61st National Board of Review Awards
Best Picture:
Driving Miss Daisy
The 61st National Board of Review Awards, honoring the best in filmmaking in 1989, were announced on 13 December 1989 and given on 26 February 1990.
Michelle Marie Pfeiffer is an American actress. One of Hollywood's most bankable stars during the 1980s and 1990s, her performances have earned her numerous accolades including a Golden Globe Award and a British Academy Film Award, as well as nominations for three Academy Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award.
Jessie Alice Tandy was a British actress. She appeared in over 100 stage productions and had more than 60 roles in film and TV, receiving an Academy Award, four Tony Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. She won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for playing Blanche DuBois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, also winning for The Gin Game and Foxfire. Her films included Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, Cocoon, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Nobody's Fool. At 80, she became the oldest actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Driving Miss Daisy.
Driving Miss Daisy is a 1989 American comedy drama film directed by Bruce Beresford and written by Alfred Uhry, based on his 1987 play. The film stars Jessica Tandy, Morgan Freeman, and Dan Aykroyd. Freeman reprised his role from the original Off-Broadway production.
The Fabulous Baker Boys is a 1989 American romantic comedy drama musical film written and directed by Steve Kloves. The film follows a piano act consisting of two brothers, who hire an attractive female singer to help revive their waning career. After a period of success, complications ensue when the younger brother develops romantic feelings for the singer. Brothers Jeff Bridges and Beau Bridges star as the eponymous Baker Boys, while Michelle Pfeiffer plays lounge singer Susie Diamond.
Joanna Gleason is a Canadian-American actress and singer. She is a Tony Award–winning musical theatre actress and has also had a number of notable film and TV roles. She is known for originating the role of the Baker's Wife in Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods for which she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. She is also known for her film work in Mike Nichols' Heartburn (1986), Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997). She has had television roles in shows such as ER, Friends, The West Wing, The Good Wife and The Affair.
Crimes and Misdemeanors is a 1989 American existential comedy drama film written and directed by Woody Allen, who stars alongside Martin Landau, Mia Farrow, Anjelica Huston, Jerry Orbach, Alan Alda, Sam Waterston, and Joanna Gleason.
Running on Empty is a 1988 American drama film directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Naomi Foner and starring River Phoenix, Judd Hirsch, Christine Lahti, and Martha Plimpton. It was produced by Lorimar Film Entertainment. It is the story of a counterculture couple on the run from the FBI, and how one of their sons starts to break out of this fugitive lifestyle.
The 62nd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 1989 and took place on March 26, 1990, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles beginning at 6:00 p.m. PST / 9:00 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards in 23 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Gil Cates and directed by Jeff Margolis. Actor Billy Crystal hosted the show for the first time. Three weeks earlier, in a ceremony held at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California on March 3, the Academy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by hosts Richard Dysart and Diane Ladd.
The 15th Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards were announced on 16 December 1989 and given on 16 January 1990.
The 10th Boston Society of Film Critics Awards honored the best filmmaking of 1989. The awards were given in 1990.
Movie Love: Complete Reviews 1988–1991 (1991) is the 11th and last collection of film reviews by the critic Pauline Kael and covers the period from October 1988 to March 1991, when she chose to retire from her regular film reviewing duties at The New Yorker. In the "Author's Note" that begins the anthology, Kael writes that this period had "not been a time of great moviemaking fervor", but "what has been sustaining is that there is so much to love in movies besides great moviemaking."
The following is a list of the Top 10 Films chosen annually by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, beginning in 1929.
The 55th New York Film Critics Circle Awards honored the best filmmaking of 1989. The winners were announced on 18 December 1989 and the awards were given on 14 January 1990.
Driving Miss Daisy is a play by American playwright Alfred Uhry, about the relationship of an elderly Southern Jewish woman, Daisy Werthan, and her African-American chauffeur, Hoke Coleburn, from 1948 to 1973. The play was the first in Uhry's Atlanta Trilogy, which deals with Jewish residents of that city in the early 20th century. The play won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The 24th National Society of Film Critics Awards, given on 8 January 1990, honored the best filmmaking of 1989.
Susie Diamond is a fictional character who appears in the romantic musical comedy-drama film The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989). Portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer, Susie is a former escort who becomes a professional lounge singer when she is hired to help revitalize the career of The Fabulous Baker Boys, a waning piano duo consisting of brothers Jack and Frank Baker. Susie's addition to the group benefits both the trio's career and her own, but she also inadvertently generates conflict between the two brothers as Frank strongly disapproves of Jack's romantic interest in Susie, ultimately jeopardizing both the brothers' relationship with each other and the trio's future as a musical act.
Lili Fini Zanuck is an American film producer and director.