The 25 Oldest Men Ever Nominated for Best Actor

by Nathaniel R

John Wayne just misses the list. Denzel almost double dips. And Hopkins tops the list setting a new recordWe did a "Youngest Best Actor" list a few years back so we thought we should balance it out with their counterparts given the return of Sir Anthony Hopkins this year at 83 years of age with The Father. He makes history in the process as the oldest nominee ever in this category. As we all know Oscar likes some years on his men (as opposed to how he feels about women) but that doesn't mean the golden years. Oscar loves men to be in their late 30s through mid 50s (whereas with women they prefer late 20s through mid 40s) but ageism  works against men, too. Just not as severely as it does against women. The roles still dry up at a certain age... though perhaps that's more on filmmakers and studios than the Oscars themselves. 

LIST HAS BEEN UPDATED WITH MINOR CORRECTIONS. (04/02). And a surprising piece of trivia about this list. Only one of the top 25 oldest nominees in this category actually won the Oscar. Not a strong success rate for senior men. Oscar likes to bid them farewell but doesn't feel the need to send them off with the statue (or a second statue)...

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Lunchtime Poll: Who would Bette & Larry vote for?

IT'S 10 DAYS UNTIL OSCAR NOMINATIONS. Academy voting on those nominations begins right now. For a bit of silly "lunchtime poll" fun, let's place ourselves in the shoes of 10* times nominated legends Bette Davis and Sir Laurence Olivier.

Both legendary performers liked to go BIG. Bette was a dangerous risk-taker and Sir Larry a big ol' THESPIAN ham. Pretend they're still alive and staring at their Oscar ballots. We know Sir Larry loved other hams (Mickey Rooney was his favourite) but what did Bette like in other actors? She was inarguably opinionated but her passions and turn-offs were hard to predict. We know that in the 1980s she preferred Debra Winger's work to Meryl Streep's (which makes a lot of sense if you consider that Debra's obstinant fire was much closer to Bette's persona than Streep's chameleon fluidity) but who would she have been into right now?   

Which movies and stars would they be voting for this year? Share your theories! 

* Bette has 10 official Best Actress nominations but we view it as 11 due to her write-ins for Of Human Bondage (1934). Olivier had 13 nominations but 3 of them were in non-acting categories.

113 days 'til Oscar. The Existential Question of the Honorary Oscars.

by Nathaniel R

Audrey Hepburn giving King Vidor his HonoraryThe Honorary Oscars, which will be given out again tonight to a very deserving quartet (Donald Sutherland, Owen Roizman, Agnes Varda, and Charles Burnett), have always been a curious and quite arbitary distinction. Like competitive Oscars the timing has to be just right. You have to be on people's minds. You have to have a cheerleading section in the right places within the Academy. You mostly have to be of a certain age (so if you die before you're 75 or so, forget about it!). Curiously, though, you don't have to be overdue having lost a bunch of previous Oscars. This year's recipients fit into the tradition of "overdue because they've been under-honored" but this is not always the case. The Honorary Oscars, even since the beginning have often gone to people who've won competitive statues. That's a strange thing, if you ask us, since shouldn't the point be to cover your bases? Quite a few great stars who have never been the single best in any particular year so the Honorary is a perfect way to honor them. At the very least it's a better way to honor them than a competitive statue in a year where they don't really deserve one (and that's happened so often!)

At the 1978 Oscars the 111th through 114th Honorary Oscars were handed out and they illustrate this confusion as to the award's purpose...

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What's Streaming from 1944?

Not too damn much, that's what! 

Whenever we prep for a Smackdown The Film Experience becomes newly alarmed at how scarce the availability of 20th century film titles actually is online. Streaming culture has somehow convinced people that everything you might ever want to see is easier to access than it's ever been. Alas, the further back in time you go, the less there is for your eyeballs as we move away from analog. Of course streaming is more convenient so we hope Hollywood will magically decide to make all their vaults available. We can dream!

Laura dear, I cannot stand these morons any longer. If you don't come with me this instant, I shall run amok.

But if you want to steep yourself in 1944 beyond the 5 films featured in the next Smackdown, here's what you can stream should you have any of these memberships...

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Kirk Douglas Centennial: Spartacus (1960)

Here's Eric to continue our mini Kirk Douglas fest. The actor turns 100 tomorrow

The story goes that Kirk Douglas was so disappointed that William Wyler didn’t cast him as the lead in 1959’s Ben-Hur that he optioned Howard Fast’s similarly-themed novel Spartacus for his chance to conquer the Roman Empire...  

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