black Hole (1979)
Avalanche (1978)
Medium Cool (1969)
Justine (1969)
The Stalking Moon (1968)
Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)

Jackie Brown

2008-08-09T21:53:00.000-07:00

Mighty, Mighty Afrodite Production; Miramax Films. 1997

Nomination
Supporting Actor: Robert Forster.

Flight attendant Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is smuggling money from Mexico for gun runner Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) when she's nabbed by the feds, tipped off by an informant (Chris Tucker). ATF agent Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton) proposes a deal: Jackie will help them nail Robbie in exchange for her freedom. She refuses, and Robbie sends bail bondsman Max Cherry (Forster) to spring her from jail. Robbie proposes that Jackie pretend to go along with Nicolette's scheme while actually smuggling half a million dollars for him. But Jackie and Max, who is smitten with her, decide to double-cross both Robbie and the feds and keep the money for themselves.

This witty adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel Rum Punch may be writer-director Quentin Tarantino's most conventional film -- it's his first to be derived from a novel -- but it's Tarantinesque in its violence and its allusions to Hollywood B-movies, especially the "blaxploitation" films that starred Grier in the 1970s. It helped revive both her career and that of Forster. The cast also includes Bridget Fonda, Robert De Niro, Michael Bowen, and Lisa Gay Hamilton.

The supporting actor Oscar went to Robin Williams for Good Will Hunting.

Other major awards:

Berlin International Film Festival: Silver Berlin Bear, Best Actor, Samuel L. Jackson (1998).
Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Supporting Actor, Robert Forster (1998).

Sally Menke

2008-08-01T22:59:00.003-07:00

Nomination
Film Editing: Pulp Fiction (1994).

Born: December 17, 1953, in [information unavailable].

Quentin Tarantino (with Menke at left) has called her his "greatest collaborator." She has edited all of his films, starting with Reservoir Dogs. Menke has also edited films by Oliver Stone, Lee Tamahori, and Billy Bob Thornton, and was an executive producer on Thornton's All the Pretty Horses.

Other notable films:
Death Proof (2007)
Grindhouse (2007)
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
All the Pretty Horses (2000)
Jackie Brown (1997)
Mulholland Falls (1996)
Heaven & Earth (1993)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

Other major awards:

Hollywood Film Festival: Editor of the Year (2004).
Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards: Best Editing, Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2004).
San Diego Film Critics Society Awards: Best Editing, Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003).

Uma Thurman

2008-08-01T22:59:00.001-07:00

Nomination
Supporting Actress: Pulp Fiction (1994).

Born: April 29, 1970, in Boston, Massachusetts.

At six feet, Thurman towers over most leading men, which may explain something of the rather eccentric nature of her filmography. She began her career as an emblem of beauty -- Venus in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen -- and of innocence -- Cécile de Volanges in Dangerous Liaisons. And then she played Henry Miller's wife, June, in the first NC-17-rated film, Henry & June, and the big-thumbed Sissy Hankshaw in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Hollywood seemed not to know what to do with her.

It was Quentin Tarantino who found Thurman a signature role, as the seductive Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction, for which she earned her nomination. While working on the movie, she and Tarantino cooked up the idea for the revenge-obsessed Bride of Kill Bill, earning her a writing credit on that two-part film. But in the meantime, she moved through a variety of odd roles, some of them disastrous -- Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin, Emma Peel in The Avengers. She also married and divorced Ethan Hawke, with whom she had two children.

The truth is, Hollywood still doesn't know what to do with her. She remains an enigmatic but attractive presence on screen, but with her signature role more than a decade in the past, she needs a role that will define her as an actress.

Other major films:
The Producers (2005)
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
The Golden Bowl (2000)
Vatel (2000)
Sweet and Lowdown (1999)
The Avengers (1998)
Gattaca (1997)
Batman and Robin (1997)
The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996)
Beautiful Girls (1996)
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)
Henry & June (1990)
Where the Heart Is (1990)
Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

Other major awards:

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films: Best Actress, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2004).
Golden Globes: Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television, "Hysterical Blindness" (2003).

John Travolta

2008-08-01T22:58:00.002-07:00

Nominations
Actor: Pulp Fiction (1994).
Actor: Saturday Night Fever (1977).

Born: February 18, 1954, in Englewood, New Jersey.

His two nominated films are the tent poles of Travolta's career, which starts to sag around -- and especially between -- them. Saturday Night Fever was followed swiftly by another hit, Grease, but then by a disaster, Moment by Moment, that damaged both Travolta's career and that of his co-star, Lily Tomlin. Things picked up a bit with Urban Cowboy, though it was generally judged as something of a retread of Saturday Night Fever, and the really good reviews went to co-stars Debra Winger and Scott Glenn. Then Blow Out, an effective thriller by Brian De Palma, was a box-office disappointment, and the Sylvester Stallone-directed sequel to Saturday Night Fever, Staying Alive, was as moribund as disco.

For the next decade, the best Travolta could do was play second banana to a wisecracking baby in Look Who's Talking and its two sequels. But Pulp Fiction revived his career with a role that may have been written with Michael Madsen in mind -- Travolta, according to the story, was cast after Madsen was unable to break a prior commitment.

Travolta's earlier hits, especially Saturday Night Fever and Grease, had played on the audience's familiarity with his TV character, Vinny Barbarino from "Welcome Back, Kotter," a mouthy street kid impressed with his own cool. The character was ripped off from the Fonz in "Happy Days," but Travolta made it his own.

But by the time of Pulp Fiction, Travolta was 40, and ready to show some mature substance, which he did in Barry Sonnenfeld's entertaining Get Shorty, an Elmore Leonard adaptation in which Travolta's confident swagger -- part Tony Manero, part Vincent Vega -- worked perfectly. He was also a standout in Face/Off, in which he and Nicolas Cage vie to see who can go further over the top, and as the horny, charismatic presidential candidate in the roman à Bill Clinton, Primary Colors.

Travolta had arrived -- again. But then came Battlefield Earth, an unwatchable mess based on the scifi novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. One of Hollywood's most prominent Scientologists, Travolta hasn't earned quite as much notoriety for devotion to his eccentric creed as Tom Cruise, but Battlefield Earth was a box office disaster of landmark proportions, and earned Travolta three Razzie Awards: as worst actor, as producer of the worst picture, and as worst couple "with anyone sharing the screen with him."

Travolta's post-Battlefield Earth work has not been particularly memorable, except for his appearance in drag in the film musical version of Hairspray. Still, he has been a significant presence on screen, a real star, off and on for thirty years.

Other notable films:
Hairspray (2007)
Swordfish (2001)
Battlefield Earth (2000)
A Civil Action (1998)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Primary Colors (1998)
Face/Off (1997)
Broken Arrow (1996)
Get Shorty (1995)
Look Who's Talking (1989)
Perfect (1985)
Two of a Kind (1983)
Staying Alive (1983)
Blow Out (1981)
Urban Cowboy (1980)
Moment by Moment (1978)
Grease (1978)
Carrie (1976)
The Devil's Rain (1975)

Other major awards:

American Comedy Awards: Funniest Actor in a Motion Picture (Leading Role), Get Shorty (1996).
Chicago International Film Festival: Lifetime Achievement Award (1998).
Golden Globes: Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture -- Comedy/Musical, Get Shorty (1996); Henrietta Award, World Film Favorite -- Male (1979).
Hollywood Film Festival: Ensemble of the Year, Hairspray (2007); Supporting Actor of the Year (2007); Lifetime Achievement Award (2004).
London Critics Circle Film Awards: Actor of the Year, Pulp Fiction (1995).
Los Angeles Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Actor, Pulp Fiction (1994).
National Board of Review: Best Actor, Saturday Night Fever (1977).
Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards: Best Actor, Get Shorty (1996).
Stockholm Film Festival: Best Actor, Pulp Fiction (1994).

Lawrence Bender

2008-08-01T22:58:00.001-07:00

Nominations
Picture: Good Will Hunting (1997).
Picture: Pulp Fiction (1994).

Born: October 17, 1957, in The Bronx, New York.

Bender began as a grip on the TV series "Tales From the Darkside," which put him in the middle of the Hollywood horror/scifi community. His first producing job was on the 1989 film Intruder, a horror movie he wrote and had a small role in. But his breakthrough came when he met Quentin Tarantino and produced Reservoir Dogs. He remained Tarantino's producer for the next 12 years, although they recently announced a parting of the ways.

