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Plummer, Monsieur Lazhar, Shore in Oscar® Race
By Ralph Lucas and Wyndham Wise
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(January 24, 2012 - Toronto, Ontario) As we have written here for the past many years, The Golden Globes often give an indication as to how the Academy Awards® will play out. With Christopher Plummer winning this year for his performance in Beginners, there was hope that his name would be on this morning's list. When the Academy Award® nominations were announced by Jennifer Lawrence, a best actress nominee last year for Winter’s Bone, and Tom Sherak, the Academy’s president, Plummer's name was indeed on the list competing for Best Supporting Actor.
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The big story for Canada last year was in the Best Foreign Language Film category and Denis Villeneuve's Incendies. This year Canada's official entry is Monsieur Lazhar. As we reported just a few days ago, this touching and emotionally packed film about how an Algerian refugee takes on the doubly difficult task of reaching his distraught students following the suicide of their teacher, while securing his own asylum from past tragedies in his homeland had survivied the winnowing process to be one of nine films on the semi-finalist list. This morning Monsieur Lazhar had made the cut and is officially in the running for an Oscar. Also in the running for Best Foreign-Language Film is the Canada/Poland/German/France co-production, In Darkness directed by Agnieszka Holland. It opens in Canada on February 17th.
Finally, Canadian composer Howard Shore, who is known his work on David Cronenberg's films, has been nominated for Best Original Score for the Martin Scorsese film, Hugo and Canada picked up two more nominations in the Best Animated Short category. One is for the film Dimanche/Sunday from director Patrick Doyon and the other is for Wild Life from Wendy Tilby & Amanda Forbis.
It has now been five years since Canada has won Oscar® Gold. With a total of seven this year, maybe 2012 will bring an end to the Oscar® drought in Canada.
Canada has an impressive record when it comes to winning Oscars®. Norman McLaren was the first to win for his short National Film Board film, Neighbours, in 1952. The National Film Board, by the way, has received a total of 12 Oscars® over the years, the most recent being in 2007 for The Danish Poet, which was directed and animated by Torill Kove.
In 2008, nominations included Julie Christie and Ellen Page together in the Best Actress category. Christie had been nominated for her work in the Sarah Polley film, Away From Her, and Ellen Page for her work in the hit film, Juno. Sarah Polley had also  been nominated for her adapted script for Away From Her which was based on an Alice Munro short story.
Canadian-born Jason Reitman was nominated for a Best Director award for helming Juno, and the film itself, although technically not a Canadian production, had been nominated in what is considered to be the top category, Best Picture. While not Canadian, we pointed out that actor Viggo Mortensen had been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his leading role in the David Cronenberg film, Eastern Promises and Diablo Cody had been nominated for writing the screenplay for Juno.
Rounding out the 2008 nominations were two films in the animated short category. One was I Met The Walrus and the other was the National Film Board's beautiful short, Madame Tutli-Putli, which was the NFB's fourth nomination in as many years. Neither won. Another disappointment last year came with the news L'Âge des ténèbres had not made the final cut in the Best Foreign Language film nominations. And when it was all over, despite a bumper crop of nominations, there were no awards for Canadian actors, directors or movies.
In 2009 we were able to grab just one nomination. Chris Williams, who was born in Kitchener, Ontario, was a co-director on Bolt, which had been nominated in the Best Animated Feature category.
At the 2010 Academy Awards despite multiple nominations for James Cameron's Avatar, including Best Picture and Best Director, the film ended up with three of the highly coveted golden statuettes, for Art Direction, Cinematography and Visual Effects. Cameron had been up against an impressive field of directors including fellow  Canadian Jason Reitman whose picture, Up in the Air was also in the running for an Oscar®. But neither of them got the nod as Kathryn Bigelow won for The Hurt Locker, which took six of the nine categories it had been nominated in, including Best Picture.
As the night wore on it became clear it was going to be a shut-out.
