I used to make an effort to get to the theater to see all five Oscar films before the ceremony. Looking back on those years through glasses smudged with the fingerprints of two grabby toddlers, it wasn’t that much of an effort after all. But even if getting to a movie theater these days didn’t involve an absurd symphony of conspirators, bribes and logistics, the Oscar race of 2009 would have marked the end of my quest to watch ’em all.
Ten films to be nominated for Best Picture? I am never one to pine for a golden age of film or ballplayers when they “still told good stories” and “played the right way” but even the most ardent supporter of the current cinema cannot possibly think there are 10 films out there worth nominating for best picture. Can they?
Well, here, I have to leave a wide berth to stand corrected. I haven’t seen one critically acclaimed film in a theater this year and am just getting into the 2009 portion of the Netflix queue, so maybe there are 10 worthy choices out there. But whenever I find there is a great film that is shut out, it’s rarely because it got squeezed by 5 other great ones – it’s because there is some idiotic choice in there. I recently devoured Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris. If a truly worthy film gets denied, it’s usually by a “Dr. Dolittle.”
I know we often discuss the futility of debating the MVP and Cy Young awards. The criteria are opaque and the judges are inaccessible. Yet the MVP award is a freshly Windexed pane and the sportswriters are your first cousins compared to Oscar. If debating the MVP is futile, debating the Oscars is masochistic.
But in the same way that Jeter’s 1999 and 2006 MVP robberies will always stick in my craw, Gladiator felling Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or (insert your big disappointment here) will always feel like a typo in the history book. I want history to reflect – and validate I guess – my interpretation of reality. And when there is some cognitive chasm, I tend to wail about it. So here come this year’s nominations, anything to wail about?
Crash winning in '06 was when I completely stopped taking it seriously...because that was one of the 10 most indefensibly awful movies I have ever seen.
I've seen all of 2 of this year's (Inglorious Basterds and A Serious Man) nominees, although I plan on watching Hurt Locker, Up, and An Education before the ceremony.
I have always been an Oscars groupie but after 81 or 82, I never took them seriously, although I had fun gettin pissed anyway...LOL
[2] oh absolutely, I'll get into them and make an effort to see a bunch of the noms. But Shakespeare in Love over Private Ryan shook my faith in them, and Crash just destroyed it.
But sometimes they can surprise you, like Silence of the Lambs or American Beauty (which I still like) pulling it out.
honestly, as long as Jeff Bridges and Christoph Waltz win, I'll be ok
[1] Crash made me wretch, that was a tough one. I lost the Pool that year because I refused to believe it would win.
[2] My wife converted me into a massive fan of Oscar night. She used to live out in LA for awhileand she brought enthusiasm for the Oscars and In 'N Out burger back east.
[3] Shakespeare in Love may not have been the winner in Private Ryan's year, but I've seen it a bunch of times and it really stands up. Tom Stoppard's amazing script and a really tight thrilling story make it for me, a worthy consideration and low on the list of disappointments. Crash on the other hand... I wouldn't watch that again if the only other thing on was NESN classics 2004 edition.
The nomnations:
http://tinyurl.com/y92d7c5
And the only best pic I've seen is Up. Which was great and I'm glad to see the Academy used the extra slots to consider an animated film. That could be a decent outcome of the expansion - elite comedies, documentaries and animated films snagging nominations.
Then again, they also filled up an extra slot with The Blind Side.
[5] Shakespeare In Love was very good, I just didn't think it should have won. But you can definitely make a strong case for it. But as you said Crash, just...oooph. Especially when you consider what it beat.
I haven't been to the theater in years. Too many remakes or sequels, or variations on Die Hard (more shooting! more explosions!) or else the story just doesn't interest me.
When Out of Africa won over The Color Purple is when I stopped taking it seriously.
Anyone read that book about the '67 Best Picture nominees?? "Pictures at a Revolution"? I've been meaning to pick it up, supposed to be really good
The classic is Dances With Wolves over Goodfellas. It had lasting implications cause then the academy was under the gun for the next twenty years to get Scorcese a Best Picture win, even as his films deserved it less and less. *
And as if to "take it to the next level" of perversion, they gave it to him for an inferior (for him) crime movie instead of one of his Oscar bait projects like The Aviator. It's almost as if the were giving a career Oscar and felt obliged to do it in Scorcese's genre of record.