In addition to the listed nominations, Bender was also a producer of the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, about Al Gore's efforts to spread the word about climate change; the award went to Bender's co-producer and the film's director, Davis Guggenheim. Bender has been frequently honored for his commitment to social justice.

Other notable films:
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
The Mexican (2001)
Anna and the King (1999)
Jackie Brown (1997)
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
Killing Zoe (1994)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Other major awards:

Independent Spirit Awards: Best Feature, Pulp Fiction (1995).

Roger Avary

2008-08-01T22:57:00.002-07:00

Award
Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen: Pulp Fiction (1994).

Born: August 23, 1965, in Flin Flon, Manitoba, Canada.

Born in Canada, Avary moved with his family to Arizona and then to California when he was a boy. A cartoonist and a film geek from an early age, he created animated cartoons with a Super-8 camera, and after high school went to work in a video store, where he first met Quentin Tarantino. After a couple of years of college and travel around Europe, Avary reunited with Tarantino and worked with him on several screenplays, including True Romance and Natural Born Killers, and contributed dialogue to Tarantino's first feature, Reservoir Dogs.

Pulp Fiction evolved from an anthology film that Avary and Tarantino planned, in which each of them, along with a third filmmaker, would write and direct a segment. When that project fell through, Tarantino reworked elements of Avary's script, which included the "gold watch" flashback scene, into a full-length script. Meanwhile Avary devoted his attention to his first feature as writer and director, Killing Zoe, a film with something of a cult following, especially in France, where it supposedly takes place -- although it was filmed in Los Angeles. But it is Pulp Fiction that established Avary in Hollywood, even though he gained a certain notoriety with his brief and decidedly irreverent Oscar acceptance speech, which he ended by announcing, "I really gotta go take a pee."

After Pulp Fiction, Avary kicked around for a while, writing and producing some unaired TV pilots, producing a couple of films that attracted little attention, until in 2002 he adapted and directed a film version of Bret Easton Ellis' novel, The Rules of Attraction, which had a modest success. He had earlier been hired to adapt novelist Neil Gaiman's graphic novel series The Sandman for film, and although the project fell through, he reteamed with Gaiman on the screenplay for Beowulf in 2007 -- a film whose director was the man who defeated Tarantino for the directing Oscar in 1994, Robert Zemeckis.

Other notable films:
Beowulf (2007)
The Rules of Attraction (2002)
Killing Zoe (1994)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Other major awards:

BAFTA Awards: Best Screenplay -- Original, Pulp Fiction (1995).
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards: Best Screenplay, Pulp Fiction (1994).
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards: Best Screenplay, Pulp Fiction (1995).
Independent Spirit Awards: Best Screenplay, Pulp Fiction (1995).
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards: Best Screenplay, Pulp Fiction (1994).
National Society of Film Critics Awards: Best Screenplay, Pulp Fiction (1995).
New York Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Screenplay, Pulp Fiction (1994).

Quentin Tarantino

2008-08-01T22:57:00.001-07:00

Award
Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen: Pulp Fiction (1994).
Nomination
Director: Pulp Fiction (1994).

Born: March 27, 1963, in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Sometimes it seems as if the history of American culture in the last quarter of the twentieth century should be titled "Revenge of the Nerds." So many of the achievements in fiction and music and computers and television and film seem to be the products of guys who in high school were the misfits with their noses in comic books, the ones who relished old B-movies, kung fu films and spaghetti Westerns. And Tarantino is their king.

He actually dropped out of high school when he was fifteen, studied acting, and worked in a video store in Manhattan Beach, California, where he developed a reputation for his encyclopedic knowledge of movies and met Roger Avary, who would be his collaborator on his earliest screenplays. Producer Lawrence Bender encouraged Tarantino to write a screenplay, and then produced Reservoir Dogs, which was a hit at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival. Tarantino followed with the screenplays for True Romance, which was directed by Tony Scott, and Natural Born Killers, which was so heavily rewritten by its director, Oliver Stone, that Tarantino has disowned it. Turning down offers to direct films such as Speed and Men in Black, he went to Amsterdam, where he wrote the screenplay for Pulp Fiction (and presumably ate french fries with mayonnaise).

Pulp Fiction remains the pinnacle of Tarantino's career. His next feature film, Jackie Brown, is an exceptionally well-executed piece of work, a smooth adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch, with the welcome casting of Pam Grier and Robert Forster, two stars whose careers had faded. But perhaps because it's an adaptation, it lacks some of the what-will-he-think-of-next audacity of his original screenplays. Certainly that audacity wasn't lacking in Kill Bill, his entertaining two-part martial arts epic, but its over-the-top moments sometimes approach self-parody. One could almost believe in Vincent and Jules and Butch in Pulp Fiction, but the characters in Kill Bill barely even make a feint at credibility.

Much of Tarantino's recent career has been spent in collaboration with Robert Rodriguez, who is almost an alter ego. Tarantino scripted and acted in From Dusk Till Dawn, directed a segment of Sin City, and directed the Death Proof segment of Grindhouse. He has also done occasional work as a script doctor, notably on Crimson Tide, has written and directed TV series such as "CSI" and "ER," and has produced such films as Hostel and the sequels to From Dusk Till Dawn.

Other notable films:
Death Proof (2007)
Grindhouse (2007)
Sin City (2005)
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Jackie Brown (1997)
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Other major awards:

American Cinema Editors: Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award (2007).
BAFTA Awards: Best Screenplay -- Original, Pulp Fiction (1995).
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards: Best Director, Pulp Fiction (1994); Best Screenplay, Pulp Fiction (1994).
Cannes Film Festival: Palm d'Or, Pulp Fiction (1994).
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards: Best Director, Pulp Fiction (1995); Best Screenplay, Pulp Fiction (1995).
David di Donatello Awards: Best Foreign Film (Miglior Film Straniero), Pulp Fiction (1995).
Edgar Allan Poe Awards: Best Motion Picture, Pulp Fiction (1995).
Golden Globes: Best Screenplay -- Motion Picture, Pulp Fiction (1995).
Independent Spirit Awards: Best Director, Pulp Fiction (1995); Best Screenplay, Pulp Fiction (1995).
Kansas City Film Critics Association: Best Director, Pulp Fiction (1995).
Kinema Junpo Awards: Best Foreign Language Film Director, Pulp Fiction (1995).
London Critics Circle Awards: Screenwriter of the Year, Pulp Fiction (1995); Newcomer of the Year, Reservoir Dogs (1994).
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards: Best Director, Pulp Fiction (1994); Best Screenplay, Pulp Fiction (1994).
National Board of Review: Best Director, Pulp Fiction (1994).
National Society of Film Critics Awards: Best Director, Pulp Fiction (1995); Best Screenplay, Pulp Fiction (1995).
New York Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Director, Pulp Fiction (1994); Best Screenplay, Pulp Fiction (1994).
Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards: Best Director, Pulp Fiction (1995).
Stockholm Film Festival: Best Screenplay, Pulp Fiction (1994); Bronze Horse, Pulp Fiction (1994); Bronze Horse, Reservoir Dogs (1992).
Toronto International Film Festival: International Critics' Award (FIPRESCI), Reservoir Dogs (1992).

Pulp Fiction

2008-07-31T19:38:00.001-07:00

Band Apart/Jersey Films Production; Miramax. 1994

Award
Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen: Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary.
Nominations
Picture: Lawrence Bender, producer.
Actor: John Travolta.
Supporting Actor: Samuel L. Jackson.
Supporting Actress: Uma Thurman.
Director: Quentin Tarantino.
Film Editing: Sally Menke.

Vincent (Travolta) and Jules (Jackson) are hit men in the hire of underworld boss Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). Thurman plays Mia, Wallace's wife, whom Vincent must entertain one evening, nervously aware of the rumors about what happens to people who get too close to her. Their stories are mingled with those of a couple who call each other "Pumpkin" (Tim Roth) and "Honey Bunny" (Amanda Plummer) and are bent on robbing the diner where they've just had breakfast, and with that of Butch (Bruce Willis), a boxer who double-crosses Wallace.