Back when it all started, the "film year" was different. The first awards were handed out on May 16, 1929, to honour films that had been released in Hollywood from the beginning of August 1927 to the end of July 1928. This two-year overlap continued until 1934. At the second gathering, held in 1930, to award films released in 1928/1929 season, Mary Pickford, Toronto-born America’s Sweetheart, was named Best Actress for her role in Coquette. What is often forgotten is Pickford's role in spearheading the movement to establish the Academy in the first place. Montreal-born, Norma Shearer, wife of MGM’s all powerful production head Irving Thalberg, was nominated that year for Their Own Desire and won the very next year (1929/1930) for her role in The Divorcée. She went on to receive nominations four more times in her career, for a total of six. To complete the trifecta, Cobourg, Ontario-born Marie Dressler won in 1931 for Min and Bill and was nominated a year later for Emma. Remarkably, for the first three years the Best Actress Oscar® was award to three Canadian-born women.
At the 1931 ceremony, not only did Norma Shearer win for The Divorcée, but she shared the stage with her older brother, Douglas, who won an Academy Award that night too. It is the only time in Oscar® history that a brother and sister were awarded on the same night. Douglas Shearer was one of the technical geniuses Hollywood has been able to attract – people with talent beyond acting and directing, but vital to filmmaking and the creation of magic. His particular genius was sound recording, and later special effects, and his win that year for The Big House was the first of 21 nominations he collected between 1931 and 1945. He won again in 1935 for Naughty Marietta, 1936 for San Francisco, 1940 for Strike Up the Band, 1944 for Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (special effects), in 1947 it was Green Dolphin Street (special effects) and 1951 brought one for The Great Caruso. He was also given an Award of Merit in 1937 and seven Oscars® for scientific and technical achievements.
Other Canadians who won big in the so-called craft categories were two huge talents from Victoria, B.C., Richard Day and Stephen Bosustow. Day, a gifted illustrator, worked with the legendary Erich von Stroheim on Foolish Wives and Greed, films that set a new standard for realistic art direction. He was with MGM from 1923 to 1930, and from 1939 to 1943 he headed the art department at 20th Century-Fox. Day was nominated 20 times for an Academy Award (winning seven), the most ever for an art director. He won for The Dark Angel (1935), Dodsworth (1936), How Green Was My Valley (1941), My Gal Sal (1942), This above All (1942), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and On the Waterfront (1954). Bosustow began working professionally as a cartoonist in the early 1930s. He joined the Walt Disney assemblyline of animators, but in 1945 he and several other disenchanted Disney artists formed United Productions of America (UPA), an animation company that allow its artists greater creative freedom. While president of UPA, he personally produced nearly 100 cartoons, including three Oscar® winners -– Gerald McBoing McBoing (1950), When Magoo Flew (1954) and Mister Magoo’s Puddle Jumper (1956) – and 11 nominees.
Toronto-born Walter Huston was nominated as Best Actor for his role in Dodsworth and again for The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), but all three times he saw the award go to someone else. In the spring of 1947 he starting shooting Treasure of the Sierra Madre under the direction of his son, John Huston, and at the 1949 Academy Awards ceremony he picked up his Oscar® for Best Supporting Actor. John Huston was named Best Director, and the father and son win was another Hollywood first.