Crash was probably the nadir, at least I'll hope so. I think Annie Hall winning may be the high point (that I'm aware of).
Jon .... coincidentally, I linked that MP bit to THIS story yesterday on Facebook.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/world/africa/01safrica.html
I lost faith in the Oscars with Titanic .... as spectacle it was ... spectacular, but ....
And oh yeah .... District 9 gets nominated for best picture??? Really?
[11] I'm a Titanic defender, even though you can definitely make a case for L.A. Confidential.
I mean I don't think Titanic is any worse than "Ben-Hur" or "Patton" as far as "epics" are concerned. Plus when you look at what it beat, L.A.C. is really the only one you can actually see winning. At the time everyone loved "Good Will Hunting", but I'm sorry it just doesn't hold up. As for "As Good As It Gets" and "The Full Monty"...c'mon.
[13]
Private Ryan was "epic" too, but it at least had good acting and a plot you cared about. :-)
[11] & [13} I'm a Titanic detractor and defender. I didn't like it, but the fact that it is so beloved makes me think so many people can't be wrong...
I'm not saying they should always win, but Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Wars shouldn't be dismissed as fluff.
9) Yeah, Jon mentioned it in the post. It's a fun book. Worth a read for sure.
how has no one mentioned Gump over Pulp Fiction and Shawshank yet?
Well neither Citizen Kane or The Maltese Falcon won it either in 1941...
[9] That book was terrific. Especially if you like to learn about the ups and downs of the behind the scenes stuff. The hypothetical casting considerations seem sacriligious in retrospect....
The Sound of Music over Dr. Zhivago is a pretty God awful selection (yes I've spent the past 20 minutes on Wikipedia)
It's all bunk. I've always enjoyed Katharine Hepburn's quote "Acting is the most minor of gifts. After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four." : D
Don't forget what Graham Greene said about Shirley Temple.
His review of "Wee Willie Winkie" found him in court for libel.
Here was the key passage:
"The owners of a child star are like leaseholders -- their property diminishes in value every year. Time's chariot is at their back; before them acres of anonymity. Miss Shirley Temple's case, though, has a peculiar interest: infancy is her disguise, her appeal is more secret and more adult. Already two years ago she was a fancy little piece (real childhood, I think, went out after The Littlest Rebel). In Captain January she wore trousers with the mature suggestiveness of a Dietrich: her neat and well-developed rump twisted in the tap-dance: her eyes had a sidelong searching coquetry. Now in Wee Willie Winkie, wearing short kilts, she is completely totsy. Watch her swaggering stride across the Indian barrack-square: hear the gasp of excited expectation from her antique audience when the sergeant's palm is raised: watch the way she measures a man with agile studio eyes, with dimpled depravity. Adult emotions of love and grief glissade across the mask of childhood, a childhood that is only skin-deep.?It is clever, but it cannot last. Her admirers -- middle-aged men and clergymen -- respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire."
Hey, Now...
[12] Why not? It was better than Avatar anyway. I'd say on a par with Inglourious Basterds. I didn't see the others.
[22] When was that published? Hilarious.
So now 10 movies get "Best Picture" nominations. Soon they'll be having the 64th and 65th-best movies compete in a "play-in" to face the #1 seed.
[18] Ugh. I understand what happened with Citizen Kane; a concerted effort to keep the film from being shown, then tar and feather all involved after it debuted. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But if they had wanted to appear fair and justified, Maltese Falcon would have been a no-brainer. How Green Was My Valley was just cutting off your nose to spite your face. I could never sit through a full showing of that without falling asleep. Geez, even Stagecoach was better, and that's saying a lot.
[22] Libel was all he was charged with? Wowzers. If I was the leaseholder, he'd be on the ground with a bloody newspaper in his mouth; black and blue and red all over...