This audacious, bloody, and hilarious reworking of film noir material into something fresh and unique was a huge critical success, and it has endured as one of the most influential films of the past twenty years. There were some dissenters at first: When it was given the top prize at Cannes there were boos mingled with the cheers. Audiences flocked to it as well, and were similarly divided, though in the end the cheers far outnumbered the boos. Also in the cast are Harvey Keitel as a gangland cleanup specialist, Maria de Medeiros as Butch's girlfriend, Eric Stoltz as a drug pusher, and Christopher Walken in a very funny flashback cameo.

Pulp Fiction has probably held up better than the film that beat it for best picture: Forrest Gump, whose sentimentality and somewhat muddled attitude toward the historical events it surveys has become more apparent with subsequent viewings. Gump also took the awards for actor Tom Hanks, director Robert Zemeckis, and editor Arthur Schmidt. The Oscars for the supporting roles went to Martin Landau for Ed Wood and Dianne Wiest for Bullets Over Broadway.

Other major awards:

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films: Saturn Award , Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film (1995).
BAFTA Awards: Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Samuel L. Jackson; Best Screenplay--Original, Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary (1995).
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards: Best Director, Quentin Tarantino; Best Film; Best Screenplay, Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary (1994).
Cannes Film Festival: Palme d'Or, Quentin Tarantino (1994).
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards: Best Director, Quentin Tarantino; Best Screenplay, Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary (1995).
David di Donatello Awards: Best Foreign Actor (Migliore Attore Straniero), John Travolta; Best Foreign Film (Miglior Film Straniero), Quentin Tarantino (1995).
Edgar Allan Poe Awards: Best Motion Picture, Quentin Tarantino (1995).
Golden Globes: Best Screenplay--Motion Picture, Quentin Tarantino (1995).
Independent Spirit Awards: Best Director, Quentin Tarantino; Best Feature, Lawrence Bender; Best Male Lead, Samuel L. Jackson; Best Screenplay, Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary (1995).
Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Director, Quentin Tarantino; Best Film (1995).
Kinema Junpo Awards: Best Foreign Language Film Director, Quentin Tarantino (1995).
London Critics Circle Film Awards: Actor of the Year, John Travolta; Screenwriter of the Year, Quentin Tarantino (1995).
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards: Best Actor, John Travolta; Best Director, Quentin Tarantino; Best Picture; Best Screenplay, Quentin Tarantino and John Avary (1994).
National Board of Review: Best Director, Quentin Tarantino; Best Film (1994).
National Society of Film Critics Awards: Best Director, Quentin Tarantino; Best Film; Best Screenplay, Quentin Tarantino (1995).
New York Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Director, Quentin Tarantino; Best Screenplay, Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary (1994).
Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards: Best Director, Quentin Tarantino; Best Picture (1995).
Stockholm Film Festival: Best Actor, John Travolta; Best Screenplay, Quentin Tarantino; Bronze Horse, Quentin Tarantino (1994).

DVD

Samuel L. Jackson

2008-07-31T19:31:00.000-07:00

Nomination
Supporting Actor: Pulp Fiction (1994).

Born: December 21, 1948, in Washington, D.C.

Jackson, an only child, was raised by his mother in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His father, who died from alcoholism, lived in Kansas City; Jackson saw him only twice during his life. He became involved with theater while at Morehouse College, from which he graduated in 1972 after being suspended for two years for participating in a protest against the administration. He moved to New York in 1976 to pursue a career in theater, and caught the attention of Morgan Freeman, who served as a mentor, and Spike Lee, who cast him in small roles in School Daze and Do the Right Thing.

Unfortunately, he also became addicted to alcohol and cocaine, and was finally persuaded by family and friends to enter rehab. His post-rehab role as Wesley Snipes' addict brother in Lee's Jungle Fever earned Jackson major acclaim, including an award at the Cannes Film Festival. But it was his Oscar-nominated performance in Pulp Fiction that would prove to be Jackson's breakthrough role, although many wondered why Jackson, who shared much screen time with John Travolta, was relegated to a supporting actor nomination while Travolta scored a nomination as a leading actor.

Above all else, Pulp Fiction established Jackson as one of Hollywood's coolest actors. In David Thomson's words, "If ever there was an actor ready to play some of the jazz greats -- Miles, Mingus, or even Ellington -- this is the guy."

Other notable films:
Black Snake Moan (2006)
Snakes on a Plane (2006)
Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones (2002)
Shaft (2000)
Rules of Engagement (2000)
Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace (1999)
The Red Violin (Le Violon rouge) (1999)
The Negotiator (1998)
Jackie Brown (1997)
The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
A Time to Kill (1996)
Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Menace II Society (1993)
Patriot Games (1992)
Jungle Fever (1991)
GoodFellas (1990)
Mo' Better Blues (1990)
Sea of Love (1989)
Do the Right Thing (1989)
School Daze (1988)
Ragtime (1981)

Other major awards:

BAFTA Awards: Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Pulp Fiction (1995).
Berlin International Film Festival: Silver Berlin Bear, Best Actor, Jackie Brown (1997).
Cannes Film Festival: Best Supporting Actor, Jungle Fever (1991).
Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Supporting Actor, Jungle Fever (1991).
New York Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Supporting Actor, Jungle Fever (1991).

The Red Violin (Le Violon rouge)

2008-07-31T14:45:00.001-07:00

Rhombus Media Production; Lions Gate Films (Canada/Italy). 1999

Award
Original Score: John Corigliano.

A pregnant woman (Irene Grazioli) in seventeenth-century Cremona, the wife of a violin-maker (Carlo Cecchi), asks a servant (Anita Laurenzi) to tell her fortune. The servant lays out five tarot cards. But the cards predict not the woman's fate but that of the violin her husband is creating. The film follows the violin through five episodes, from Cremona to eighteenth-century Vienna, then to late nineteenth-century England, to China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, and finally to an auction house in present-day Montréal, where descendants of the various previous owners of the violin are bidding on it. The cast, directed by François Girard, who co-wrote the script with Don McKellar, includes Greta Scacchi, Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Flemyng, and Colm Feore. Corigliano's score, with virtuoso solo work by violinist Joshua Bell, who also makes a cameo appearance onscreen, ties together this episodic but generally absorbing film.

Other major awards:

Motion Picture Sound Editors: Golden Reel Award, Best Sound Editing -- Music -- Musical Feature, Todd Kasow, music editor, and Claude La Haye, re-recording music editor.

DVD

2002

2008-07-30T20:03:00.000-07:00

Awards presented March 23, 2003

SOUND

Award

Michael Minkler, Domenick Tavella, and David Lee for Chicago.

Nominations

Christopher Boyes, Michael Semanick, Michael Hedges, and Hammond Peek for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
Tom Fleischman, Eugene Gearty, and Ivan Sharrock for Gangs of New York.
Scott Millan, Bob Beemer, and John Pritchett for Road to Perdition.
Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell, and Ed Novick for Spider-Man.

MUSIC: ORIGINAL SONG

Award

Eminem (music and lyrics), Jeff Bass (music), and Luis Resto (music) for "Lose Yourself" from 8 Mile.

Nominations

Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. (music and lyrics ) for "The Hands That Built America" from Gangs of New York.
Elliot Goldenthal (music) and Julie Taymor (lyrics) for "Burn It Blue" from Frida.
John Kander (music) and Fred Ebb (lyrics) for "I Move On" from Chicago.
Paul Simon (music and lyrics) for "Father and Daughter" from The Wild Thornberrys Movie.

MUSIC: ORIGINAL SCORE

Award

Elliot Goldenthal for Frida.

Nominations

Elmer Bernstein for Far From Heaven.
Philip Glass for The Hours.
Thomas Newman for Road to Perdition.
John Williams for Catch Me If You Can.

John Corigliano

2008-07-30T15:38:00.001-07:00

Award
Original Score: The Red Violin (Le Violon rouge) (1999).
Nomination
Original Score: Altered States (1980).

Born: February 16, 1938, in New York, New York.

One of the most honored of contemporary American composers, Corigliano is the son of a longtime concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. He studied composition at Columbia University and the Manhattan School of Music, and began his occasional association with popular media as an assistant to the producer of Leonard Bernstein's CBS-TV "Young People's Concerts" and as a recording session producer for classical artists including Andre Watts. In 1964, his Sonata for Violin and Piano was a prize-winner at the Spoleto Festival, launching his career as a composer.

