A world where Gena Rowlands has an Oscar, that’s the world I want to one day live in.
The fact that John Cassavetes, David Cronenberg, David Lynch and Werner Herzog don’t even have honorary oscars is bullshit and really makes me question why an award show is so highly regarded for honoring mediocrity. I think the worst robbery is in 1985 when they had a chance to give a Best Director oscar to Akira Kurosawa, but instead gave it to Sydney Pollack.
Slumdog Millionaire is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Sean Penn was god awful as well (Milk). Rourke was robbed. After this year’s Oscars and last year’s overlooked masterpiece Zodiac, I’ve stopped caring. I don’t even bother with the show anymore. I’m sick of seeing people and films getting recognition that don’t deserve it.
One thing to remember about many, many, many oscar winners is that no one talks about most of them after they win. To quote Spike Lee: “who the fuck talks about Driving Miss Daisy nowadays?”. As well, who the fuck talks about Chicago, Crash, Million Dollar Baby, or the great Shakespeare in Love other than the fact that it won over everyone’s expectations, much like Chariots of Fire.
I’m not sure about what I thought was robbed, but I am tired of seeing Penelope Cruz, Kate Winslet, and Meryl Streep at every Oscar ceremony. They’re bait, and are usually shoe-ins as well, which is lame. How long has it been since an actor who really acted the shit out of a movie, and who also might be a first timer, won over the high order? Like Sally Field, or what should’ve been Mickey Rourke. Because it’s popular not to like Penn for winning, but seriously, he played the I Am Sam character but without being retarded.
hi
Do The Right Thing was a huge snub. its almost insulting that the only actor nominated was the white guy in the movie (not that he didn’t do a good job, but still…why not Ossie Davis or Ruby Dee nominations if you’re gonna nominate someone old who may earn a sympathy Oscar?) and that Spike Lee was only nominated in screenplay. David Lynch has had a couple of films where he’s nominated for Best Director but the film got few, if any, other nominations, so why not at least acknowledge that this decidedly against-the-grain (for 1989) film was stellar and give Lee some love? Because unlike Driving Miss Daisy, Spike Lee and his earlier films were definatley not Hollywood/Middlebrow friendly—and this is coming from someone who often likes middlebrow films! (yes, I liked Rocky!)
the Acedmy is gonna keep on doing this same old thing, and people like us are gonna keep on whining about what should be in and what shouldn’t be, but in the end none of this talk is gonna do anymore than piss us all off when we keep on thinking about what is being overlooked by EVERYONE every year.
…and i for one am probably still gonna watch the Oscars and root for the underdogs, just in case something cool happens.
Raging Bull was an infamous mistake. Looking back, no one remembers much else from that year. And, it didn’t win best picture.
didn’t the greatest show on earth win over singin in the rain?
I’m going with Pan’s Labyrinth beating Children of Men for cinematography. By the way, Children of Men is a far superior film to The Queen, and should have kicked it out of the Best Picture race to get nominated. Too bad it was released by the end of the year so that none of the damn members of the Academy could see it. They’re probably kicking themselves now.
The Oscars is a rubbishy trade show in support of foursquare marketable commodities, not art. They can still be amusing in the way a horserace can be amusing to someone who knows nothing about horses – have a quick flutter, laugh about it and move on.
Top 5 biggest upsets:
1. Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction for Best Picture 1994
2. John Wayne (True Grit) over Dustin Hoffman (Midnight Cowboy) for Best Actor 1969
3. Chariots of Fire over Reds for Best Picture 1981
4. Dead Poets Society for Best Original Screenplay over Do the Right Thing and/or Crimes and Misdemeanors 1989
5. Maximillian Schell (a great SUPPORTING performance in Judgement at Nuremberg) over Paul Newman (The Hustler) for Best Actor 1961
And over course there are the insane non-nominees: Gordon Willis for every film he photographed before Zelig; Sandra Bernhard as Best Supporting Actress for The King of Comedy; Mia Farrow for Best Actress in Rosemary’s Baby, Broadway Danny Rose or Alice; John Travolta for Best Actor in Get Shorty; Otto Preminger as Best Director for Anatomy of a Murder…blah blah blah
For me, the beginning of the absolute end was 1991; Of the four nominees for Best Actor, two played psychopaths who had taken bites out of other people, (Hopkins and DeNiro) one was Warren Beatty (whom he’s played in every-single-movie) and the other was in love with Barbara Striesand (Nick Nolte. And there’s just no excuse for that; she’s got the job covered herself). Yeesh…that line up of characters was like the jury from hell in The Devil and Daniel Webster.
