The Best Costumes of 1965

by Cláudio Alves

Last month, before the 1938 Best Supporting Actress Smackdown, Nathaniel and I discussed what could have been the Costume Design Oscar lineup had the category existed back then. Now, before the '65 Smackdown, I return to the topic of costuming and the Academy Awards. This time, though, there are actual nominees to consider, both for black-and-white films and color pictures. Furthermore, we know some of the runners-up that came close to the nomination.

Before the reveal of my personal Best Costume Design ballot for 1965, let's examine AMPAS' choices…

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Vintage '65

by Nathaniel R

Year of the Julies: Andrews and Christie dominated both the Oscars and the box office

The Supporting Actress Smackdown 1965 Episode arrives on October 9th, so you have until October 8th to watch the four movies and vote on them. Let's talk context...

Great Big Box Office Hits: 1)The Sound of Music 2) Doctor Zhivago 3) Thunderball 4) Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines 5) The Great Race 6) That Darn Cat 7) Cat Ballou 8) What's New Pussycat? 9) Shenandoah 10) Von Ryan's Express

Oscar's Best Pictures: The Sound of Music  and Doctor Zhivago (10 noms / 5 wins each) led by the two Julies, battled it out at the Oscars The other Best Picture nominees were Ship of Fools (8 noms / 2 wins), Darling (5 noms / 3 wins) another Julie Christie vehicle, and A Thousand Clowns (4 noms / 1 win). But what would have been nominated if the Best Picture race were 10 wide...

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Captain Von Link

• ET Sex and the City thinking of recasting Samantha? Terrible terrible idea.
• Vanity Fair Elle Fanning is this month's covergirl
• The Guardian profiles Sophia Loren

Greatest Albums, Aldis Hodge casting, the would-be Baroness Von Trapp, Samuel L Jackson up for more Nick Fury, and mSarah Jessica Parker's hustling after the jump...

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1965: Eleanor Parker in "The Sound of Music"

Each month before the Smackdown, Nick Taylor chooses three performances to highlight that weren't Oscar-nominated...

 “And Eleanor Parker as The Baroness” reads the final casting credit of the opening credits of The Sound of Music. Hers is also the only name that appears by itself, positioning the character and the actress as events the film wants you to eagerly anticipate. Hard enough when you're the other woman in a love triangle, especially as a non-singing role in a three-hour musical. Yet Parker, boasting one of the most exciting, chameleonic personas in American cinema, lives up to the hype over fifty years later, emerging with the film's most multifaceted performance.

Baroness Elsa von Schraeder won’t appear until roughly an hour into The Sound of Music, by which time we’ve already watched the indomitably energetic Maria (Julie Andrews) enter the Von Trapp family at the direction of her Abbess, instructing her to work as a governess to see if it’ll suit her better than being a nun...

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The Wise Guy

by Jason Adams

A quick shout-out to the director Robert Wise, who was born 105 years ago this very day. He passed in 2005, by then a four-time Oscar winner for a couple little movies called The Sound of Music and West Side Story (he won for both directing and producing), although he was nominated a couple other times. I mean he edited Citizen Kane! Obviously he was nominated other times. 

I do love his nomination for directing Susan Hayward's 1958 melodrama I Want To Live!, a film which looks way overcooked to modern eyes (as does most of Hayward's output) but which I love all the same. But Wise should've had several more nominations, if you ask me -- in between his two musical masterpieces he only directed one of the greatest horror films of all time, The Haunting, still effective to this day. There didn't seem to be a genre he couldn't master. How many nominations would you have given Robert Wise?