It was his 1977 Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, composed for the New York Philharmonic, that drew the attention of director Ken Russell and led to Corigliano's first work composing for the movies, the score of Altered States. His second film score, for the notorious 1985 flop Revolution, was a less rewarding experience: Corigliano was even nominated for a "Razzie Award" for worst musical score of the year, and the score has never been released as a recording. But his score for The Red Violin (Le Violon rouge) won him the Oscar, and Corigliano subsequently adapted themes from it into a concerto, which has been recorded by Joshua Bell (who also performed on the film soundtrack).

Corigliano's major non-cinematic work includes the Symphony No. 1 (1991), a memorial to the many friends he lost to the AIDS epidemic. His Symphony No. 2 won him the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. His opera, The Ghosts of Versailles, was staged with great success at the Metropolitan Opera in 1991, revived in the 1994-95 season, and is scheduled for another revival during the 2009-2010 season.

Other notable films:
Revolution (1985)

Other major awards:

British Film Institute Awards: Film Music Award (1986).

Willie D. Burton

2008-07-30T15:37:00.002-07:00

Awards
Sound: Dreamgirls (2006).
Sound: Bird (1988).
Nominations
Sound: The Green Mile (1999).
Sound: The Shawshank Redemption (1994).
Sound: WarGames (1983).
Sound: Altered States (1980).
Sound: The Buddy Holly Story (1978).

Born: [information unavailable], in ?Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Burton grew up in Alabama, and became fascinated with broadcasting because he lived near a radio station. In high school, he entered a work-study program and went to work in a store that sold and repaired radios and TVs. This fed his fascination with electronics, but he was stymied by the limited opportunities for African-Americans to work in the field, especially in the South, so he moved to Long Beach, California, after high school. He attended a trade school and Compton City College, where he studied electronics technology.

After graduation he worked on sonar technology for the Department of the Navy, but his hopes to work in broadcasting were still frustrated because he needed to be a union member to work in Hollywood. Finally, in 1969, he made it into the International Sound Technicians union -- the first black man to be accepted into the union. This led to an entry level job on the TV series "Land of the Giants." Between TV jobs, which also included work as a boom operator on "Medical Center" and "Gunsmoke," he worked as a custodian at a bank.

Fortunately, a friend from one of his TV jobs helped train Burton on sound-mixing equipment. His break into mixing came in 1975, when he heard that Sidney Poitier was directing the film Let's Do It Again, with Bill Cosby. Poitier agreed to hire Burton, launching him on a career that has lasted into its fourth decade. With seven nominations each, he and Quincy Jones are the Academy's most-honored African-Americans.

Other notable films:
The Great Debaters (2007)
The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)
Jarhead (2005)
Antwone Fisher (2002)
Panic Room (2002)
Charlie's Angels (2000)
Beloved (1998)
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
Se7en (1995)
The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
In the Line of Fire (1993)
Bugsy (1991)
Avalon (1990)
Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
The Color Purple (1985)
All of Me (1984)
Urban Cowboy (1980)
The China Syndrome (1979)
Car Wash (1976)
Let's Do It Again (1975)

Other major awards:

BAFTA Awards: Best Sound, WarGames (1984).
Cinema Audio Society Awards: Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures, Dreamgirls (2007); Career Achievement Award (2005).

Michael Minkler

2008-07-30T15:37:00.001-07:00

Awards
Sound: Dreamgirls (2006).
Sound: Chicago (2002).
Sound: Black Hawk Down (2001).
Nominations
Sound: Cliffhanger (1993).
Sound: JFK (1991).
Sound: Born on the Fourth of July (1989).
Sound: A Chorus Line (1985).
Sound: Tron (1982).
Sound: Altered States (1980).
Sound: The Electric Horseman (1979).

Born: May 14, 1952, in Los Angeles, California.

Minkler's long and distinguished career, in which he's worked with such directors as Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, and Francis Ford Coppola, speaks for itself. Unfortunately, when he accepted the Oscar for Dreamgirls he tarnished his reputation with an unkind, though perhaps jokingly intended, remark to a reporter's question about multiply nominated, never-winning sound mixer Kevin O'Connell:

Later, Minkler issued an apology, saying that he had let his irritation at the press, which he claimed had been asking him the same question about O'Connell since 2002, get the better of him. The situation had been made worse by the fact that O'Connell (unknown to Minkler) was absent from the ceremonies -- he was at his mother's deathbed.

Minkler grew up in the sound-mixing business: Both his father and his grandfather were sound engineers, and he started work at 17 as a recordist, becoming a mixer when he was 22. He has said that one of the films that inspired him was West Side Story. Appropriately, two of his three Oscars are for musicals.

Other notable films:
Mamma Mia! (2008)
In the Valley of Elah (2007)
Into the Wild (2007)
Rent (2005)
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)
Jackie Brown (1997)
Showgirls (1995)
Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995)
Nell (1994)
Natural Born Killers (1994)
True Lies (1994)
Last Action Hero (1993)
Hoffa (1992)
Love Field (1992)
The Addams Family (1991)
The Godfather: Part III (1990)
Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
The Abyss (1989)
Young Guns (1988)
The Milagro Beanfield War (1988)
The Cotton Club (1984)
Repo Man (1984)
Speed (1984)
Under Fire (1983)
The Stunt Man (1980)
The China Syndrome (1979)
An Unmarried Woman (1978)
Star Wars (1977)
The Shootist (1976)

Other major awards:

BAFTA Awards: Best Sound, Chicago (2003); Best Sound, JFK (1993); Best Sound, Star Wars (1979).
Cinema Audio Society Awards: Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures, Dreamgirls (2007); Career Achievement Award (2006).

Altered States

2008-07-30T15:11:00.000-07:00

Warner Bros. Production; Warner Bros. 1980

Nominations
Sound: Arthur Piantadosi, Les Fresholtz, Michael Minkler, and Willie D. Burton.
Original Score: John Corigliano.

Psychology professor Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) experiments with a sensory-deprivation tank and psychedelic mushrooms in an attempt to prove his theory that altered states of consciousness have a connection with human evolution. Only the dedication of his wife, Emily (Blair Brown), rescues him when things go seriously awry. This messy intellectual horror movie, based on a novel and screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky, is a kind of updated Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. After the first director, Arthur Penn, withdrew from the project, it was handed to Ken Russell, who juices up the material a little more than is necessary. Chayefsky hated Russell's take on his screenplay, feeling that he didn't take it seriously enough and that he encouraged the performers to overact. Chayefsky withdrew his name from the credits and insisted on being billed as "Sidney Aaron," but he still has to bear the blame for the pretentiousness of some of the dialogue. The cast also includes Bob Balaban and Charles Haid. This was the film debut for Hurt and for five-year-old Drew Barrymore, who plays his daughter.

The sound Oscar went to The Empire Strikes Back. Michael Gore won the scoring award for Fame.

Other major awards:

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films: Saturn Award, Best Makeup, Dick Smith (1981).

DVD

Nathan Levinson

2008-07-28T21:21:00.002-07:00

Awards
Technical Achievement Award: For the design and construction of a constant-speed sound editing machine (1947).
Sound: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942).
Honorary Award: For his outstanding service to the industry and the Army during the past nine years, which has made possible the present efficient mobilization of the motion picture industry facilities for the production of Army training films (1940).
Technical Achievement Award: For the method of intercutting variable density and variable area sound tracks to secure an increase in the effective volume range of sound recorded for motion pictures (1935).
Nominations
Sound: A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).
Special Effects: A Stolen Life (1946).
Sound: Rhapsody in Blue (1945).
Special Effects: The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944).
Sound: Hollywood Canteen (1944).
Special Effects: Air Force (1943).
Sound: This Is the Army (1943).
Special Effects: Desperate Journey (1942).
Special Effects: The Sea Wolf (1941).
Sound: Sergeant York (1941).
Special Effects: The Sea Hawk (1940).
Sound: The Sea Hawk (1940).
Special Effects: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939).
Sound: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939).
Sound: Four Daughters (1938).
Sound: The Life of Emile Zola (1937).
Sound: The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936).
Sound: Captain Blood (1935).
Sound: Flirtation Walk (1934).
Sound: 42nd Street (1932-33).
Sound: Gold Diggers of 1933 (1932-33).
Sound: I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932-33).

