I nominate this thread for the Hall of Shame. It is guilty on one account of being pro Cast Away.
Since when was it all about winning awards, anyway?
Hall of Shame
who cares about the Oscars?
(but I do enjoy watching them)
Mister bob, I’m saying it isn’t about the awards the merit a film’s greatness. It’s how well time treats it, and people are the ones who control that.
}}}}}}}Hall of shame nomination accepted.
i despise the oscars not only on principle but all those enormous egos are difficult to endure in one sitting.
Despite people’s feelings on the Oscars it’s not going to make them not exist or demerit their worth in certain circles. It goes without saying that a Best Picture winner will definitely generate a certain amount of movie goers regardless of it being “worthy”. That being said, I think it’s a fine thread, for celebrating what performances or film experiences moved you the most in a particular year.
I agree that Saving Private Ryan is a much more intense experience, and I agree that my tastes lie more with that film than Shakespeare, but it’s hard to deny the creativity in retelling the ol “boy meets girl” tale by completely taking liberties with history.
This year is a bit of a mixed bag. I think that when the hype surrounding Slumdog Millionaire dies down people will realize that it’s not quite as amazing as it’s made out to be, (though I wouldn’t knock any of Boyle’s work. I think he’s quite enjoyable.) Personally, I don’t think Frost/Nixon should be nominated for Best Picture or Director as there were many other deserving films that could use that spot.
I think my biggest snub I can think of was actually at the Golden Globes when Richard Gere won Best Actor in Chicago over Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love. But that just goes to show that your personal reaction to a film isn’t necessarily shared by the masses, which makes discussing films quite difficult sometimes.
Thank you.
>>But the biggest snub in recent Oscar history (bigger than Denzel winning for his stereotypical turn in Training Day) is Crash winning over Brokeback Mountain. People still remember this one. It was when I lost respect for the Oscars.<<
I guess I lost respect for the Oscars way long ago. I was one of the few people I know who was completely unsurprised that BROKEBACK did not win the Oscar. Disappointed, yes, but unsurprised …
To me the worst oscar snubs were Rocky, over Taxi Driver, Ordinary People, over Raging Bull, and Dances with Wolves over Goodfellas, none of those winners are really good movies and yet some how they triumphed over three of cinemas masterpiece ( yes I know this is all Scorsese but he is still my favorite director) also I would say Chicago over Gangs of New York. Also Scorsese in general was the victim of the oscars worst snub lasting thirty years, that’s how you know that you can’t trust the Oscars.
I’ve always taken Ebert’s advice concerning the Oscars to heart: “Substitute ‘Biggest’ for ‘Best’ and you know exactly who is going to win ‘Best Picture.’”
Since I read that sage advice, I haven’t sat down to watch the Oscars since the late 90s, and it has been dead on. Whichever film had the biggest budget or the longest (post-) production will win in that category. I’ll spoil this year’s now & tell you that it will be BENJAMIN BUTTON.
The rest will be apportioned in an attempt to assauge repressed guilt at having to snub transparently great/better films. Best Oscar for sound/editing/supporting actor go to these films. THE DARK KNIGHT or SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE will grab the Editing oscar precisely because the Best Picture is a hollywood-ego-circle-jerk lock. If you went to an American high school, think student council elections featuring celebrity/producer jocks and cheerleaders duking it out, annoying each other, and pulling favors to win self-congratulatory, nominal posts.
The snub that galls me: whichever films were in competition with A BEAUTIFUL MIND should each win concillatory Irving Thalberg awards for having to compete with a straight face against that piece of garbage.
Also: English and Indian films would have better luck in the “Foreign Language” category if they weren’t already restricted when not shot in Hindi/Gudjarati/Gaelic/Welsh. Since these are products from other studio systems, their films are longshots for awards. Oscars are specifically designed for Hollywood to congratulate itself; not to award foreign studios, except in one carefully delimited minor award category: “Foreign Language.”
I agree A Beautiful Mind was quickly forgettable, and had it not won Best Picture would be left on the slate of mediocre dramas that Ron Howard has left behind (The Missing anyone? Ransom? Hmm.)
