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The Oscar recall voting.

Entertainment Weekly set up recall votes for 30 Oscar contests ? the 6 major categories from 5 past years at 5 year intervals (2003, 1998, 1993, 1988, and 1983). I'm sure the voting ? by Hollywood insiders ? was strongly influenced by the fact of the past win, so I'm not surprised that only 7 old winners lost the recall vote. One Best Picture Oscar was revoked: "Shakespeare in Love" lost to "Saving Private Ryan." The actor losers are James Coburn (to Geoffrey Rush), Tommy Lee Jones (to Ralph Fiennes), Geena Davis (to Frances McDormand), Gwyneth Paltrow (to Cate Blanchett) Renee Zellweger (to Shohreh Aghdashloo), and, naturally, Roberto Benigni (to Edward Norton).

By the way, I was a big Shohreh Aghdashloo supporter for the 2003 Oscar. Her movie, "The House of Sand and Fog," was the first movie I ever blogged, on the second day in the life of this blog, and I remember feeling that I was inventing a way to blog a movie ? which is decidedly not the same as reviewing a movie ? first here:

... The movie we'd come to see, though, was "House of Sand and Fog," which had a good script, the kind of story that works so well in a movie, where some little thing happens in the beginning, then one thing leads to another, with all sorts of extravagant consequences. At some point you have to just let go of the thought "Jennifer Connelly should have opened her mail" and follow the characters.

... and then, the next day, in a post about candy:

?House of Sand and Fog? introduces a character by having him take a bite out of a Snickers bar and then subtract its cost in his account book. That movie may be the melodrama equivalent of ?The Odd Couple?: One keeps account of a candy bar, the other never opens the mail. Both are trying to live in the same place. Hijinks/tragedy ensues.

Sorry to go off on a wave of nostalgia about the early days of this blog, but next Wednesday is its 5th anniversary. It will be 5 years straight ? not one day missed. But back to the present: The Golden Globes are handed out tomorrow. And I mean to live-blog the big show.

Full post as published by Althouse on January 10, 2009 (boomark / email).