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Oscar Snubs and other Academy Mistakes


RonL21

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IIRC, the makers of BLAIR WITCH were successfully sued by the makers of a movie called THE LAST BROADCAST, which is the opposite of BLAIR WITCH in that it's a decent movie with an incredibly awful ending, instead of a boring-as-fuck movie with an awesome ending.

 

I love The Last Broadcast, but then I'm partial cause I grew up on the outskirts of the Pine Barrens...

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Watched Requiem for a Dream the first time a few weeks back and was convinced Ellen Burstyn HAD to have won for her performance there, only to look it up later and find she lost to Julia Roberts and Erin Brockovich. WTF?

 

I tend to put Roberts' as Brockovich in the same category as Bullock in The Blind Side: They won Oscars mainly for putting on Southern accents and having an attitude, which impresses the Academy more than actual, you know, acting.

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Hating on Chariots of Fire boggles my mind... and it had some really stiff competiton that year with Reds, Raiders and Atlantic City (I can live without On Golden Pond). I can see CoF winning because the there was such a split in the voting. The next year was so weird because you had Ghandi up against some lightweights in ET and Tootsie followed by some hard hitters like Missing (almost a forgotten great movie these days) and The Verdict (a movie I don't think I've watched since I was like 13) and barely remember.

 

James

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IIRC, the makers of BLAIR WITCH were successfully sued by the makers of a movie called THE LAST BROADCAST, which is the opposite of BLAIR WITCH in that it's a decent movie with an incredibly awful ending, instead of a boring-as-fuck movie with an awesome ending.

 

I love The Last Broadcast, but then I'm partial cause I grew up on the outskirts of the Pine Barrens...

 

 

I loved it until the big reveal (the execution, not the idea).

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I will concede that WALL-E suffers the same problem as Up, namely that the rest of the (very good) film can't measure up to the absolutely perfect first act (It is also, as a side note, a problem faced by Inglorious Basterds, for a completely different kind of movie) but it's still an excellent film.

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You know what? On looking at the 1982 music Oscars, I am going to argue that Tron was snubbed in both categories there too. It may be unpopular to knock on John Williams, but I really think ET isn't in his top five, and doesn't compare to Wendy Carlos's finest original work (you could argue she did better work as Walter Carlos, but it was nearly all derivative from classical.). I honestly can't comment on the other best score nods (Ghandi, Sophie's Choice, Poltergeist and An Officer and a Gentleman) but to be honest, the fact that I have seen all those movies and don't have any real memory of the music beyond one or two cues kind of damns them all in comparison to ET and Tron (and Blade Runner for that matter). And "Only Solutions" is cheesy, but I would take it over "Up Where We Belong" any day. Shit, now that I see "Eye of the Tiger" was no mend but lost, that seems like the REAL snub. Up yours, Joe Cocker. Go back to covering Traffic and the Beatles.

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Wow, five pages in and nobody has mentioned this yet:

 

Posted Image

I'll be your huckleberry.

 

Great performance, but, in the Academy's defense, the Best Supporting Actor category was loaded that year.

 

Tommy Lee Jones won for The Fugitive, and you had DiCaprio in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Fiennes in Schindler's List, Malkovich for In The Line of Fire, and Postlethwaite for In The Name of the Father.  That is one fucking loading class.

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I would easily bump Malkovich for Kilmer.

Of course, that may just be hindsight talking. Both Malkovich in IN THE LINE OF FIRE and Jones in THE FUGITIVE seem like lesser performances today, mainly because both guys would go on to give the same performance in similar roles many times over in the years that followed.

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Speaking of loaded categories, any other year Samuel L Jackson would have won best supporting actor for Pulp Fiction, but he just has to be up against Martin Landau for Ed Wood.

 

I'd say Jones deserved to win for The Fugitive since he took was what essentially a generic (if very good) Hollywood blockbuster movie and took it up a few notches. He gave a performance that outclassed the movie (Pacino in Godfather III is similar).

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I think that Shakespeare in Love winning Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan was a pretty big snub.

 

y

I don't know. I think Shakespeare In Love is all in all a better overall movie than Ryan.

 

How many people still talk about SiL?  Since the movie got all the hub hub of their award season you almost never see it on TV and it's not exactly a movie people say is a must have for their Blu Ray collection.  While you can't go a Memorial Day weekend without one of the cable channels re-airing SPR.

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Watched Requiem for a Dream the first time a few weeks back and was convinced Ellen Burstyn HAD to have won for her performance there, only to look it up later and find she lost to Julia Roberts and Erin Brockovich. WTF?

 

I tend to put Roberts' as Brockovich in the same category as Bullock in The Blind Side: They won Oscars mainly for putting on Southern accents and having an attitude, which impresses the Academy more than actual, you know, acting.

 

 

 

I agree.  On the other hand, Bullock is about to win her 2nd one and totally deserve it.  I would bet on it.

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Wow, five pages in and nobody has mentioned this yet:

 

Posted Image

I'll be your huckleberry.

 

Great performance, but, in the Academy's defense, the Best Supporting Actor category was loaded that year.

 

Tommy Lee Jones won for The Fugitive, and you had DiCaprio in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Fiennes in Schindler's List, Malkovich for In The Line of Fire, and Postlethwaite for In The Name of the Father.  That is one fucking loading class.

 

 

Would get my vote from that group.

He was only 18 or 19 at the time but that part (and the movie as a whole) are just fantastic. Who would've thought that 3 years later Arnie Grape would be playing Romeo in a big budget film?

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Someone mentioned Rocky vs Network.  I always felt like Rocky won, just because it's a borderline miracle that it's as good as it is, especially when you know the story of it's development.  Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I think the Academy realized that Rocky was great in spite of itself.

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Wasn't Taxi Driver that year?

 

Well, you brought it up...

 

Network is one of my all-time favorite films, literally one of the greatest films ever made.  And I'm biased because I work in television and I've seen how the majority of the prophecies then are standard now.

 

That being said, it's an absolute joke that Peter Finch won Best Actor for Network when he's basically the comic relief and isn't even in the majority of the film.  He was great, but he was a supporting role.  He won because he died.

 

Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle is one of the greatest performances of anything ever.  It is literally THE portrayal of loneliness.

 

And yeah, Rocky beat out two of the greatest movies ever made:  Network and Taxi Driver.  And I'd argue that All the President's Men was a better film too.

 

On a sidenote, to show you the mindset of the Oscars, Beatrice Straight won Best Supporting Actress also for Network.  She was in one scene that lasted five minutes.  It was probably shot in an afternoon.  Apparently, that was enough. 

 

And as far as Heath Ledger goes, look at the list of the other nominees that year and tell me who was legitimately better. I would have freaked out if Robert Downey Jr had won but I'm pretty sure there was no chance in hell of that happening.

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I think that Shakespeare in Love winning Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan was a pretty big snub.y

I don't know. I think Shakespeare In Love is all in all a better overall movie than Ryan.
How many people still talk about SiL? Since the movie got all the hub hub of their award season you almost never see it on TV and it's not exactly a movie people say is a must have for their Blu Ray collection. While you can't go a Memorial Day weekend without one of the cable channels re-airing SPR.
Doesn't mean it's a better movie, though.
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