During the 1940s, Raymond Massey was nominated for Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), Walter Pidgeon for Mrs. Miniver (1942) and Madame Currie (1943), Lucile Watson for Watch on the Rhine (1943), Alexander Knox for Wilson (1944), Hume Cronyn for The Seventh Cross (1944) and John Ireland for All the Kings’s Men (1949), but the 1950s were a long dry spell for Canadians in Hollywood. We were mostly overlooked through much of the early 1960s as well. Then Norman Jewison’s The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming was nominated for Best Picture in 1966. The following year he was nominated for Best Director, and although he didn’t win (Mike Nichols took the award for The Graduate), In the Heat of the Night remains one of the most powerful pieces of filmmaking to come out of Hollywood. In the Heat of the Night won Oscars® for Best Picture, Best Actor (Rod Steiger), Best Sound (Samuel Goldwyn Studio), Best Editing (Hal Ashby) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Sterling Silliphant). In 1972, his production of Fiddler on the Roof earned him nominations for Best Director and  Best Picture, and again in 1987 Monstruck earned him the double. His A Soldier’s Story was nominated for Best Picture in 1985, but Amadeus was the winner, and the following year Agnes of God picked up three nominations, including Best Actress (Anne Bancroft), Best Original Score and Best Supporting Actress for B.C.-born Meg Tilly. In all, films directed by Norman Jewison have been blessed with 45 Academy Award nominations, winning 12; however, personally, he remains winless after seven separate nominations. In 1999, he was presented with the Irving G. Talberg Memorial Award for his contributions to the art of cinema.
There were no Canadian winners in the acting categories during the 1970s and 1980s, although we did pick up a few nominations: Geneviève Bujold for Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), Chief Dan George for Little Big Man (1970), Dan Aykroyd for Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Graham Greene for Dances with Wolves (1990) and Kate Nelligan for Prince of Tides (1991), then in 1993 there was an audible gasp, followed by thunderous applause when child actor Anna Paquin was named Best Supporting Actress for The Piano. She was not quite 11 years old. Listed in many film directories as being born in New Zealand, Paquin was born July 24, 1982, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 1995, Jennifer Tilly (older sister of Meg) was nominated for Bullets over Broadway.
In the Adapted Screenplay category, Mordecai Richler and Lionel Chetwynd where nominated for The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz in 1975, and in the Original Screenplay category, Ted Allan was nominated in 1976 for Lies My Father Told Me, but the award went to Dog Day Afternoon and the American writer Frank Pierson. In the Musical Score category, Toronto's Howard Shore won three times for his work on The Lord of the Rings trilogy, twice for Best Score and once for Best Song. The Red Violin won for Best Score in 2000.
Art-house darling Atom Egoyan found himself with both Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay nominations for The Sweet Hearafter in 1998, the only time a Canadian director has been nominated in the Best Director category for a Canadian film. Ironically, that same year, James Cameron, from Kapuskasing, Ontario, won three Oscars® for Titanic, Best Picture, Best Director and Best Editing, the only time a Canadian-born director has won in those categories. The film was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, and won 11.
Recently, the Canadian Oscar® golden boy was London, Ontario-born Paul Haggis. The prolific writer/director has been nominated five times over three consecutive years. This year he is up for Best Original Screenplay for Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima. In 2006, it was Oscars for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay for Crash in addition to a Best Director nomination, and in 2005 it was a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for another Eastwood film, Million Dollar Baby. In 2007, Deepha Mehta’s Water is up for Best Foreign-Language Film (it was shot in Hindi with English subtitles), a category in which Canadian films have had past success. Deny Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions won in 2004, and Arcand was nominated for Best Original Screenplay. He was also nominated for Jesus of Montreal in 1990 and The Decline of the American Empire in 1987. In 1978, A Special Day, a Canada/Italy co-production starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni (who received a Best Actor nod) was also nominated in the foreign-language category. In 1981, Atlantic City, a Canada/US/France co-production, was nominated for Best Picture, the only time a Canadian film has competed in that category.
In other, less high-profile categories, Canadians have done very well over the years. The NFB has received dozens of Oscar® nominations for animation, short films and documentaries, and naturally, Canadians have done well in the documentary category. There have been three feature-length winners: The Man Who Skied down Everest in 1976, Just another Missing Kid in 1983 and Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got in 1987.
Academy Awards
This list includes Oscars® presented to Canadians and Canadian-born actors, actresses, producers, directors, writers, animators, and Canadian-produced films or co-productions. The Awards are listed according to the year they were presented. Co-productions, American, and foreign films are indicated in parenthesis.
