As usual, the Oscar nominations leave a lot to be desired. Russell Crowe?? I don’t think so. They didn’t have Australians 2000 years ago, everyone knows that. Over the years a lot of deserving actors have lucked out. In my opinion these are two of them:
Heather Matarazzo for her role of the girl interrogated in court by Keanu Reeves in the Devil’s Advocate.
Dominique Swain for Lolita.
Does anyone want to add any more (or object to these choices)?
[nitpick]
They did have Australians 2,000 years ago. They lived in the Bush and played didgeridoos(sp?), much like they do now. Only today they are called “Aboriginees.”
[/nitpick]
Although I don’t necessarily object to Dominique Swain for Lolita, I wonder if she was even eligible for an Oscar™. I would think the best she could do would be an emmy, since the movie was originally made for broadcast on cable TV. Unless, of course, it was screened at a theater somewhere specifically for Oscar™ consideration.
IMHO, E.T. got the shaft in favor of Ghandi.
My $.02.
How about the ethics of George C. Scott for refusing the Oscar?
Or of Marlon Brando sending an emissary to accept his? 
I think there has been a tremendous swing in recent years from the arthouse hits to the populist tripe in terms of who gets nominated. It wasn’t too long ago when you wouldn’t see any comedy get a nod, and it wasn’t too long ago when blockbuster films wouldn’t get any either. I don’t know if this is so much a reflection on changing mores within the voters or if they simply are making fewer good films or if the voters are lazy. I opt for the latter - they get tapes of all movies that are in the running, but I think it’s up to the studio to submit tapes. And the voters have short memories, too, which is why so many nominated films are rereleased in Jan and Feb so that when the votes are tallied, the voters remember those films in particular and not the ones that were shown the previous summer.
But what are we doing looking for ethics in Hollywood, anyway? 
Just a little tidbit here. Russell Crowe was “PLAYING A ROLE” as we call it in the business. Just because he IS an Australian doesn’t mean that he’s playing an Australian. He was called “the Spaniard” if you remember correctly.
jarbaby
I thought of a good one. Matthew Broderick was, IIRC, 24 when he filmed Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986). A tad old to be a teen, you would think!
dan, I’m going to be honest with you. I’ve read the OP five times and I’m not sure what we’re talking about. I understand we’re angry with Russell Crowe being nominated but what are we listing here? G. Nome said
if they’re deserving…how did they “luck out”? I’m totally lost.
I like Lolita a lot…does that apply?
somebody help me.
jarbaby
Heck if I know, jarbabyj…
I’m sure G. Nome will be along presently to offer an explanation. But there are two possibilities, one you’ve hit on and one I’ve thought of.
Either the OP means actors who in theory don’t seem suited for a particular role who were then nominated for said role or actors who have been overlooked for a role in which they performed admirably.
Oh, and I think rastahomie is correct that Lolita was orignally a Showtime movie, which makes it eligible for an ACE, but not an Oscar, unless the movie was shown in an Los Angeles theater, however briefly.
[sub]PS: I was going to say [sup]hi jarbabyj[/sup] in my last post, but I didn’t remember until I had hit Submit![/sub]
Admittitedly, this hasn’t been the greatest year for film. But how about the ethics of trying to nominate actors from 3-year old films? Both The Devil’s Advocate and Lolita were released in 1997.
Anamorphic, I think G. was trying to say that those actors/actresses should (or should not, heck if I remember nominees that far back) have been nominated for their respective years.
Well, Judi Dench should have gotten the Best Actress award, not Helen Hunt!
Ah yes, upon rereading the OP, you’re right. Sorry G!
[/antinitpick]They had Americans too, but they weren’t hot dog addicts with dude accents. As far as cinema quotes go “When I give the signal unleash hell” rates right up there with “a dingo ate my baby” - to my ears anyway. [/antinitpick]
I’m still confused as to what the OP’s about…Are you then saying you think Gladiator didn’t deserve its nominations? Fair enough, but having an Australian in the lead role shouldn’t be a problem. There was no evidence of his country of origin in the film that I saw. If Crowe had played Maximus with an Aussie accent, I’d be upset.
Mel Gibson didn’t play William Wallace with an Aussie accent in Braveheart, and that film did well in the eyes of critics, too. Now, I suppose if you had a problem with Gladiator, then I suppose you might have had a problem with Braveheart, too, since they were both violent, blockbuster action movies. I saw Gladiator and I personally don’t think it was good enough to warrant any nominations, let alone 12. But that’s on merit. That objection has nothing to do with an Australian actor playing a role.
So was your initial objection along the lines of “I can’t believe Gladiator got all those nominations! They didn’t have Australians 2,000 years ago!”? As rastahomie said, there certainly were Australians 2,000 years ago - only they were called aborigines.
Clarify your objections, if you please!
OK, there were Australians 2000 years ago. They all belonged to the Commonwealth, the women glowed and men chundered and they all ate vegemite sandwiches. And they spoke strine.
Strine: a jocular name given to Australian English in terms of its vernacular pronunciation (with frequent assimilation, elision, etc)
What I’m saying is: Russell Crowe speaks Strine in Gladiator. You may not realise it but he does. Not all the time, admittedly, but in the phrase “When I give the signal unleash hell” it’s very noticeable. The American equivalent would be a film about prehistoric Native Indians who spoke with New Jersey(?)accents.
So there. Maybe I’ve become jaded. I just don’t relate to the Academy Awards any more. I still don’t understand why Kim Basinger got one for putting on a cape and standing in shop in L.A. Confidential and The Sixth Sense seemed hackeyned to me.
Where is all that space at the end of my posts coming from. I’m just testing.
In some dialects of English “to luck out” means “to suffer a stroke of bad luck”.
Oh. I get it. You’re objecting because RC was speaking (in parts) with an Australian accent, which did not exist at the time.
Whereas American accented English, British accented English…well, English itself, for that matter, did? :rolleyes:
Obviously they should have spoken Latin and had it subtitled.
Right! God, you know what really bugged me about that movie Schindler’s List? Is that the Germans were speaking English when the whole movie should have been in German and Hebrew…What am I supposed to do, suspend my disbelief? I mean…that’s…unethical. :rolleyes:
jarbaby
What bugged me about Schindler’s List is that the Jews hardly spoke at all. Ben Kingsley, being the only Jew in the film with a personality, said a few words but you’d be hard pressed to remember any others.
I’ll accept that you are accusing me of having higher standards than a lot of filmgoers. Prizes are not normally given to people in any enterprise who have sub-standard skills. Olympic skaters don’t win medals if they display even slight imperfections for instance. And yet people who call themselves actors prove again and again that they don’t deserve that label and get awards for it.
I think Russell Crowe was supposed to be speaking accentless, classless, dialectless English. If, in the film, his life had depended on doing that properly instead of displaying superior sword skills (and maybe lives did depend on stuff like that in World War 2 Europe, for isntance) he would have been dead in the first 30 minutes.