Born: July 15, 1888, in New York, New York.
Died: October 18, 1952, in Toluca Lake, California.

He was present at the creation, as it were. As a representative for Western Electric, it was Levinson who invited Sam Warner to a demonstration of the company's sound recording research. Sam was impressed not only with the process but also with the man who demonstrated it, and hired Levinson to help the Warner Bros. studio make its historic move toward synchronized sound. Levinson worked on both the 1926 Don Juan, which had a synchronized score, and the famous film in which Jolson allows that we haven't heard anything yet. And he spent his long career at the studio, rewarded with one of the longest unbroken strings of nominations -- for both sound and audible special effects -- in Oscar history.

Levinson was a telegraph operator when he was only 14, and he achieved the rank of major in the Army during World War I. Later promoted, he was always referred to as "Colonel Levinson" after he became head of the sound department at Warners.

Other notable films:
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Anthony Adverse (1936)
The Green Pastures (1936)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
The Jazz Singer (1927)

Rex Wimpy

2008-07-28T21:21:00.001-07:00

Nomination
Special Effects: Air Force (1943).

Born: December 18, 1889, in [information unavailable].
Died: December ?, 1972, in [information unavailable].

Second-unit director and visual effects specialist Wimpy worked at Warner Bros. until after World War II when he became a cinematographer on B-movies -- Westerns and Three Stooges comedies -- at Columbia. He returned to second-unit work on major features in the 1960s.

Other notable films:
Darling Lili (1970)
Hud (1963)
The Misfits (1961)
Psycho (1960)
Devotion (1946)
Spellbound (1945)
To Have and Have Not (1944)
Passage to Marseille (1944)
Captains of the Clouds (1942)
Dive Bomber (1942)
Knute Rockne All American (1940)
All This, and Heaven Too (1940)
Dodge City (1939)
The Rough Riders (1927)

Hans Koenekamp

2008-07-28T21:20:00.002-07:00

Nomination
Special Effects: Air Force (1943).

Born: December 3, 1891, in Denison, Iowa.
Died: September 12, 1992, in Northridge, California.

Hans Koenekamp went to work for Mack Sennett as a cameraman in 1913. After working for Fox and Vitagraph, he signed a contract with Warner Bros., where he worked for thirty years, mostly as a second-unit cinematographer and as a visual effects specialist. His son, Fred Koenekamp, won the Oscar that eluded his father, for The Towering Inferno.

Other notable films:
Spencer's Mountain (1963)
Sayonara (1957)
The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955)
The Silver Chalice (1954)
A Star Is Born (1954)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
White Heat (1949)
The Fountainhead (1949)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1947)
Dark Passage (1947)
The Beast With Five Fingers (1946)
Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943)
Mission to Moscow (1943)
The Sea Wolf (1941)
High Sierra (1941)
They Drive by Night (1940)
The Sea Hawk (1940)
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Wizard of Oz (1925)
Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914)

Other major awards:

American Society of Cinematographers: President's Award (1991).

Charles Marshall

2008-07-28T21:20:00.001-07:00

Nomination
Black-and-White Cinematography: Air Force (1943).

Born: July 21, 1898, in [information unavailable].
Died: January 8, 1985, in Apple Valley, California.

Marshall was a pioneering aerial photographer who also did uncredited work on such films as the 1926 Ben-Hur and The Big Parade. After World War II, he filmed nuclear tests for the Air Force.

Other notable films:
God Is My Co-Pilot (1945)
Captains of the Clouds (1942)
Dive Bomber (1941)
Night Flight (1933)
Hell Divers (1931)
The Flying Fleet (1929)

Elmer Dyer

2008-07-28T21:19:00.001-07:00

Nomination
Black-and-White Cinematography: Air Force (1943).

Born: August 24, 1892, in Lawrence, Kansas.
Died: February 8, 1970, in Los Angeles, California.

Dyer, shown above with an Akeley aerial camera, was one of the pioneering Hollywood aerial photographers, though he actually began his film career as a set dresser. During World War II he did aerial photography for Army training films. After the war, he did movie work only sporadically, mostly on B pictures, devoting much of his time to a stock-photography business.

Other notable films:
Wake Island (1942)
Captains of the Clouds (1942)
Dive Bomber (1941)
I Wanted Wings (1941)
Flight Command (1940)
The Flying Deuces (1939)
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Lost Horizon (1937)
Night Flight (1933)
The Dawn Patrol (1930)
Hell's Angels (1930)
The White Squaw (1920)

Dudley Nichols

2008-07-28T21:18:00.002-07:00

Award
Screenplay: The Informer (1935).
Nominations
Screenplay: The Long Voyage Home (1940).
Original Screenplay: Air Force (1943).
Story and Screenplay -- Written Directly for the Screen: The Tin Star (1957).

Born: April 6, 1895, in Wapakoneta, Ohio.
Died: January 4, 1960, in Hollywood, California.

In the annals of Oscar, Nichols holds the distinction of being the first person to refuse the award. The ceremony for the 1935 Oscars took place in the thick of union battles, and many members of the Screen Writers Guild, such as Nichols, chose to boycott the awards because the Academy had been formed as a kind of company union, an attempt to stave off the organization of Hollywood labor. When the statuette was delivered to him, he returned it with a note: "To accept it would be to turn my back on nearly a thousand members who ventured everything in the long-drawn-out fight for a genuine writers' organization." Two years later, when the Academy had been persuaded to divorce itself from any union-busting activities, Nichols accepted the award.

A former newspaperman, Nichols came to Hollywood with the advent of sound and began his most fruitful collaboration, with John Ford, in 1934, when he scripted The Lost Patrol and Judge Priest. He also worked with Howard Hawks to create the screwiest of the screwball comedies, Bringing Up Baby. In fact, Nichols' most distinguished work was for those two directors and for Fritz Lang on Man Hunt and Scarlett Street. He also directed several films, including Sister Kenny and Mourning Becomes Electra, but without distinction.

Other notable films:
Heller in Pink Tights (1960)
The Big Sky (1952)
Pinky (1949)
Mourning Becomes Electra (1947)
Sister Kenny (1946)
Scarlet Street (1945)
The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
Mr. Lucky (1943)
This Land Is Mine (1943)
Man Hunt (1941)
Stagecoach (1939)
Carefree (1938)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
The Hurricane (1937)
Mary of Scotland (1936)
Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)
Judge Priest (1934)
The Lost Patrol (1934)
Men Without Women (1930)

Other major awards:

Writers Guild of America: Laurel Award for Screen Writing Achievement (1954).

George Amy

2008-07-28T21:18:00.001-07:00

Award
Film Editing: Air Force (1943).
Nominations
Film Editing: Objective, Burma! (1945).
Film Editing: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942).

Born: October 15, 1903, in Brooklyn, New York.
Died: December 18, 1986, in Los Angeles, California.

Amy's career was spent at Warner Bros., where he became an editor in the early 1920s. He also directed short subjects and several minor features. At the end of his career, he turned to directing and editing for television.

Other notable films:
A Lion Is in the Streets (1953)
Clash by Night (1952)
The Blue Veil (1951)
Flamingo Road (1949)
My Dream Is Yours (1949)
Life With Father (1947)
This Is the Army (1943)
Action in the North Atlantic (1943)
Captains of the Clouds (1942)
Dive Bomber (1941)
The Sea Wolf (1941)
The Letter (1940)
The Sea Hawk (1940)
The Old Maid (1939)
Dodge City (1939)
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)
Captain Blood (1935)
Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935)
Here Comes the Navy (1934)
Footlight Parade (1933)
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932)

Nicaragua (Foreign Language Film)

2008-07-28T20:54:00.001-07:00

Nomination
Foreign Language Film: Alsino and the Condor (Alsino y el cóndor) (1982)

Alsino and the Condor (Alsino y el cóndor)

2008-07-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

Nicaraguan Film Institute Production. 1982

Nomination
Foreign Language Film: Nicaragua.

