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You may also take my online poll on who YOU would vote for the Oscars,
among this year's nominees.
To vote, click
here. To just see the results so far, click
here.
-Peter Jackson: Look at his original trilogy of bizarro: Bad Taste, Dead Alive (a.k.a. Brain Dead), and Meet the Feebles. Were it not for those flicks cult status, he would never be where he is today. On the other hand, he did The Frightners.
-Ridley Scott: none of his stuff is particularly bizarre, but this is a remider that he directed the classic horror/sci-fi flick Alien, as well as the gory thriller Hannibal, and the cult classic sci-fi flick Blade Runner.
-Robert Altman: some feel that Three Women is a strange movie, although very few are even remotely attracted to watching that movie, and even less seem to like it at all. However, recall that Altman (who, by the way, used to direct episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents) is responsible for Popeye. You cannot go stranger than that, as far as big-budget Hollywood movies go.
-Ron Howard: ol' Richie Cunningham hasn't done anything bizarre (unless
you count The Grinch). But he did direct the cult fantasy
flick Willow.
-Denzel Washington: just a reminder that Denzel was in B-flicks
Virtuosity and Fallen.
-Russell Crowe: And Russell was in Virtuosity too! As for bizarre flicks, he was in Sam Raimi's western The Quick and the Dead, and in the bomb Rough Magic.
-Will Smith: Needless to say, he was in the sci-fi hits Independence Day and Men In Black, and the odd flop Wild Wild West.
-Sean Penn: other than camp classic Shanghai Surprise, his oddest flicks are Olivers Stone's U-Turn and Terrence Malick's Oscar nominated art war film The Thin Red Line. But of course, he is the stoner of all movie stoners in the cult comedy The Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
-Tom Wilkinson: the strangest thing he has ever done is Smilla's
Sense of Snow. And I don't know if to include The Full Monty.
As far as as B-movies, heck, Rush Hour is a martial arts flick,
so... Otherwise, he's in classy flicks for the most part.
-Nicole Kidman: she's nominated for her performance in her strangest
movie ever. But she turned even a better performance last year in
Alejandro Amenabar's classy ghost film The Others. You should
also check her out in the masterpiece suspense film Dead Calm.
And for laughs there's always BMX Bandits.
-Sissy Spacek: They're all gonna laugh at you! They're all gonna laugh at you! They're all gonna laugh at you! Spacek, of course, became a star with Brian De Palma's masterful adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie.
-Renée Zellweger: her first starring role was in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. She followed it with the Tarantinoesque Love & a .45. Her first film role was in the teen zombie comedy My Boyfriend's Back. As an established actress, she starred in the slightly-off black comedy Nurse Betty, and in the Farelly Bros' Me,Myself,&Irene.
-Halle Berry: turned in an odd performance and said some really odd lines in X-Men.
-Judi Dench: is M in the last 3 James Bond flicks, and the upcoming
one.
-Ian McKellen: He did a great, very odd adaptation of Richard
III, which is worthwhile watching (and he puts in the best performance
of his career). But he didn't break out in the US until 1998, when
he played horror director James Whale in Gods and Monsters, and
starred in the adaptation of Stephen King's Apt Pupil. Earlier
in his career he was in Michael Mann's first flick, the odd horror movie
The Keep (along with Jurgen Prochnov, Scott Glenn, and a young Gabriel
Byrne). And let's not forget that Sir Ian plays Magneto in X-Men.
-Ethan Hawke: as a child, he starred in the kid's sci-fi fantasy The Explorers. As a grown-up, he's in Richard Linklater's odd (but great) animated flick Waking Life, Michael Almereyda's modern adaptation of Hamlet, and the classy sci-fi film Gattaca.
-Jim Broadbent: Moulin Rouge! is one his strangest films, but he was also in Terry Gilliam's Brazil and Time Bandits, as well as Rough Magic (along with Russell Crowe), Smilla's Sense of Snow (along with Tom Wilkinson), The Crying Game, Richard III, the wacked-out 1998 version of The Avengers, the awful Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, and the typical 80s action flick The Dogs of War.
-Jon Voight: starred in Anaconda. That same year he was in the bizarre U-Turn. His next role will be in the unrequested sequel Baby Geniuses 2: Superbabies. And, of course, he was in Deliverance.
-Ben Kingsley: ol' Gandhi was a bad scientist in Species, had
the starring role in HBO's version of The Tale of Sweeney Todd,
and also was in the semi-horror flick Photographing Fairies.
