Roberto Remigio Benigni is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and director. He gained international recognition for writing, directing and starring in the Holocaust comedy-drama film Life Is Beautiful (1997), for which he received the Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best International Feature Film. Benigni remains the only actor to win the Best Actor Academy Award for a non-English language performance.
Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 period romantic comedy film directed by John Madden, written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, and produced by Harvey Weinstein. It stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, Ben Affleck and Judi Dench.
Life Is Beautiful is a 1997 Italian comedy-drama film directed by and starring Roberto Benigni, who co-wrote the film with Vincenzo Cerami. Benigni plays Guido Orefice, a Jewish Italian bookshop owner, who employs his imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp. The film was partially inspired by the book In the End, I Beat Hitler by Rubino Romeo Salmonì and by Benigni's father, who spent two years in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II.
The year 1998 in film involved many significant films, including Shakespeare in Love, Saving Private Ryan, Armageddon, American History X, The Truman Show, Primary Colors, Rushmore, Rush Hour, There's Something About Mary, The Big Lebowski, and Terrence Malick's directorial return in The Thin Red Line. DreamWorks SKG released its first two animated films: Antz and The Prince of Egypt, the latter becoming the inaugural winner of the Critics' Choice Award for Best Animated Feature. The Pokémon theatrical film series started with Pokémon: The First Movie. Warner Bros. Pictures celebrated its 75th anniversary.
Gods and Monsters is a 1998 period drama film written and directed by Bill Condon, based on Christopher Bram's 1995 novel Father of Frankenstein. The film stars Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave, Lolita Davidovich, and David Dukes. Its plot is a partly fictionalized account of the last days of the life of film director James Whale (McKellan), known for directing Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). A veteran of World War I, the aged Whale develops a complicated relationship with his gardener, Clayton Boone (Fraser), a fictitious character originally created by Bram for the source novel.
Antz is a 1998 American computer-animated adventure comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and Pacific Data Images and released by DreamWorks Pictures. It was directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson from a screenplay by Todd Alcott, Chris Weitz, and Paul Weitz. The film features the voices of Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Jennifer Lopez, Sylvester Stallone, Christopher Walken, Dan Aykroyd, Anne Bancroft, Danny Glover and Gene Hackman. Some of the main characters share facial similarities with the actors who voice them. The film involves an anxious worker ant, Z (Allen), who falls in love with Princess Bala (Stone). When the treacherous scheming of the arrogant officer General Mandible (Hackman) threatens to wipe out the entire worker population, Z must save the ant colony from the flooded tunnel and strives to make social inroads.
The 71st Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best of 1998 in film and took place on March 21, 1999, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards in 24 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Gil Cates and directed by Louis J. Horvitz. Actress Whoopi Goldberg hosted the show for the third time. She first hosted the 66th ceremony held in 1994 and had last hosted the 68th ceremony in 1996. Nearly a month earlier in a ceremony held at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on February 27, the Academy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by host Anne Heche.
The 3rd Florida Film Critics Circle Awards, given on 12 January 1999, honored the best in film for 1998.
The 2nd Toronto Film Critics Association Awards, honoring the best in film for 1998, were held on 16 December 1998.
The 64th New York Film Critics Circle Awards, honoring the best in film for 1998, were announced on 16 December 1998 and given on 10 January 1999.
The 24th Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, honoring the best in film for 1998, were voted on in December 1998. The awards were presented Jan. 20 1999 at the Bel Age Hotel.
The 70th National Board of Review Awards, honoring the best in filmmaking in 1998, were announced on 8 December 1998 and given on 8 February 1999.
The 3rd San Diego Film Critics Society Awards, given by the San Diego Film Critics Society on 18 December 1998, honored the best in film for 1998.
The 11th Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, given on 1 March 1999, honored the finest achievements in 1998 filmmaking.
The 19th Boston Society of Film Critics Awards honored the best films of 1998. The awards were given on 13 December 1998.
The 3rd Golden Satellite Awards, given by the International Press Academy, honored the best in film and television for 1998.
Paolo Virzì is an Italian film director, writer and producer.
The 33rd National Society of Film Critics Awards, given on 3 January 1999, honored the best filmmaking of 1998.
The 51st Writers Guild of America Awards, given in 1999, honored the film and television best writers of 1998.