How about driving Miss Daisy winning over Born on the Fourth of July and Field of Dreams in 1989. That was pretty bad.
The English Patient winning over Jerry Maguire and Fargo was also a pretty bad decision. I'm also they guy who flet the MTV Awards in the mid 90's better reflected the movies people were actually going to see at theaters.
[22] Sounds like some creepy projectionism. Very creepy.
27) 1937, I believe.
[28] But what would be the difference between that and a legitimate theory? I can't tell.
I've seen all of the nominees except avatar, up in the air, a serious man and an education (so I've seen 6 of the 10).
I'm no critic, but of those 6 I thought they were all good pictures. However, Hurt Locker and Blind Side didn't seem "great" to me - just ok. District 9 seemed very good, but only from the perspective that it was a bit of a different take on the typical alien movie. It seemed a bit fresh. So out of what's left, I guess I would pick Precious over Inglourious, but I would imagine that Avatar trumps them all this year based on everything I've heard.
Last year, my favorite movie (Revolutionary Road) wasn't even nominated, so I guess I don't really know what I'm talking about.
[30] Don't know -- and this is merely an excerpt so I might be misjudging. Maybe less of a focus on all the body moves and more on "look at what they are having her do, isn't this a bit creepy?"
I'm really a little taken aback by the Avatar love. I get it from a cinematic experience point of view, because in 3D it's pretty spectacular. For an hour, anyway. Well I guess we've gone over plenty of examples of undeserving winners; certainly Titanic was one too.
But I thought the story, writing and characters of Avatar were pro forma at best. And the creativity in other areas is impressive but just puts the lack elsewhere in stark contrast.
Technical innovation is not always accompanied by great artistic achievement. "Avatar" might not be the best script ever written, but "The Jazz Singer" wasn't exactly the greatest movie ever made, either.
The consensus worst best picture is "Greatest Show on Earth," in 1952, which beat out "High Noon," The real omission, of course, is that "Singin' In The Rain" wasn't even nominated.
1980 ~ Ordinary People (a fine film) beats out Raging Bull. Travesty of a mockery of a sham.....
The "Oscars" have absolutely zero to do with cinema..it's a revolting, self-congratulatory wank-a-thon that almost always makes the wrong choices. Like my man Rudy Arnheim said, "Film is Art", the Oscars is show-biz...
Chyll Will, I know you got my back on this!
[36] I got you, Jazz! That's exactly right. That's why an artist like Marlon Brando sent a rep in his place, protesting the treatment of indigenous people while a showbiz guy like James Cameron exclaims, "I'm the king of the world!" I have a feeling most people actually watch it to see how wacky the choices turn out to be and participate in the ensuing outrage. Meh, we congratulate and fête mediocrity nowadays.
Still, it's pleasant to see that Avatar was justly left out of the performance nominations, and likely will not win Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow with Hurt Locker is the best bet.) Also, judging by his record, the casting and available previews, I am so NOT looking forward to M. Night Shymalan's The Last Airbender (neè Avatar). Boooo!
Eddie Lee got to it before me...
Raging Bull getting beaten by Ordinary People. I saw Raging Bull a couple of weeks ago- it had been several years since I'd seen it- and the cinematography nearly made me cry in the way Jack Nicklaus was heard to react upon watching Secretariat win the Belmont Stakes. This was perfection.
Particularly the montage scene where Scorsese cuts to the color home movies. Amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2xD-HYTPPI
By the way, am I the only one that can't stand Randy Newman?
The Departed is the worst pile of crap to ever win Best Picture. An absolutely vomit-inducing mess. We know why it won, but damn, I don't think Scorsese could make a worse mess if he directed it blind and drunk. Absolute rubbish. However, I still watch the Oscars and often call them pretty close. I called Crash, and I may be in a small minority, but I LOVED that movie and have watched it at least 3 times. Once in the cinema and 2x on cable. What was so wrong with it?
BTW, either Precious or Avatar will win Best Picture. You heard it hear (from Tokyo) first. I will be happy to put money where my mowf is. Jazz? Guiness?
{39} I loved Crash too. One of the few times they had it right.