Alsino (Alan Esquivel), a 12-year-old Nicaraguan boy, dreams of being able to fly. After Frank (Dean Stockwell), a military adviser from the United States, gives him a ride in a helicopter, the boy's dreams are heightened until he injures himself in a fall from a tree. Eventually Alsino becomes a hero in the guerrilla movement against the Somoza regime -- the very people that Frank is there to support. Writer-director Miguel Littin's blend of realism and fantasy -- one of the film's admirers is Gabriel García Márquez, the noted "magic realist"-- helps keep the political allegory from becoming too heavy-handed, though this Mexican-Cuban-Nicaraguan co-production is never likely to become one of Oliver North's favorite films.

The Oscar went to Volver a empezar (To Begin Again), from Spain.

Other major awards:

Moscow International Film Festival: Golden Prize, Miguel Littin (1983).

Keith A. Wester

2008-07-27T22:12:00.000-07:00

Nominations
Sound: The Perfect Storm (2000).
Sound: Armageddon (1998).
Sound: Air Force One (1997).
Sound: The Rock (1996).
Sound: Waterworld (1995).
Sound: Black Rain (1989).

Born: February 21, 1940, in Seattle, Washington.
Died: November 1, 2002, in Studio City, California.

Wester was a ham radio enthusiast as a boy. He graduated from California State University--Los Angeles and did graduate work at UCLA. He was a sound mixer for commercials and for television before going to work in motion pictures.

Other notable films:
The Princess Diaries (2001)
Runaway Bride (1999)
G.I. Jane (1997)
Indecent Proposal (1993)
Frankie and Johnny (1991)
Thelma & Louise (1991)
Sea of Love (1989)

Other major awards:

Emmy Awards: Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Miniseries or a Special, "An Early Frost" (1985).

Doug Hemphill

2008-07-27T15:26:00.000-07:00

Award
Sound: The Last of the Mohicans (1992).
Nominations
Sound: Walk the Line (2005).
Sound: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003).
Sound: The Insider (1999).
Sound: Air Force One (1997).
Sound: Geronimo: An American Legend (1993).
Sound: Dick Tracy (1990).

Born: [information unavailable].

Hemphill began his career in 1981 as a sound effects recordist and has become one of the industry's most sought-after re-recording mixers.

Other notable films:
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
Hairspray (2007)
Superman Returns (2006)
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Fantastic Four (2005)
War of the Worlds (2005)
I, Robot (2004)
Ice Age (2002)
Vanilla Sky (2001)
Almost Famous (2000)
Wild Things (1998)
Gattaca (1997)
Liar Liar (1997)
Jerry Maguire (1996)
The Rock (1996)
Heat (1995)
Immortal Beloved (1994)
The Firm (1993)
Last Action Hero (1993)
Scent of a Woman (1992)
The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
Say Anything... (1989)
Heathers (1989)
Three Men and a Baby (1987)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Weird Science (1985)
Rumble Fish (1983)
Dragonslayer (1981)

Other major awards:

BAFTA Awards: Sound, Walk the Line (2006); Sound, Master and Command: The Far Side of the World (2004); Sound, Almost Famous (2001); Sound, The Fabulous Baker Boys (1991).
Cinema Audio Society Awards: Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures, Walk the Line (2006); Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2004).

Rick Kline

2008-07-22T16:17:00.000-07:00

Nominations
Sound: Memoirs of a Geisha (2005).
Sound: U-571 (2000).
Sound: The Mummy (1999).
Sound: Air Force One (1997).
Sound: Crimson Tide (1995).
Sound: A Few Good Men (1992).
Sound: Days of Thunder (1990).
Sound: Mississippi Burning (1988).
Sound: Top Gun (1986).
Sound: Silverado (1985).
Sound: Terms of Endearment (1983).

Born: [information unavailable].

Sound re-recording mixer Kline began as a musician. When he decided that behind-the-scenes sound gave promise of a more stable career, he began his film work without credit on Rocky, and subsequently worked -- with credit -- on two of its sequels, as well as several of the Rambo films. In 1998 he teamed with Chris Carpenter in the Universal Studios audio post-production facility.

Other notable films:
Hancock (2008)
Speed Racer (2008)
I Am Legend (2007)
Hairspray (2007)
Friday Night Lights (2004)
Troy (2004)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones (2002)
Vanilla Sky (2001)
Almost Famous (2000)
Jerry Maguire (1996)
Fly Away Home (1996)
The American President (1995)
Wyatt Earp (1994)
Tombstone (1993)
In the Line of Fire (1993)
Love Field (1992)
Thunderheart (1992)
City Slickers (1991)
The Godfather: Part III (1990)
Misery (1990)
Enemies: A Love Story (1989)
Field of Dreams (1989)
The Accidental Tourist (1988)
Broadcast News (1987)
La Bamba (1987)
Beverly Hills Cop II (1987)
Ruthless People (1986)
Crossroads (1986)
Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
Gremlins (1984)
Sixteen Candles (1984)
The Big Chill (1983)
First Blood (1982)
The Secret of NIMH (1982)
Rocky III (1982)
Being There (1979)
The Black Stallion (1979)
... And Justice for All (1979)
Rocky II (1979)

Other major awards:

BAFTA Awards: Best Sound, Almost Famous (2001); Best Sound, Mississippi Burning (1990).

2003

2008-07-21T21:16:00.000-07:00

Awards presented February 29, 2004

SOUND

Award

Christopher Boyes, Michael Semanick, Michael Hedges, and Hammond Peek for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Nominations

Christopher Boyes, David Parker, David E. Campbell, and Lee Orloff for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
Paul Massey, Doug Hemphill, and Art Rochester for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
Andy Nelson, Anna Behlmer, and Tod A. Maitland for Seabiscuit.
Andy Nelson, Anna Behlmer, and Jeff Wexler for The Last Samurai.

MUSIC, ORIGINAL SONG

Award

Fran Walsh, Howard Shore, and Annie Lenox for "Into the West" from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Nominations

T-Bone Burnett and Elvis Costello for "Scarlet Tide" from Cold Mountain.
Benoît Charest and Sylvain Chomet for "Belleville Rendez-Vous" from The Triplets of Belleville (Les Triplettes de Belleville).
Michael McKean and Annette O'Toole for "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" from A Mighty Wind.
Sting for "You Will Be My Ain True Love" from Cold Mountain.

MUSIC, ORIGINAL SCORE

Award

Howard Shore for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Nominations

Danny Elfman for Big Fish.
James Horner for House of Sand and Fog.
Thomas Newman for Finding Nemo.
Gabriel Yared for Cold Mountain.

Paul Massey

2008-07-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

Nominations
Sound: 3:10 to Yuma (2007).
Sound: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006).
Sound: Walk the Line (2005).
Sound: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003).
Sound: Air Force One (1997).
Sound: Legends of the Fall (1994).

Born: February 10, 1958, in London, England.

Though born in England, Massey is a Canadian citizen. He began as a music recording engineer, then moved into TV post-production and finally became one of the movies' most prominent sound re-recording mixers.

Other notable films:
The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
Night at the Museum (2006)
Alexander (2004)
I, Robot (2004)
X2 (2003)
Old School (2003)
Ice Age (2002)
Hannibal (2001)
Almost Famous (2000)
Mission: Impossible II (2000)
Gattaca (1997)
Jerry Maguire (1996)
Nixon (1996)
Clueless (1995)
Don Juan Demarco (1995)
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)
Last Action Hero (1993)
The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
Boyz n the Hood (1991)

Other major awards:

BAFTA Awards: Best Sound, Walk the Line (2006); Best Sound, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2004); Best Sound: Almost Famous (2001).
Cinema Audio Society Awards: Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures, Walk the Line (2006); Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2004).

Richard Francis-Bruce

2008-07-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

Nominations
Film Editing: Air Force One (1997).
Film Editing: Se7en (1995).
Film Editing: The Shawshank Redemption (1994).

Born: December 10, 1948, in Sydney, Australia.

Francis-Bruce, the son of silent-era cinematographer Jack Bruce, began his editing career with the Australian Broadcasting Company. His work with director George Miller on Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome led to his move to Hollywood when Miller was hired to direct The Witches of Eastwick.