Moving on in that decade, it became obvious that anything a B-minus sit-com actor like Tom Hanks could win twice in a row is just not worth dignifying with attention. His Marcel Marceau impression during the Maria Callas aria in Philadelphia is the most laughably bad moment in movie acting ever to be honored with an award—and I defy anyone on this site to quantify Hanks’ acting above what Elvis provided in Blue Hawaii.
When he was nominated for the third year in a row for Apollo 13, (which, to be fair, may have been the most real of those three performances) I gave up altogether.
Oscars, Grammys, Emmys: Not a one of those awards ceremonies means anything to me.
Umm… the Coen Brothers over Paul Thomas Anderson two years ago for best picture and best director.
This classifies as a robbery.
Ordinary People over Raging Bull.
Rocky over Taxi Driver
Kramer vs. Kramer over Apocalypse Now
American Beauty winning an Academy Award..
Also, this has nothing to do with anything— but I love Sophia Loren’s reaction when Roberto Benigni won.
Brokeback Mountain’s loss as best film was heartbreaking for gay and lesbian folk everywhere. Much more than just a cult favorite, it was a significantly finer film than Crash. Crash is mostly forgotten already, but Brokeback Mountain will linger in the hearts and minds of many of us for a lifetime. Hollywood, always more conservative than USA right-wingers would have it, seems unable still to come to grips with homosexuality. Another truly sad loss was that of Bette Davis, whose performance of a lifetime as Margo Channing in All About Eve was clearly surperior to that of Judy Holiday, although probably a split vote between Davis and Gloria Swanson accounts for the loss.
Halle Berry in Monsters Ball
Jack Palance in City Slickers
Really nice discussion going on here.
Best Picture
Rocky over Network in ’76.
Crash! I cannot believe it won Best Picture, I honestly thought it was terrible.
Slumdog over Milk!
Driving Miss Daisy!
Best Actor
I like to think Penn (Dead Man Walking) was robbed in ‘96 when Cage won Best Actor for Leaving Las Vegas. I don’t mind Cage’s performance, but I do not think it was worthy of beating out Penn.
Best Supporting Actor
I thought Ledger winning this year was quite overrated.
there a lot of them, many already mentioned.
crash piece of crap over brokeback mountain
gladiator all five noms that year were ordinary
titantic over l.a. confidential, boogie nights not even nominated for shame
ben hur a big piece of doody that was the year that some like it hot, and northby northwest weren’t even nominated. for shame.
pulp fiction losing to forest gump. give me a break
hilary swank winning over imelda staunton’s magnificent performance in vera drake
julia roberts winning over ellen burstyn’s extraordinary performance requiem for a dream
Cate Blanchett in her worst performance in The Aviator over virginia madsen in sideways. parody over subtlety.
dancers with wolves over goodfellas
ordinary people over raging bull
the greatest piece of shit, oh i mean the greatest show on earth. Singing in the rain not even nominated for shame
helen hunt, t.v. sitcom crap actress actually has an Oscar
robin williams over burt reynolds for boogie nights
kim basinger over Julianne Moore, Boogie Nights
and on and on.
Denzel
Marisa Tomei’s performance in MY COUSIN VINNY did not deserve an Oscar.
Gladiator winning best picture in 2001 over Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I really like Gladiator but it’s not in the same league as CTHD.
I guess it won best foreign language film, but I think the film transcends language and should have won best picture.
If I may go a bit further back, I’ll say How Green Was My Valley over Citizen Kane.
@ MICHAEL SAJKOWICZ — True, but her performances in In the Bedroom and The Wrestler did. She’s made up for a fault not really her own by being a better actress in the ensuing years.
Kill me for saying it, but I loved Crash a lot. I was happy to sse it beat Brokeback, although that’s a great movie also.
I’m going to throw my money behind Crash and say that I liked it too. I found it a lot more entertaining than Gladiator, Chicago, A Beautiful Mind, the Departed so don’t quite understand the vitriol against it.
No Country For Old Men seemed like a chance to award the Coens as they briefly put their perceived career slide on hold and made something critics liked, before the Academy had to award them 10 years down the line for a really disappointing film (a la Scorsese from the previous year). Personally I’ve never really got the Coens and although Fargo, Blood Simple and Barton Fink are perfectly enjoyable pictures, I don’t get their indie kings status. The Assassination of Jesse James and There Will Be Blood are two of the greatest films of the decade and were criminally overlooked, as was Casey Affleck’s performance in the former.
