Okay, maybe I'll draw it out a little. Here are the bottom three finishers in each category:
Best Picture
Toy Story 2 12.7%
Fight Club 8.1%
Being John Malkovich 3.3%
Yep, a two-way race between Magnolia and The Matrix, with 75.9% of the vote between them. It seemed like a dead heat, as I was tabulating the ballots. Magnolia, as you might recall, won the 1990s US Bracket, while The Matrix lost in just the second round (to Eyes Wide Shut, another 1999 film!) but earned resurrection only to lose again immediately (to Hoop Dreams). Can the Wachowski's find redemption in the Retrospots?
Best Director
Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut 19.0%
David Fincher, Fight Club 15.6%
Spike Jonze, Being John Malkovich 8.7%
The same two-way race as Best Picture, but with a much smaller percentage of the vote between them (56.7%).
Best Original Screenplay
The Wachowskis, The Matrix 18.1%
Jim Jarmusch, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai 9.6%
M. Night Shyamalan, The Sixth Sense 6.5%
It's Charlie Kaufman versus Paul Thomas Anderson here, with 65.2% of the vote between them.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Andrew Stanton, Rita Hsiao, Doug Chamberlin and Chris Webb, Toy Story 2 (from characters created in the film Toy Story) 14.7%
Anthony Minghella, The Talented Mr. Ripley (from the novel by Patricia Highsmith) 7.4%
This is a race between Election, Fight Club, and The Iron Giant. I'm only showing the bottom two here because the second- and third-place finishers were separated by 0.1%. Somewhat surprising that The Iron Giant outperformed Toy Story 2 in this category, given that the latter was also a Best Picture nominee.
Best Actor
Forest Whitaker, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai 17.4%
Russell Crowe, The Insider 14.8%
Edward Norton, Fight Club 5.9%
It's the Oscar-winner, Spacey, versus cabal favorite Lavant. Place your bets, place your bets.
Best Actress
Emilie Dequenne, Rosetta 18.8%
Hillary Swank, Boys Don't Cry 17.9%
Annette Benning, American Beauty 8.4%
A very close, four-way race, but it ultimately came down to Roth and Witherspoon.
Best Supporting Actor
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Magnolia 15.0%
Hugo Weaving, The Matrix 5.5%
Another category in which the second- and third-place finishers were separated by just 0.1% even though the category itself wasn't close at all. Either Cruise, Pitt, or Rickman won it handily.
Best Supporting Actress
Julianne Moore, Magnolia 17.0%
Nicole Kidman, Eyes Wide Shut 14.5%
Helena Bonham Carter, Fight Club 13.7%
Just 0.4% separates the winner with the first runner-up. One of the dark horse candidates will prevail, either Morton or San Juan. This result ends the bid by Cruise and Kidman to become the first husband-and-wife team to win Filmspots in the same year for different films. (Note: I didn't fact-check this entirely made-up stat.)
Best Ensemble Cast
All About My Mother 16.2%
Topsy-Turvy 7.0%
The Matrix 4.0%
Can underdog Galaxy Quest really snatch this Filmspot away from the powerhouse cast of Magnolia? Stay tuned!
Best Non-English Language Film
Rosetta (directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) 14.0%
Audition (directed by Miike Takashi) 13.3%
The Wind Will Carry Us (directed by Abbas Kiarostami) 11.2%
Another category in which the Oscar-winner (this time, All About My Mother) faces off against cabal favorite Beau Travail. Place your bets, place your bets.
Best Animated Film
Fantasia 2000 (directed by Hendel Butoy and Don Hahn) 0.0%
Fantasia 2000 wins the It Was Just an Honor to Be Nominated Award, as the only nominee to receive zero votes on the final ballot. The other four nominees are separated by just 4.2% of the vote.
Best Documentary
My Best Fiend (directed by Werner Herzog) 17.1%
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (directed by Errol Morris) 8.2%
Buena Vista Social Club (directed by Wim Wenders) 5.5%
This is probably the sixth or seventh time in which a Documentary race has come down to a battle between the early favorite (American Movie) and an underseen Wiseman film (Belfast, Maine). They combined for 69.2% of the votes. We all know how this ends, right?
Best Editing
Dylan Tichenor, Magnolia 8.9%
Andrew Mondshein, The Sixth Sense 8.5%
Eric Zumbrunnen, Being John Malkovich 4.4%
This has always been The Matrix's category to lose, but Fight Club put up a great fight, to say the least.
Best Score
Don Davis, The Matrix 17.2%
Thomas Newman, American Beauty 11.7%
John Williams, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace 4.6%
The Matrix did well here with voters who voted for it in every category possible, but this was mostly just a race between Jon Brion and RZA.
Best Cinematography
Robert Elswit, Magnolia 16.2%
Newton Thomas Sigel, Three Kings 14.9%
Jeff Cronenweth, Fight Club 10.0%
It's Eyes Wide Shut versus The Matrix, in a 90s US Bracket rematch! The winner got 30.5% of the vote; the loser, 28.4%.
Best Art Direction
Alex McDowell and Jay Hart, Fight Club 16.9%
K.K. Barrett and Gene Serdena, Being John Malkovich 8.3%
Rick Heinrichs and Peter Young, Sleepy Hollow 5.2%
It's Eyes Wide Shut versus The Matrix, in a 90s US Bracket rematch! The winner got 50.2% of the vote; the loser, 19.5%. I expected Fight Club to perform much better here.
Best Year
Kirsten Dunst (for The Virgin Suicides, Dick, and Drop Dead Gorgeous) 13.6%
Sam Rockwell (for Galaxy Quest and The Green Mile) 13.6%
Spike Jonze (for Being John Malkovich, Three Kings, and Torrance Rises) 13.6%
A three-way tie for third, leaving Magnolia co-stars Cruise and Hoffman battle it out for supremacy, in a rematch of Mission: Impossible III. The movie was much more of a nail-biter.
Full results in two hours.
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