Other notable films:
Ghost Rider (2007)
The Italian Job (2003)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
The Perfect Storm (2000)
The Green Mile (1999)
The Rock (1996)
Sliver (1993)
Lorenzo's Oil (1992)
Cadillac Man (1990)
Dead Calm (1989)
The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
The Mosquito Coast (1986)
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

Other major awards:

Australian Film Institute Awards: Best Achievement in Editing, Dead Calm (1989).

Louis Mesenkop

2008-07-18T23:35:00.000-07:00

Awards
Special Effects: Reap the Wild Wind (1942).
Special Effects: I Wanted Wings (1941).
Honorary Award: For outstanding achievements in creating special photographic and sound effects in the Paramount production Spawn of the North (1938).
Nomination
Special Effects: Aloma of the South Seas (1941).

Born: February 6, 1903, in ?Illinois.
Died: February 19, 1974, in Los Angeles, California.

Mesenkop was a Paramount sound recordist from the late '30s to the 1950s.

Other notable films:
The Ten Commandments (1956)
The Buccaneer (1938)
Angel (1937)
Waikiki Wedding (1937)
The Plainsman (1936)
The General Died at Dawn (1936)
Klondike Annie (1936)

Gordon Jennings

2008-07-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

Awards
Scientific and Engineering Award: For the design, construction, and application of a servo-operated recording and repeating device (1951).
Technical Achievement Award: For the design and construction of the Paramount nodal point tripod (1944).
Special Effects: Reap the Wild Wind (1942).
Special Effects: I Wanted Wings (1941).
Honorary Award: For outstanding achievements in creating special photographic and sound effects in the Paramount production Spawn of the North (1938).
Nominations
Special Effects: Unconquered (1947).
Special Effects: The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944).
Special Effects: So Proudly We Hail! (1943).
Special Effects: Aloma of the South Seas (1941).
Special Effects: Dr. Cyclops (1940).
Special Effects: Typhoon (1940).
Special Effects: Union Pacific (1939).

Born: ?1896, in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Died: January 11, 1953, in Hollywood, California.

Jennings might have two more Oscars to his credit if the special awards for the films When Worlds Collide and War of the Worlds had named the technicians who achieved the special effects the Academy honored. Trained as an engineer at the University of Utah, he entered movies as an assistant cameraman and is credited as cinematographer on Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality. But he became a specialist in visual effects. Among his innovations are scrolling credits, which he achieved by moving a sheet of glass with the words painted on them across a painted backdrop. He spent most of his career at Paramount. His brother was cinematographer and special effects artist Deveraux Jennings, with whom he shared a nomination for Unconquered and an honorary award for Spawn of the North.

Other notable films:
Here Come the Girls (1953)
Little Boy Lost (1953)
War of the Worlds (1953)
Houdini (1953)
Stalag 17 (1953)
Shane (1953)
Come Back, Little Sheba (1952)
Son of Paleface (1952)
My Son John (1952)
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
Here Comes the Groom (1951)
When Worlds Collide (1951)
A Place in the Sun (1951)
The Furies (1950)
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Samson and Delilah (1949)
The Heiress (1949)
Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)
A Foreign Affair (1948)
Dream Girl (1948)
The Emperor Waltz (1948)
Road to Rio (1947)
Blue Skies (1946)
To Each His Own (1946)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
Going My Way (1944)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
Wake Island (1942)
North West Mounted Police (1940)
If I Were King (1938)
The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938)
Souls at Sea (1937)
The Plainsman (1936)
Peter Ibbetson (1935)
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
Alice in Wonderland (1933)
Our Hospitality (1923)

Farciot Edouart

2008-07-17T19:51:00.000-07:00

Awards
Scientific and Engineering Award: For the engineering and development of a double-frame, triple-head background projector (1955).
Technical Achievement Award: For an improved dial stereopticon background projector (1955).
Technical Achievement Award: For the first application of a special solarizing glass to high-intensity background and spot arc projectors (1947).
Scientific and Engineering Award: For the development and practical application to motion picture production of a method of duplicating and enlarging natural color photographs, transferring the image emulsions to glass plates and projecting these slides by especially designed stereopticon equipment (1943).
Technical Achievement Award: For an automatic electric transparency cueing timer (1943).
Special Effects: Reap the Wild Wind (1942).
Special Effects: I Wanted Wings (1941).
Technical Achievement Award: For the design and construction of a quiet portable treadmill (1939).
Honorary Award: For outstanding achievements in creating special photographic and sound effects in the Paramount production Spawn of the North (1938).
Scientific and Engineering Award: For the development of the Paramount dual screen transparency camera setup (1937).
Nominations
Special Effects: Unconquered (1947).
Special Effects: The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944).
Special Effects: So Proudly We Hail! (1943).
Special Effects: Aloma of the South Seas (1941).
Special Effects: Dr. Cyclops (1940).
Special Effects: Typhoon (1940).
Special Effects: Union Pacific (1939).

Born: November 5, 1894, in ?California.
Died: March 17, 1980, in Kenwood, California.

Edouart started as a cameraman in 1915, and after service in World War I went to work for the Lasky Company, which became Paramount -- the studio he remained with until 1974. He became a specialist in rear-screen projection, the technique by which a filmed background is projected behind the foreground action, which enabled studios to fake outdoor settings on the soundstage. The technique was first used in films in 1930, and Edouart swiftly became an expert. His string of scientific and technical awards reflects the various refinements Edouart made to the process.

Other notable films:
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Barefoot in the Park (1967)
El Dorado (1966)
This Property Is Condemned (1966)
The Oscar (1966)
Ship of Fools (1965)
In Harm's Way (1965)
The Patsy (1964)
Love With the Proper Stranger (1963)
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
Donovan's Reef (1963)
Hud (1963)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Pocketful of Miracles (1961)
Blue Hawaii (1961)
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
Visit to a Small Planet (1960)
The Five Pennies (1959)
The Buccaneer (1958)
Houseboat (1958)
Vertigo (1958)
Teacher's Pet (1958)
Wild Is the Wind (1957)
Funny Face (1957)
The Ten Commandments (1956)
The Proud and Profane (1956)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
The Rose Tattoo (1955)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
The Seven Little Foys (1955)
Strategic Air Command (1955)
The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)
White Christmas (1954)
Sabrina (1954)
Elephant Walk (1954)
The Caddy (1953)
The War of the Worlds (1953)
Shane (1953)
Carrie (1952)
Son of Paleface (1952)
My Son John (1952)
Detective Story (1951)
Here Comes the Groom (1951)
When Worlds Collide (1951)
A Place in the Sun (1951)
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Captain Carey, U.S.A. (1950)
Samson and Delilah (1949)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949)
The Paleface (1948)
Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)
A Foreign Affair (1948)
The Emperor Waltz (1948)
Road to Rio (1947)
Blue Skies (1946)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
Love Letters (1945)
The Affairs of Susan (1945)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Lady in the Dark (1944)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
Wake Island (1942)
Sullivan's Travels (1941)
Easy Living (1937)
Waikiki Wedding (1937)
The Plainsman (1936)
Alice in Wonderland (1933)
A Farewell to Arms (1932)

William E. Snyder

2008-07-16T16:30:00.000-07:00

Nominations
Color Cinematography: Jolson Sings Again (1949).
Color Cinematography: The Loves of Carmen (1948).
Color Cinematography: Aloma of the South Seas (1941).

Born: September 21, 1901, in New York, New York.
Died: March 4, 1984, in ?California.

Snyder made his debut as a director of photography on the film that earned him his first Oscar nomination, Aloma of the South Seas. He was a freelance cinematographer for most of his career, but spent his last decade at the Disney Studios, working on a variety of live-action features. He also worked in television, on "Bonanza," "Star Trek," and the "Disneyland" TV series.

Other notable films:
The Million Dollar Duck (1971)
Rascal (1969)
Bon Voyage! (1962)
Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks With a Circus (1960)
Tarzan's Fight for Life (1958)
Bundle of Joy (1956)
The First Traveling Saleslady (1956)
The Conqueror (1956)
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)
Flying Leathernecks (1951)
The Toast of New Orleans (1950)
Blue Skies (1946)
Wonder Man (1945)

Karl Struss

2008-07-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

Award
Cinematography: Sunrise (1927-28).
Nominations
Color Cinematography: Aloma of the South Seas (1941).
Cinematography: The Sign of the Cross (1932-33).*
Cinematography: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931-32).

