Isn’t the award supposed to be for that particular performance, and not for lifetime achievement? I agree about Cuba Gooding Jr.'s post-*Jerry Maguire *role choices, but he was pretty good in that movie. I don’t recall who was nominated against him though…
Agreed. He was also good in Outbreak and A Few Good Men, I thought. And Rat Race, come to think of it, in a very different role. I haven’t seen any of his other dreck.
Frankly, I thought Kim Basinger didn’t earn hers for L.A. Confidential in the first place. She was OK, but jeez, she did nothing Oscar-worthy there. Don’t know that she’s done anything else in her career to earn one.
It’s a fun performance, but a larger-than-life one, beating more subtle/nuanced/restrained work from William H. Macy (Fargo) and Edward Norton (Primal Fear)–not to mention the non-nominated Noah Taylor and Martin Donovan that year.
Having a bad performance or two (Ms. Berry) is never enough to “revoke” an Oscar, but Gooding seems to have gone out of his way to make as many dreadful films as has been physically possibly in the last decade. Nice guy, it seems, but very sad.
Oh, I had forgotten that was the same year as Fargo. William H. Macy’s performance was better. But there are many performances that lost against inferior competition. I still don’t think that you should disregard a specific role because of a body of work. But I may change my mind if Ashton Kutcher ever has his name read from within the envelope…
Oh, I had forgotten that was the same year as Fargo. William H. Macy’s performance was better. But there are many performances that have lost against inferior competition. I still don’t think that you should disregard a specific role because of a body of work. But I may change my mind if Ashton Kutcher ever has his name read from within the envelope…
Except it has dawned on people (or at least me) that it wasn’t really a great performance, but just a particular role that suited his limited talents. It might have seemed good at the time, but in retrospect, it seems as if it was just him being Cuba Gooding Jr. and not really a great performance.
Miss Lansbury would I’m sure be thrilled to have even one Oscar with which she could be beaten, let alone three. Alas, she has not yet been honored by the Academy.
