Ridley Scott's horror classic Alien won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at the 52nd Academy Awards April 14, 1980. It was up against more of my favorite movies, 1941, Star Trek - The Motion Picture, and The Black Hole.
Alien was also nominated for Best Art Direction.
1941 was nominated for three Oscars including Best Cinematography and Best Sound.
The Black Hole was also nominated for Best Sound.
Star Trek - The Motion Picture was also nominated for Best Original Score and Best Art Direction.
Unfortunately, Alien's Best Visual Effects Oscar was the only one for this group.
It may not have received the best reviews, but true to the Disney spirit, it took us to some place we hadn't been before. Where The Black Hole took us...well... into a black hole, Tron took us into a computer, using computer graphics, which were ground-breaking at the time. Nowadays, those special effects seem lame but back then, they were awesome! Even now, it's great to look back and watch young Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner!
My favorite movies from 1979, another year with some great films, too many to choose just one so I picked several favorites and one guilty pleasure.
Alien starring Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt and Veronica Cartwright. It was the first horror movie that I sat through and enjoyed. It created a monster (no pun intended) as now I enjoy horror films.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture starring everybody from the original series. We had waited so long for a movie version of our favorite television show and finally got this. Not bad but it wasn't good. I often suspect they got someone who didn't like Star Trek to write the script.
1941 starring everybody. I love this movie even though it's generally considered to be not funny. And it's the only non-science fiction movie on this list! Wow!
Walt Disney's The Black Hole starring Maximillian Schell, Yvette Mimieux, Tony Perkins and Ernest Borgnine. I think Disney tried to capitalize on the whole Star Wars trend, and this was the result. However, I like the non-Roddenberry, non-Lucas approach to space travel/exploration.
Guilty pleasure: Meteor starring Sean Connery and Natalie Wood. I know it was a huge star-studded flop but I'm a sucker for disaster movies. Now it's campy fun!
With the success of "Star Wars: A New Hope", lots of studios were jumping on the space exploration band wagon. Disney released "The Black Hole" December 21, 1979. Reviews were lackluster and it did have some problems but I enjoyed it. I still watch it on occasion, even though the ending with Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell) and the robot Maximilian bothers me way too much.
