Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1985

The Contenders:

The Color Purple
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Out of Africa (winner)
Prizzi’s Honor
The Trip to Bountiful

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1985

The Contenders:

William Hurt: Kiss of the Spider Woman (winner)
James Garner: Murphy’s Romance
Jack Nicholson: Prizzi’s Honor
Jon Voight: Runaway Train
Harrison Ford: Witness

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1985

The Contenders:

Hector Babenco: Kiss of the Spider Woman
Sydney Pollack: Out of Africa (winner)
John Huston: Prizzi’s Honor
Akira Kurosawa: Ran
Peter Weir: Witness

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1985

The Contenders:
The Color Purple
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Out of Africa (winner)
Prizzi’s Honor
Witness

Huston, We Don't Have a Problem

Film: The Dead; Prizzi's Honor
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix (The Dead) and DVD from personal collection (Prizzi’s Honor) on laptop.

I think John Huston can be forgiven for the evident nepotism of frequently casting his daughter Anjelica Huston in many of his later films. I mean, we’re talking about Anjelica Huston here, not someone talentless and not worthy of mention. He can also be forgiven for putting her in one of the lead roles in his final film, The Dead, based on the final story in James Joyce’s Dubliners. This is one of the singularly most Irish films I have ever seen. Not only is the story one of fine Irish heritage, it is also an all-Irish cast, with the exception of Anjelica Huston herself, and she was at least partly raised in Ireland.

The bulk of the story takes place at a party in Dublin at the beginning of 1904, a party evidently there to celebrate the Epiphany, the revelation of Christ as the son of God shortly after his birth. That’s not a mistake, since the film itself is about the lower-case epiphany of one of its characters.