Vintage '98

The Smackdown of '98 (with special guests) arrives in just one week. Before we get to the main event let's just soak in that year a bit. Were you old enough to be conscious of pop culture in that year? If so, nostalgia warning. If not, here's what people were talking about before your time.

Great Big Box Office Hits: Titanic (1997) reigned long into 1998 as the then the biggest hit of all time. In fact it didn't fully cede the #1 of the weekend placement from Christmas '97 through Easter of '98. What's more it didn't leave the top ten box office chart until JUNE. That kind of run is unthinkable now. But the biggest hits released in the actual calendar year of 1998 were...

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1998: The Year of the (Blonde) Ingénue

Team Experience is revisiting '98 in the lead up to the Supporting Actress Smackdown on July 26th

by Mark Brinkerhoff

For as long as motion pictures have existed, ingénues have been central to Hollywood. Yet while pretty young things have never been out of style in the film industry, they do appear more dominant—or at least ubiquitous—in certain eras. And in 1998, ingénues, notably of the blonde variety, were seemingly everywhere in entertainment—on screens big and small...

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1998: Patricia Clarkson in "High Art"

We're revisiting the 1998 film year in the lead up to the next Supporting Actress Smackdown. As always Nick Taylor will suggest a few alternates to Oscar's ballot.

Unlike my last two companion pieces for 1998, which opened with well-deserved grousing about the meager recognition Velvet Goldmine and Beloved received from audiences and industry professionals alike, I actually feel pretty good about how High Art was received on the indie circuit. No, it didn’t get any notices from Oscar, but five nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards, with Ally Sheedy deservedly winning their Lead Actress prize, is a damn good run for any film, to say nothing of how well its reputation has grown since it debuted. But surely the best thing to come from High Art’s success is giving us Patricia Clarkson, Character Actress Extraordinaire™. Her highwire turn as the perpetually soused, washed-up German actress Greta earned Clarkson a handful of runner-up citations from critics groups who would go on to throw prizes at her for the first half of the ‘00s. The remarkable career that High Art made possible for Clarkson gives her performance a wonderful afterglow, and the fact that it still holds up as one of her best turns makes it even more glorious . . . .

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1998: The women of "Beloved"

We're revisiting the 1998 film year in the lead up to the next Supporting Actress Smackdown. As always Nick Taylor will suggest a few alternates to Oscar's ballot.

Another week, another lone Costume Design nominee that deserved far better attention than it got. Yes, Jonathan Demme’s Beloved is visibly uneven in several passages, to include the entire last hour. Yes, there’s a whole lot of discourse around Oprah as producer/actress/cultural icon at the time that I completely missed. Broadly speaking, it’s so disappointing that Toni Morrison’s works have had so few adaptations for screen, even as the author herself was a constant source of insightful interviews and the focus of several documentaries. But even on its own terms, Beloved is a genuinely risky, textured piece of filmmaking, honoring Morrison’s astounding novel without softening its most difficult themes. It’s also filled to the brim with fiercely etched performances from its supporting actresses. Kimberly Elise, Thandiwe Newton, LisaGay Hamilton, Beah Richards, all approach tremendously difficult roles with ferocity and candor...

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1998: Toni Collette in "Velvet Goldmine"

We're revisiting the 1998 film year in the lead up to the next Supporting Actress Smackdown. As always Nick Taylor will suggest a few alternates to Oscar's ballot.

by Nick Taylor

We begin our dive into 1998 with one of two films to get lone nominations for Costume Design but deserved way more attention in other categories. I’ll have plenty to say about the treasure trove of supporting actressing in Beloved next week, but who could be a better starting point for a retrospective in this category than Toni Collette’s prismatic turn in Velvet Goldmine? Collette is a regular godsend to directors who need a smart actress to ground and humanize second-tier characters that might otherwise seem wan or uninteresting. The role of Mandy Slade, the storied wife of disgraced, long-missing glam superstar Brian Slade, is perhaps too fascinatingly written and too doted over by director Todd Haynes and his team of heroically imaginative collaborators to fit into a coterie of women like About a Boy’s Fiona Brewer or Krampus’ Sarah Engel. On top of that, the demands Haynes places on the role call upon a very different skill set than Collette is normally asked to use. And yet, what makes her work in Velvet Goldmine so exhilarating is how different her approach to this role is, giving what might be her most dissimilar performance in a career full of film-elevating work...

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