Best Actor 1982

[OscarGuy]

Thanks foe the welcome backs. I didn't leave for any particular reason. After the Board came back from being down earlier in the year, I just got out of the habit of checking in. Especially since summertime movies are generally of so little interest. I did, however, see two releases I think are magnificent achievements, Tree of Life and Raul Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon.

I'm glad to know that I was wrong about you never coming back!

[Damien]

Thanks foe the welcome backs. I didn't leave for any particular reason. After the Board came back from being down earlier in the year, I just got out of the habit of checking in. Especially since summertime movies are generally of so little interest. I did, however, see two releases I think are magnificent achievements, Tree of Life and Raul Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon.

[Uri]

I guess there's some actor playing a priest on one of the races we're heading to - which I'm not aware of – who'd need some ardent support.

Welcome back, Damien.

[Reza]

I'm delighted to cast the vote that puts Jack Lemmon ahead. I think it's one of his three great performances, the others being The Apartment and Days of Wine and Roses. His gradual realization in MIssing that the America he so believed in is a myth is so spot on, so incredibly wrenching that its devastating to watch. Equally impressive is how this real-life lefty so vividly captured the essence of a country club Republican in the film's early scenes. He's head and shoulders above the competition (only Peter O'Toole deserves to be mentioned alongside Lemmon, and OToole's film is such a trifle). Lemmon also won my gang's IRA award for Best Actor that year.

Yes, welcome back !!

I think the last year you commented (or voted) was in the 1966 Best Actor category. Hope you'll join in and vote in the polls you missed.

[ITALIANO]

Welcome back! And at the right moment, too - Tootsie is certainly a pleasant "studio comedy", but Missing is on another level, really, and Lemmon definitely deserves to win here.

Hope you will stay.

[Damien]

I'm delighted to cast the vote that puts Jack Lemmon ahead. I think it's one of his three great performances, the others being The Apartment and Days of Wine and Roses. His gradual realization in MIssing that the America he so believed in is a myth is so spot on, so incredibly wrenching that its devastating to watch. Equally impressive is how this real-life lefty so vividly captured the essence of a country club Republican in the film's early scenes. He's head and shoulders above the competition (only Peter O'Toole deserves to be mentioned alongside Lemmon, and OToole's film is such a trifle). Lemmon also won my gang's IRA award for Best Actor that year.

[HarryGoldfarb]

Hoffman gave a solid/splendid performance, but all the time I always get to think that I'm witnessing an actor's job,

Wasn't this what his performance should've been about?

I don't get what all the rage toward Magilla is about – a perfectly acceptable, tongue in cheek, very mild pan.

I meant that I never stop watching Hoffman, the actor, making his job... I never ceased to witnessed Hoffman in drag doing a nice job...

And rage? I'm not mad at anyone... I just asked Magilla what did he implied considering his comment (tongue in cheek or not) suprised me as it sounded condescendant and to some level, almost offensive... Not very "Magillish". If we ask for an explaination in this board are we filled with rage?

[Big Magilla]

Thank you, Uri. It's nice to know someone "gets" me.

[Uri]

Hoffman gave a solid/splendid performance, but all the time I always get to think that I'm witnessing an actor's job,

Wasn't this what his performance should've been about?

I don't get what all the rage toward Magilla is about – a perfectly acceptable, tongue in cheek, very mild pan.

Anyway, speaking about this year race, I remember someone writing just after the Oscars that Kingsley won because Gandhi was everything people in Hollywood wished they were – thin, tanned and moral.

[dws1982]

Yeah, I don't much care for Magilla's rude and rather bitchy comment. Not sure why everyone who didn't vote for one of his favorites has to have some questionable motive.

[HarryGoldfarb]

It must be the Italiano influence.

This time I'm innocent. I've voted for last.

Magilla, what do u mean about the "italiano Influence"? R u actually being condescendant to people who cast a vote after someone gives his consideration about his own? Italiano is incredibly articulated but your post is somehow shocking...

I voted yesterday and did it for Lemmon. My vote was the one of the draw between him and Hoffman, so even if not a lot of people had been very vocal about their support on Lemmon's performance, obviously by that time the guy had drew almost the same amount of votes than the supposed leader (Hoffman).

I voted even though I haven't seen My Favorite Year. Gandhi is a film I pretty much disdain, but it is undeniable that Kingsley gave the performance of a lifetime... However, considering that we are talking abouyt a film I'm not very much interested in rewatch, I have to bypass him if only because of his vehicle. He's a solid second in my book.

My third and fourth are intermitently switchable...

Paul Newman's performance in The Verdict was somewhat a revelation to me. After not being that impressed with his Academy winning role, I was very amazed by the power of his acting ability here... The man won a lot of respect from me, but eventually, right now, as I post this, he is fourth in my list.

Hoffman is an oddity... I have rewatched Tootsie so many times, specially because the film is so easy to enjoy. The lightness of it and the smartness of the material makes a great comedy. But through the years it has gained a status that it is very hard for me to understand. I wouldn't use the term "overrated" but it is getting close to it. Hoffman gave a solid/splendid performance, but all the time I always get to think that I'm witnessing an actor's job, the skills (specially the tough comedic ones) are all over the place and even though he's almost solemn in his approach, I find him just "fitted". Yes, it migh have been risky back in its days, he might have gone the wrong way, he accomplished something endurable, but I can not see him as the best performance of the year...