On a somewhat related sidenote, I recently went through to see how many of the Best Pictures I’ve seen (41), and was surprised to see that I hadn’t seen many from the 80s. For whatever reason I have a hard time hyping myself up for the uber-dramas that dominated that decade. But I found it fun to pick and choose my favorites of what has won Best Picture over the last 81 years (out of what has won, not what should’ve won). My picks:
It Happened One Night
Casablanca
Marty
The Apartment
The Godfather
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Unforgiven
American Beauty
No Country for Old Men
This is the Academy that has given two Oscars for Best Direction to Clint Eastwood, and never awarded the same statues to Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, or Stanley Kubrick. Kevin Spacey — two Oscars. Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton, Johnny Depp, Carole Lombard, Cary Grant, Greta Garbo — none.
Oscars. Ha.
Chicago. best picture?
Crash over Brokeback Mountain. That was a true disgrace and the reason I stopped watching the Oscars completely. They have no credibility. When you look back over the years at the horrible choices made and the great films and performances passed over. There should be a poll taken with all Academy members who voted for Rainman for Best Picture to see if have ever sat down and watched it ever again, ditto with A Beautiful Mind or Forrest Gump for that matter. Where was 2001’s Best Picture nomination? The Academy Awards are nothing but a glam fest for the Hollywood elite and have no true merrit.
I love this thread….and agree with each one of you that quoted people should return the statuettes, having said that the academy also had some memorable moments, like lifetime achievements for Fellini, Satyajit Ray, Chaplin, Altman spot on…but missing on movies by Truffaut, Godard, Kubrick, Hitchcock is a sacrilege of epic proportions
1980 – Ordinary People won over Ragin Bull
1976 – Rocky beat out Network
1977 – Annie Hall won over Star Wars
2005 – Crash won over Brokeback Mountain
Clint Eastwood won best director for Million Dollar Baby over Martin Scorcese for The Aviator ( a year later, Scorcese finally got his best director nod for the more inferior The Departed, but he deserved Oscars for Aviator and Goodfellas).
Denzel Washington won best actor award for the formulaic, inferior popcorn movie “Training Day” when he should have won best actor a year prior for “The Hurricane.”
“How Green Was My Valley” won best picture over “Citizen Kane.” But John Ford was the favored director, and “Valley” was an excellent film.
There’s too many others to name.
A trend I’ve noticed with Oscars is that what’s happening in the world really affects the winner of Best Picture. Case and point is Rocky winning over the greatly other superior films that year. The Vietnam war just ended, Nixon just resigned after the Watergate scandal, and I’d say America was feeling pretty beat up and dejected. I can see how they could get behind the underdog of Rocky’s nature, especially since the other filmes (Taxi Driver, Network, All the President’s Men) were very dark and bleek looks at our society. Over 30 years later, it hasn’t stood the test of time. It’s a product of its era.
I’m sure that’s the case with a lot of the wins over the years, (I would argue that point with the Crash/Brokeback Mountain win too.) Not to mention the massive amount of politics that go into picking the winners.
Going My Way won over Double Indemnity.
As I have already posted my feelings about the Oscars on one of the other threads, I will just say here that the Oscars for best picture, and the other major awards tend to always go to something (or someone) with sweeping sentimentality over substance and quality. One of the best examples off the top of my head, as so many have already been mentioned, and there are hundreds more examples, is awarding the best picture award to Oliver in 1968. There was an obscure film you may have heard of that also came out that year called 2001. The only awards they seem to sometimes get it right are the technical awards: film editing, cinematography, set design, etc., as they are more likely to be based on something besides the sentimentality factor.
2001, the movie everyone remembers. Timeless, like all Kubrick Films.
It proves the post correct that it is the films that don’t win awards stand the test of time, for cinema as a language is eternal. Agreeing with Bob Stutsman here, awards that matter are technical ones.
Awards and critic’s list are great, because they foster debate and generally recognize great film making. To me the nominations are more important than who actually wins as I view them as a collective group, but every year I do watch the Oscars and generally go, “WTF!” in one or two categories. This year’s biggest snub to me was Woody’s non-nomination for best screenplay. How can you win a Golden Globe, and not even be nominated for an Oscar?