Rain Man I thought was an awful mentally-disabled-by-numbers film as well and thought giving Hoffman an award would have sufficed.
Helen Hunt over Judi Dench? This mistake wasn’t rectified by awarding the latter for 8 minutes of screen time in one of her least remarkable performances in the dreadful Shakespeare in Love.
Finally, although I don’t begrudge her an Oscar, I thought the runaway success of Helen Mirren for The Queen was a bit over the top given that Penelope Cruz (Volver), Judi Dench (Notes on a Scandal) and Kate Winslet (Little Children) all gave fantastic performances and any one of them could have snatched it from her. But hell, they all have one now so I’m sure they’re over it. Sadder still was that Laura Dern wasn’t even nominated for her spellbinding turn in Inland Empire.
Nice call Laura Dern was magnificent in inland Empire. Although i must say that Penelope Cruz for Vicky Cristina was un called for. Another Allen cast member steals an Oscar!
Forgot to add Braveheart onto my list as the least deserving Oscar winner ever for its completely ridiculous revisionist history of the William Wallace story. As a Scot myself I found his claim to have found some sort of real truth (presumably as opposed to an English viewpoint) in the opening preamble insulting given his lack of commitment to fact (the Battle of Stirling Bridge is recreated without any mention of a bridge, the sacking of York way further south than Wallace ever reached and some trumped up romance with a French princess just after his wife’s throat was slit!). I’m not normally a stickler for historical fact in drama but when the director goes out of there way to impress upon you that what you see is true and those who disagree are liars, higher expectations are not unrealistic. Also, from a social point of view I saw it launch a new wave of racist nationalism against the English in my home country that was wholly disgusting. I can only hope Mel Gibson trips over his Oscar one day and causes himself an injury.
That said, 1995 seems to have been a very weak field. I can’t see him having won in any other year.
There is honestly something every Oscar year that is incomprehendable to me so i just expect it to happen and it begins automatically with a wtf in the nomination itself – frankly, it sets the stage for it to happen with a win and we can definitely sense where they are going with the popular vote winner. Maybe the Independent Spirit awards is meant to be for the more worthy candidate these days. I definitely feel Melissa Leo was the rightful win for their category but I do see that it could be considered a lifetime acheivement win at the Oscars for Winslet.
I was actually appalled at the ‘new’ arrangement for the Oscars last year. I mean, it’s nice to see some appearances by actors giving shout-outs to their peers, but don’t try to have them explain a movie that they possibly haven’t seen and can stutter on to highlight a performance for someone when it is ‘their’ moment. No clip even, for shame.
I tend to look for performances that you can match up at any given year and it’s tough to choose all over again, whether the movie is bad or not, irreverent. Also, I look at Beatrice Straight winning for her 10 or so min screen time on Network (excellent film, popular that year) and say as good as that brief time shown, does it really compare in criteria to Piper Laurie, for instance, who certainly had more meat to chew on and had been in the industry for 20+ yrs without an Oscar win as well? or Jodie Foster doing a rather stark and disturbing portrayal at 15 – perhaps the industry already felt they gave it to a younger actress a few years back (O’Neal) and didn’t want to repeat the early age range again.
I’m all for giving ‘post’ awards for what the Oscars originally gave in error and where they admit their head was up their collective arses. Maybe they can also give retributory fines to the actors that couldn’t achieve that ‘win’ amount raise because of the failing logic on their part. Especially with women roles, sometimes a missed opportunity really means years before you see a decent role again or are offered it first with no audition needed.
Interesting would be to see the BAFTAs that were injust too.
I think of Clint Eastwood, common man ( I believe worked in construction before landing his first gig) becomes diverse actor, turned down a role in Any Given Sunday because he couldn’t direct it too. Directs a very moving movie “Million Dollar Baby” amongst others and elected mayor of Carmel, California in (I think) 1986. This is a mere particle of what this man has done in the film industry and community. I admire his bio and contributions.
eric felberg
I have to disagree with Ryan and Lee about the Matrix vs Episode I. The matrix was one of the most visually raw and stylish big effects movies ever. Episode I was technically impressive, but it looked too much like a disney version of Eps IV – VI. From the very first scene with Trinity and the cops, the Matrix was obviously so new. Jar Jar wasn’t much more than a cute velociraptor with pants. I think maybe the Academy thought ILM had enough statues already.
One thing to remember is that the Academy membership skews way old. My dad loves Shakespeare in Love. Watches it all the time. He also loved Chicago. (and all musicals, and doesn’t think they’re at all gay.) There will always be a demographic disconnect between the general public and the Academy.