There are some films I grew up listening about... My elder brothers spoke to me about them and managed to create these great expectations about them. Some films didn't live up to those expectations but some others, like Amadeus, Ordinary People, Network and Ran definitely did. One of the latter group is Missing. By the time I finally got to it, I was like in shock... My 15 years at the time might excuse me, but I learned to love the film. It was my first experience with Jack Lemmon so everything I have seen from him has been compared to this performance, one that I think is incredibly honest. The character may play a part in my interpretation but I thought (and think) it was brave for such an american actor, an american icon, to portray this guy in a film that questions so in your face the americanism exploited by the industry in so many ways and in so many times. Of course I fell in love with Spacek, but the dynamics between the two of them was pitch-perfect. In my mind there can not be another winner (though I totally understand the actual win by Kingsley, considering the Academy standards). Lemmon's face expressions in this film are like carved in my mind. I was actually learning from this thread about his apparently underdog situation at the time, and (specially) how he was being considered here as a filler in the nominees list, two things I was going to use to argument about his perfomance being unfairly underrated or underappreciated... Guess that is not necessary anymore.

[ITALIANO]

It must be the Italiano influence.

This time I'm innocent. I've voted for last.

[Big Magilla]

It must be the Italiano influence. Jack Lemmon, incedulous as it may seem to some of us, is winning this one at seven to Dustin Hoffman's six and Paul Newmna's five, Peter O'toole's four and Ben Kingsley's two.

The character of the naive American whose eyes are opened was a cliche in 1982, but sadly it is mostly a movie affectation. Yes, there were/are some Americans whose eyes are opened by local/national/world events, but there are so many more who stick to their guns or rather their TV sets, influenced by Glenn Beck and the other nutcases who appeal to their bassic/base instincts. It's quite bewildering to me that otherwise nice, charitable people still fall for the Republican, or worse, Tea Party lines, but that's another story.

Jack Lemmon could be a very good actor. His two best post-China Syndrome performances were still to be seen in 1982, although neither resulted in an Oscar nomination. On the other hand, he could be maudlin and prone to hamminess, especially in his comedic roles opposite Walter Mattahu. Grumpy Old Men and their ilk are a prime example.

I suppose I should watch Missing again, but to me the film is preaching to the converted and in its way just as ponderous as Gandhi is. Lemmon and Sissy Spacek do rise above Costa-Gavras' obviousness but Lemmon's performance is not as striking to me as those of the other four nominees. Not at all.

[ITALIANO]

A great year, not only for Best Actor, but for the Acting categories in general.

Paul Newman's turn in The Verdict was considered by many to finally be his Oscar performance - even before the movie came out, and certainly right afterwards. It's easy to see why. The role - drunken lawyer - is a traditionally effective one, the director was much admired and thought to be very good with actors, and Newman was actually solid, though he had been better before and would be better afterwards. He lost only because anyone would have lost to Gandhi - otherwise the Oscar, deservedly or not, would have been in his hands.

Not deservedly I think. Not in such a year. The others were at least equally good, and some were better.

I didn't particularly care for My Favorite Year when I saw it centuries ago - I found some gags and lines a bit forced (Mel Brooks, after all, was I think among the producers). I didn't care much for the period the movie is set in - which now I would find fascinating instead, but then I was just a teenager. Still, nobody can deny that Peter O'Toole plays as only he could a role which looks as if it was written especially for him. He's better than the movie he's in.

I have seen Tootsie again about ten days ago. It's still nice, and reasonably funny, and Jessica Lange is as beautiful and sweet as she had seemed to me in early 1983. But the movie itself is not as biting and meaningful as I remembered it to be - the script doesn't always rise above sit-com level, and probably it has also been too imitated, copied even, on the big and on the small screen in the meantime, which of course makes it seem blander. But Hoffman is certainly very good.

But I may be the only one here who thinks this is between Ben Kingsley and Jack Lemmon. It's easy today to dismiss Gandhi as a movie, and probably right, too. It has certainly been almost completely forgotten, despite all its Oscars (though I still think that it's a better movie than some Best Picture winners of recent years like A Beautiful Mind and that Lord of the Rings episode). Yet Kingsley is superb as Gandhi - subtle, quiet, charismatic, and very convincing. It's not just a wax-museum-type performance - you feel there's a great actor behind the make up job (and it's not like back then he was already famously great). Much worse performances have been given an Oscar.

But - surprise - MY personal Oscar goes to Jack Lemmon. He's not much loved on this board, and I can understand why. But I've always found his acting in Missing to be, for once, perfectly controlled and at times even moving. Now I realize that, especially for the young among us, this kind of character, the naive American who realizes a few things, and not good things, about his country, may seem cliched, and even absurd. But this kind of people existed back then. Only very few years after I saw Missing I went to California to stay with a perfectly nice American family living in Dana Point, Orange County. A residential area. Now that I think of it, I mean, these poor unsuspecting people..! They welcomed in their house this very young but already extremely opinionated ITALIANO... and I was much tougher back then, as only teenagers can be. But believe me, they - especially the parents - were exactly like the Jack Lemmon character. They trusted America. Blindly so. I'm sure that now Americans have opened their eyes - but what I'm trying to say is that the Lemmon character in Missing isn't a convenient narrative - and political - device, but a real man, a painfully real man, very well portrayed by an actor who, well directed, could still find the human side of his characters. Even with such a competition, he deserves to win.

[Greg]

Plus, Hoffman is a total hoot ("My name is not Honey, or Tootsie, or Toots...it is DOROTHY!")

My favorite line of Hoffman as Dorothy is, "I'm going to give my nurses an electric cattle prod and tell them to give him one right in the badoobies."