*Struss placed third in the category. For three years, starting with the 1932-33 awards, the second- and third-place finishers were announced.

Born: November 30, 1886, in New York, New York.
Died: December 16, 1981, in Santa Monica, California.

There's some point to be made about the way Hollywood treats talent in the fact that Struss, a pioneer in the industry, who began as a cameraman with Cecil B. DeMille, worked with Charles Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, and won the very first Oscar ever given for cinematography, wound up his career shooting Tarzan movies, horror films, Italian 3-D movies, and TV series ("Broken Arrow" and "My Friend Flicka").

He began as a magazine photographer, and one of his first Hollywood assignments was shooting stills for DeMille on the set of Male and Female in 1919. He learned the craft of motion pictures by working as a second cameraman, and by 1925 was cinematographer on one of the most ambitious films of the silent era, Ben-Hur. He was a favorite of Mary Pickford's, and filmed her Oscar-winning performance in Coquette.

(The photograph above shows Struss with the "blimped" camera used for early sound films -- hooded to reduce the noise of the camera.)

His interest in stereoscopic techniques took him to Italy, where he shot three films in 3-D, and an early Sophia Loren movie, Due notti con Cleopatra (Two Nights With Cleopatra) (1953). He also made a stereoscopic image of Loren on the set of the film.

Other notable films:
Counterplot (1959)
The Fly (1958)
Tarzan and the She-Devil (1953)
Limelight (1952)
Riding High (1943)
Journey Into Fear (1943)
The Great Dictator (1940)
Thanks for the Memory (1938)
Waikiki Wedding (1937)
Rhythm on the Range (1936)
Anything Goes (1936)
Belle of the Nineties (1934)
The Story of Temple Drake (1933)
Skippy (1931)
Abraham Lincoln (1930)
The Taming of the Shrew (1929)
Coquette (1929)
Drums of Love (1928)
Ben-Hur (1925)
Maytime (1923)
The Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Wilfred M. Cline

2008-07-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

Nomination
Color Cinematography: Aloma of the South Seas (1941).

Born: September 3, 1903, in ?California.
Died: April 9, 1976, in Orange County, California.

Cline was certified as a specialist by the Technicolor Corporation itself, so much of his early work in Hollywood was done as a consultant on the earliest Technicolor films. This led to some clashes with cinematographers, such as James Wong Howe, who battled with Cline over the costume color choices in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The corporation, eager to show off the process, insisted on bright primary colors, whereas Howe wanted realistic period costumes of the small-town South -- faded denims and earth tones. Cline's career on his own as a director of photography was not particularly distinguished.

Other notable films:
Battle of the Coral Sea (1959)
From Hell to Texas (1958)
April Love (1957)
Lucky Me (1954)
Calamity Jane (1953)
April in Paris (1952)
Tea for Two (1950)
My Dream Is Yours (1949)
Fiesta (1947)
Captains of the Clouds (1942)
Gone With the Wind (1939)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938)
Nothing Sacred (1937)
The Garden of Allah (1936)

Aloma of the South Seas

2008-07-15T19:55:00.000-07:00

Paramount. 1941

Nominations
Color Cinematography: Wilfred M. Cline, Karl Struss, and William E. Snyder.
Special Effects: Farciot Edouart and Gordon Jennings, photographic; Louis Mesenkop, sound.

Tanoa (Jon Hall) has been sent to the United States for an education, but after his father dies he returns home to quell a revolution that erupts, along with a volcano. Fortunately, Aloma (Dorothy Lamour) is there waiting for him. Lamour and Hall made a strong impression in Hurricane, he by baring his chest, she by wrapping hers in a sarong, so this reteaming was inevitable. But the handsome stars, the lurid color, and the volcanic special effects are all the movie has going for it. Directed by Alfred Santell.

The cinematography Oscar went to Ernest Palmer and Ray Rennahan for Blood and Sand, but Edouart, Jennings, and Mesenkop didn't go home empty-handed. They won for I Wanted Wings.

David H. Moriarty

2008-07-13T23:29:00.000-07:00

Nomination
Sound: Airport (1970).

Born: [information unavailable]

Much of Moriarty's sound work was done for television, on series such as "Columbo," "Night Gallery," "Ironside," "The Virginian," "Wagon Train" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents."

Other notable films:
Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969)
The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968)
Three Guns for Texas (1968)
Beau Geste (1966)
The Killers (1964)

Ronald Pierce

2008-07-13T22:58:00.000-07:00

Award
Sound: Earthquake (1974).
Nominations
Sound: The Sting (1973).
Sound: Airport (1970).

Born: [information unavailable]

Pierce's Oscar comes from his work with the Universal sound department to develop a process known as "Sensurround": large speakers arranged around the theater that delivered a subaudible bass at 120 decibels. The process is said to have caused plaster to fall from some theater ceilings, to have shattered glassware in a neighboring gift shop, and even to have cracked the ribs of one viewer. It was used subsequently in the films Midway and Rollercoaster. He began his career in 1944 as a sound mixer at Universal.

Other notable films:
The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)
The Front Page (1974)
The Andromeda Strain (1971)
Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)
Sweet Charity (1969)
Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967)
Spartacus (1960)

Jack D. Moore

2008-07-13T16:41:00.000-07:00

Award
Color Art Direction-Set Decoration: Little Women (1949).
Nominations
Art Direction-Set Decoration: Airport (1970).
Art Direction-Set Decoration: Sweet Charity (1969).
Color Art Direction-Set Decoration: The Story of Three Loves (1953).
Color Art Direction-Set Decoration: Young Bess (1953).
Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration: Too Young to Kiss (1951).
Black-and-White Art Direction-Interior Decoration: Random Harvest (1942).

Born: April 15, 1906, in [information unavailable].
Died: December 29, 1998, in Santa Monica, California.

Moore began his career as a set decorator in 1933. He did most of his work at MGM until the breakup of the studio, when he moved over to Universal. He was also the set decorator for the TV series "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" from 1957 through 1966.

Other notable films:
The Tender Trap (1955)
Love Me or Leave Me (1955)
Interrupted Melody (1955)
The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)
Lovely to Look At (1952)
The Great Caruso (1951)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
The Magnificent Yankee (1950)
On the Town (1949)
That Forsyte Woman (1949)
Command Decision (1948)
B.F.'s Daughter (1948)
The Hucksters (1947)
Her Cardboard Lover (1942)
Boom Town (1940)
The Women (1939)
Camille (1936)

E. Preston Ames

2008-07-13T15:28:00.000-07:00

Awards
Black-and-White or Color Art Direction-Set Decoration: Gigi (1958).
Color Art Direction-Set Decoration: An American in Paris (1951).
Nominations
Art Direction-Set Decoration: Earthquake (1974).
Art Direction-Set Decoration: Airport (1970).
Color Art Direction-Set Decoration: The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964).
Color Art Direction-Set Decoration: Lust for Life (1956).
Color Art Direction-Set Decoration: Brigadoon (1954).
Color Art Direction-Set Decoration: The Story of Three Loves (1953).

Born: June 15, 1906, in [information unavailable].
Died: July 20, 1983, in Los Angeles, California.

In the nominations for the art direction category, Ames' name is usually listed second after Cedric Gibbons or Alexander Golitzen, which means, ironically, that he probably did more of the actual design work on the film. Gibbons and Golitzen were entitled to top billing because they were head of the design departments where Ames worked -- MGM and Universal, respectively. But there is some justice in the fact that Ames won his two Oscars for films directed by Vincente Minnelli, who clashed with Gibbons over the design of his movies. Ames and Minnelli were frequent collaborators.

Ames studied architecture and worked as an architectural draftsman in San Francisco before being hired as a draftsman in the MGM art department, where he worked on, among other films, The Wizard of Oz. He graduated to art director on Blonde Fever in 1944.

Other notable films:
Rooster Cogburn (1975)
The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975)
Lost Horizon (1973)
Brewster McCloud (1970)
Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962)
Where the Boys Are (1960)
Bells Are Ringing (1960)
Home From the Hill (1960)
Green Mansions (1959)
Designing Woman (1957)
Kismet (1955)
The Band Wagon (1953)
That Midnight Kiss (1949)
Blonde Fever (1944)