1930:
Actress: Mary Pickford, Coquette (US)
1931:
Actress: Norma Shearer, The Divorcée (US)
Sound Recording: Douglas Shearer, The Big House (US)
1932:
Actress: Marie Dressler, Min and Bill (US)
Short Subject (Novelty): Wrestling Swordfish (US), Mack Sennett (p)
1936:
Interior Decoration: Richard Day, Dark Angel (US)
Sound Recording: Douglas Shearer, Naughty Marietta (US)
Scientific or Technical Award: Douglas Shearer
1937:
Academy Award of Merit: Douglas Shearer
Interior Decoration: Richard Day, Dodsworth (US)
Scientific or Technical Award: Douglas Shearer
Sound Recording: Douglas Shearer, San Francisco (US)
1938:
Honorary Award: Mack Sennett
Scientific and Engineering Award: Douglas Shearer
Scientific and Engineering Award: Douglas Shearer
1939:
Honorary Award: Deanna Durbin
1941:
Documentary: Churchill’s Island, Stuart Legg (p/d)
Sound Recording: Douglas Shearer, Strike Up the Band (US)
1942:
Interior Decoration: Richard Day, How Green Was My Valley (US)
Scientific or Technical Award: Douglas Shearer
1943:
Interior Decoration (colour): Richard Day, My Gal Sal (US)
Interior Decoration (b+w): Richard Day, This above All (US)
1945:
Special Effects: Douglas Shearer, Thirty Seconds over Toyko (US)
1947:
Honorary Award: Harold Russell
Supporting Actor: Harold Russell, The Best Years of Our Lives (US)
1948:
Special Effects: Douglas Shearer, Green Dolphin Street (US)
1949:
Supporting Actor: Walter Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (US)
1951:
Short/Cartoon: Gerald McBoing McBoing (US), Stephen Bosustow (exp)
1952:
Art Direction (b+w): Richard Day, A Street Car Named Desire (US)
Sound Recording: Douglas Shearer, The Great Carcuso (US)
1953:
Short Documentary: Neighbours, Norman McLaren (p/d/an)
1955:
Art Direction (b+w): Richard Day, On the Waterfront (US)
Short/Cartoon: When Magoo Flew (US), Stephen Bosustow (p)
1957:
Short/Cartoon: Mister Magoo’s Puddle Jumper (US), Stephen Bosustow (p)
1959:
Irving G. Thalberg Award: Jack L. Warner
1960:
Scientific or Technical Award: Douglas Shearer
1964:
Scientific or Technical Award: Douglas Shearer
1965:
Picture: My Fair Lady (US), Jack L. Warner (p)
1968:
Live-Action Short: A Place to Stand, Christopher Chapman (p/d)
1973:
Animated Short: A Christmas Carol (US), Richard Williams (d/an)
1976:
Feature Documentary: The Man Who Skied down Everest, Budge Crawley (p/d)
Honorary Award: Mary Pickford
1978:
Live-Action Short: I’ll Find a Way, Yuki Yoshida (p), Beverly Shaffer (d)
Animated Short: The Sand Castle, Gaston Sarault (p), Co Hoedeman (d/an)
1979:
Animated Short: Special Delivery, Derek Lamb (p), John Weldon and Eunice Macauley (d/an)
1980:
Animated Short: Every Child, Derek Lamb (p), Eugene Fedorenko (d/an)
1982:
Animated Short: Crac!, Hubert Tison and Frédéric Back (p), Frédéric Back (d/an)
Picture: Chariots of Fire (UK), Jake Eberts (exp)
1983:
Feature Documentary: Just another Missing Kid, John Zaritsky (p/d)
Make-up: Michèle Burke, Quest for Fire
Short Documentary: If You Love This Planet, Edward Le Lorrain (p), Terre Nash (d)
1984:
Live-Action Short: Boys and Girls, Seaton McLean (p), Don McBrearty (d)
Short Documentary: Flamenco at 5:15, Adam Symansky and Cynthia Scott (p), Cynthia Scott (d)
1985:
Animated Short: Charade, John Minnis (d/an)
1987:
Feature Documentary: Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got, Brigitte Berman (p/d)
Make-Up: Stephan Dupuis, The Fly (US)
Picture: Platoon (US), Pierre David (production executive)
Scientific or Technical (Scientific and Engineering Award): IMAX Systems Corporation
1988:
Animated Short: The Man Who Planted Trees Hubert Tison and Frédéric Back (p), Frédéric Back (d/an)