Can we please get rid of the Short Films category. Does anyone even see these before the nominations come out? And if this category did mean something, why is every acceptance speech prefaced with, “I’d like to thank the academy, and beg that this genre continues to get support and funding…blah, blah, blah, blah.” Every 20 years, a GREAT short film comes along (Red Balloon), so why do we recognize these EVERY year. The oscars always run over time, so lets just cut this category and save 5-8 minutes.
IMO, I felt that Saving Private Ryan WAS NOT a better film than Shakespeare in Love. Maybe better content, but not a better movie.
@Joe-Annie Hall is a better film than Star Wars. That award was deserved.
I agree, Annie Hall deserved to win that year.
Star wars was something new and special for cinema, but I would agree that Annie Hall deserved it just as much. It was an amazing achievement in screenplay. Not many can match it in my opinion.
It’s easy to see which films were more prevalent in retrospect. In the case of Oliver! vs. 2001, (and this is only speculation,) I’m willing to bet that the voters (and the world for that matter) hadn’t quite absorbed the massive effects it would have on cinema. I’m sure it was just as big of an experience, if not moreso, when it came out, but since then it’s had so much time to be studied and be the source of influence. If the Academy voters could go back in time and revote, I bet they would change a lot of their choices.
It’s funny how quickly blockbusters disappeared from the Best Picture category. I think E.T. was the last true blockbuster to be nominated? I may need to check my sources before committing to that statement.
I’m a huge Star Wars nerd, but, yeah, Annie Hall is way better than Star Wars.
The Oscars is a piece of shit, they put the eye, in the big productions, and everytime they win the celebritys.
Cannes kick ass
@Landen-Titantic. Also if I remember correctly(and I don’t always) 2001 was not reviewed that well at the time of release but has grown in stature since.
@Julian-Translate. They put the eye? I don’t understand what that means.And big productions are not always the norm. The only real big production nominated is Benjamin Button this year.
@Steve: I think you’re right, which proves my point two-fold because I was thinking of people like Speilberg speak of seeing 2001 as a life changing experience, but that just effects my retrospect opinion of the film. And I can’t believe I forgot about Titanic! (perhaps I’m just bitter about LA Confidential not winning…)
How odd do you think Alec Guinness felt when he was nominated for best supporting actor for Star Wars when he so publicly defecated it?
Alanedit
Here is a post dedicated to the oscar snubbed, and the oscar should’ve been over eventual winners. Seems to be a good topic of discourse, we’re in awards season.
Remember…Shakespeare in love? dunno, how bout Saving Private Ryan? oh yes you do. It’s widely regarded as the better film between the two. Oscars have always done this, and missed the boat on what constitutes a great movie. Under this pretense, I order a return of the best picture oscar to the better movie.
Who won for best actor in 2001? Russell Crowe for Maximus. Glorious character, better performance in The Insider. It could be said Tom Hanks had a helluba harder job playing the character in Cast Away. I judge the best actor based on technical and emotional effectiveness. This snub is no exception.
Oscars 2007, Pan’s Labirynth wins cinematography honors over Children of Men. Bourne wins editing over…Children of men.
But the biggest snub in recent Oscar history (bigger than Denzel winning for his stereotypical turn in Training Day) is Crash winning over Brokeback Mountain. People still remember this one. It was when I lost respect for the Oscars. It’s fun to watch, but nowhere near do the films that stand the test of time a signal of how many awards they get. There’s a slight chance Slumdog Millionare will it all, but will be quickly forgotten. What I think makes a movie great is how far it expands cinematic language, and how unique it tells the story. That’s why we go back and watch 2001, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, and many others because this is what they achieved. Films don’t impact the medium anymore, sorry to be grim. It’s a sign of the times, good films are still made, but elevated to greatness is not a badge of greatness. Dark Knight is a film 94% of people at rotten tomatoes liked, yet because it’s a pop culture film it isn’t taken seriously as greatness. I’ve seen a few posts here calling it overrated, when in ten years we’ll be talking about it and not any of those nominees except maybe Benjamin Button.
There are countless other examples, feel free to add yours. They’re just awards, but it goes without saying that it ain’t the Oscars that merit a film’s greatness, for the movies that end up as the greatest are not the Oscar winners.
If there is a post like this, please forgive me. Put me in the hall of shame.
I misspelled statuettes.