A Letter to Three Years: reference 1976, 1994 and the turn of the millennium

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(Free-Press-Release.com) January 17, 2007 -- To this day, some people wonder why two of the greatest actors of the Greatest Generation � Marlon Brando and George C. Scott � refused one Oscar and Emmy after another in the early 1970s. The obvious answer (besides a worldwide ego trip and publicity stunt) was that they felt it unfair for actors and films to be in such fierce, zero-sum competition with one another � but that only tells half the story. A case could be made that the real reason for the �unfairness� of
such a system is because each year�s playing field is so wildly uneven.

Take 1976 (please!) Probably the best single year ever for post-Production Code, relatively modern cinema, it offered such Oscar contenders as Network, Taxi Driver, All the President�s Men and Rocky. Ultimately, though he lost his first fight with Apollo Creed, Rocky triumphed where it really counted � which it certainly deserved to.

But alas, that also meant that the other three were left out in the cold � which they certainly didn�t deserve to be, as any one of them would have wiped the floor with almost any of the candidates from the next decade. (Likewise in the music category, something tells me that recent winners like �Its Hard Out There for a Pimp� and �Blame Canada!� will never threaten prior recipients like Richard Rodgers and Burt Bacharach in America�s songbook.)

During the Reagan-Bush era, as the first waves of the tsunami of Big Media consolidation and

deregulation started crashing in, the most notable movies became crowd-pleasing blockbusters like ET, Back to the Future and Top Gun, alongside stylish neo-noir thrillers like Body Heat, Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct. Independent US film was trapped in that awkward adolescent phase between the grindhouse blaxploitation and slasher films that kept the bills paid during the Ford and Carter years, and the true flowering of world-class American auteurs like Van Sant, Tarantino, Soderbergh, and David Lynch.

Then, just a year and a half after the most Hollywood-friendly president ever was elected on a

platform of �change� (and the same year as the �Republican Revolution�) came 1994 � a revolutionary year in American cinema if there ever was one. From the stylized sadism of Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers, to the three-hankie catharsis of Forrest Gump, to the breathtakingly nuanced morality plays of Quiz Show. For a moment, it looked like studio filmmaking had turned the corner, and that a new Golden Age of movies was about to rise along with the booming �information age� of the �90s.

Source: http://www.msn.com
Posted By Telly Davidson