1989:
Honorary Award: National Film Board of Canada
Special Achievement Award: Richard Williams, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (US)
Special Effects: Richard Williams, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (US)
1990:
Picture: Driving Miss Daisy (US), Jake Eberts (exp)
1991:
Picture: Dances with Wolves (US), Jake Eberts (exp)
1994:
Supporting Actress: Anna Paquin, The Piano (Australia)
1995:
Animated Short: Bob’s Birthday, Alison Snowden, David Fine, and David Verrall (p), Alison Snowden and David Fine (d), Alison Snowden, David Fine, and Janet Perlman (an)
Original Screenplay: Roger Avary, Pulp Fiction (US)
1997:
Scientific and Technical (Scientific and Engineering Award): William Reeves for the original concept and development of particle systems used to create computer-generated visual effects
1998:
Director: James Cameron, Titanic (US)
Editing: James Cameron, Titanic (US)
Picture: Titanic (US), James Cameron (p)
Scientific and Technical (Scientific and Engineering Award): Dominique Boisvert, Réjean Gagné, Daniel Langlois, and Richard Laperrière of Softimage
Scientific and Technical (Scientific and Engineering Award): William Reeves for the development of the Marionette Three-Dimensional Computer Animation System
Scientific and Technical (Technical Achievement Award): Kim Davidson and Greg Hermanovic of Side Effects Software
1999:
Irving G. Talberg Memorial Award: Norman Jewison
Scientific and Technical (Scientific and Engineering Award): Dominique Boisvert, André LeBlanc, and Phillippe Panzini for the development and implementation of Flame and Inferno software
Scientific and Technical (Technical Achievement Award): Ed Zwaneveld and Frederick Gasoi of the NFB and Mike Lazaridis and Dale Brubacher-Cressman of Research in Motion
2000:
Animated Short: The Old Man and the Sea (Canada/Japan/Russia), Bernard Lajoie (p)
Musical Score: The Red Violin (Canada /UK/Italy)
2002:
Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Arthur Hiller
Musical Score: Howard Shore, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (US)
2003:
Animated Short: The ChubbChubbs (US), Eric Armstrong (an)
Art Direction (Sets): Gordon Sim, Chicago (US)
Feature Documentary: Bowling for Columbine (US), Michael Donovan and Charles Bishop (p)
Picture: Chicago (US), Don Carmody (co-p)
Scientific and Technical (Academy Award of Merit): Alias/Wavefront
Sound: David Lee, Chicago (US)
2004:
Foreign-Language Film: Les Invasions barbares (Canada/France), Denise Robert and Daniel Louis (p), Denys Arcand (d)
Musical Score: Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (US)
Song: Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (US)
2005:
Animated Short: Ryan, Steve Hoban, Marcy Page, and Mark Smith (p), Chris Landreth (d)
Make-Up: Valli O’Reilly, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (US)
2006:
Original Screenplay: Paul Haggis, Crash (US)
Picture: Crash (US), Paul Haggis (co-p)
2007:
Animated Short: Torill Kove, The Danish Poet
This year's Oscars® will be handed out on February 26 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood when Billy Crystal takes the stage to host the awards show. Crystal first hosted the Oscars in 1990 when Driving Miss Daisy was named Best Picture. For a complete list of 2012 nominees, click here.
Also see: Canadian Film Awards Archive
Also see: Genie Awards Archive
Also see: Jutra Awrads Archive
The images of Mary Pickford, Walter Huston and Meg Tilly are scanned from originals in the Northernstars Collection.
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