-Jennifer Connelly: her first starring role was in Dario Argento's
Phenomena (a.k.a. Creepers, and one of his best). Her first
starring role in a major US flick was in the oddball muppet musical Labyrinth.
She was later in the superhero flick The Rocketeer. Most recently,
she starred in Alex "The Crow" Proyas' odd sci-fi flick Dark City
and in Darren "Pi" Arenofsky's visceral Requiem for a Dream.
Her next role will be in The Hulk, as Betty.
-Helen Mirren: starred (and appeared nude) in Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. Additionally you can see her in Kevin Williamson's Teaching Mrs. Tingle.
-Kate Winslet: she was recently in Jane Campion's slightly odd Holy
Smoke.
-The Royal Tennenbaums is a fun, odd flick, worth watching,
filled with characters whose screws are loose. Owen Wilson and Wes
Anderson previously wrote the oddball comedies Rushmore and Bottle
Rocket.
-Memento is strange in its approach, playing the movie narratively backwards, starting with the end and ending with the beginning. And it is one of the best films of the year.
-One of the screenwriters of Monster's Ball (Will Rokos) had a small role in a movie called Galactic Gigolo.
-Gosford Park scribe Julian Fellowes has acted in dino flick
Baby... Secret of the Lost Legend, Bond flick Tomorrow Never
Dies, and the movie about the author of James Bond, Spymaster.
-Ghost World is a rather odd movie, and definitely one with
odd characters.
-Akiva Goldsman adapted A Beautiful Mind, but is better known (infamously) for the screenplays of Lost in Space, Batman Forever, and Batman & Robin.
-Todd Field directed and co-scripted In the Bedroom. But he is better known as the pianist in Eyes Wide Shut. He was also in the Jan De Bont version of The Haunting.
-Of the Shrek scribes: Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio wrote Little
Monsters, The Puppet Masters, and the 1998 version of Godzilla.
Joe Stillman was a writer on Beavis & Butthead, and thus went
on to do Beavis & Butthead Do America. He also had a small
role in Brian De Palma's Hi Mom!
-Roger Deakins, up for the cinematography of The Man Who Wasn't
There (and whom also shot A Beautiful Mind and previous Oscar nominee
The Shawshank Redemption) is the Coen brothers regular cinematographer,
and is thus responsible for the cinematography in Barton
Fink, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Fargo, The Big
Lebowski, and The Hudsucker Proxy. He also shot Sid
& Nancy.
-Slavomir Idziak is up for cinematography of Black Hawk Down. He shot Gattaca, as well as Kieslowski's The Double Life of Vernoique, Blanc, and The Decalogue. His talent (and that of everyone else involved) was wasted in the odd (but lame) Jessica Alba flick Paranoid.
-Donald Alpine is up for the cinematography of Moulin Rouge!. He previoulsy shot Predator and the odd Romeo + Juliet. His latest work is the new adaptation of The Time Machine.
-John Gilbert is up for best editing, for Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. He previously edited Jack Be Nimble and the really bad horror flick Aberration.
-Pietro Scalia is up for his editing of Black Hawk Down. He previously did Hannibal, as well as The Quick and the Dead, and the sci-fi flick Megaville.
-Doddy Dorn, nominated for his editing of Memento, previously did the special edition of Terminator 2, and the adaptation of Ed Wood's screenplay I Woke Up Early the Day I Died.
-Peter Owen is up for best make-up. He's worked on the hair and/or make-up of Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract, this year's horror hit The Others, Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, The Grotesque (a.k.a. Gentlemen Don't Eat Poets) and last year's Shadow of the Vampire.
-Also up for make-up AND visual FX for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is Richard Taylor, who did the puppets in Meet the Feebles, and is responsible for the record-breaking gore effects in Dead Alive, and did some effects in The Frighteners. He also did the make-up in the cult horror film The Ugly.
-Stan Winston is nominated for his FX in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. He's responsible for the creatures in Aliens, Predator, John Carpenter's The Thing, Leviathan, the live-action dinos in Jurassic Park, The Monster Squad, Terminator, Invaders from Mars (the '86 Tobe Hooper version), Lake Placid, and The Relic. He did effects for Terminator 2, End of Days, Interview With the Vampire, the '96 version of The Island of Dr. Mureau. He also directed the underrated horror flick Pumpkinhead. Early in his career he did make-up effects in Mansion of the Doomed, The Bat People, Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde, Zoltan: Hound of Dracula, The Hand, Wes Craven's Chiller, and The Wiz, as well as the effects in Manimal. Additionally he hosts some sci-fi flicks on AMC from time to time.