Maybe it is because it is the people who make the movies telling us which they think are the best.
William Goldman always gives his impressions of the Oscars and nominees by prefacing with the fact that nothing he is about to say makes the Academy wrong or him right. It is just his opinion.
For example, Shakespeare in Love, in my opinion, is a better movie than Saving Private Ryan. After the first 20 minutes, Ryan is crap (further ruined by the fact that the movie is the flashback of someone who wasn’t there). I don’t think Shakespear in Love was the best movie of that year, but it was a better movie.
If Crouching tiger, Hidden Dragon or Life is Beautiful didn’t win for best picture, then it shows that no foreign film (other than from Britain) will ever win in the Best picture category.
More the reason I’m rooting for Shrek to win next year. A fall/winter movie will have to blow minds to even compare to this masterpiece.
Zhivago was boring; it was an extended classical music video you see in Classical Arts Showcase, while TSOM was about a troupe that escaped Nazi clutches while singing about it.
Have you guys seen the real Erin Brokovich? Oh my, Julia Roberts portrayed a much subtler, quieter version of her.
This is an oldie, but I still think Rod Steiger (in The Pawnbroker) was robbed when Lee Marvin (in Cat Ballou) got Best Actor Oscar in 1965. Ok, I was only 11, but I remember how blown away I was by The Pawnbroker.
Saving Private Ryan wasn’t even close to as good as Shakespeare in Love.
SPR had an amazing D-Day scene, and the rest of it was a pretty formulaic war movie, with one of Tom Hanks’ least memorable roles in recent movies (not all his fault, though).
And I agree, a lot of you are being too hard on Rocky the First. Standing alone, it is a fantastic movie, that really, really stands up.
Mine’s gotta be Marisa Tomei. Sorry; that role, and her performance of it, were not Oscar-worthy. I don’t know how she even got nominated; let alone won. And this is coming from a person who would watch her read the phone book.
Additionally, how Al Pacino went Oscarless for both Godfather I and II is beyond comprehension.
And then they think they make it all better with their “sympathy Oscar,” years down the road. They don’t.
Pacino’s performance in Scent of a Woman was very good. Maybe even Oscar-worthy. But it didn’t touch his work in the first two Godfather films.
Roberts’ win for Brockavich was undeserved and political in both the Hollywood sense (wanting to get Julia “her Oscar”) and the politically correct sense (kind of storyline that the Academy always goes overboard for).
I want to add that Pacino’s performance in Scent of a Woman (again; while great) was also not as good as his turns in And Justice For All and Dog Day Afternoon, either.
I have to agree with this statement. The Shawshank Redemption was, hands down, the best movie in that year. Pulp Fiction (which I loved) was also better than Forrest Gump (which I didn’t really like).
As for the Cate Blanchett/Gwyneth Paltrow debate. Cate Blanchett was definitely the better actress, but I have to say that SIL was the better movie. While Blanchett was brilliant as Elizabeth, there were too many historical errors in Elizabeth for me to get totally swept away. That’s not to say that SIL was historically accurate, but it was a romantic comedy, it wasn’t supposed to be.
In my honest opinion, “Forrest Gump” was ten times better than “The Shawshank Redemption,” which while a decent movie just isn’t Oscar material. I thought “Forrest Gump” was a masterpiece, and I don’t know why people have such an aversion to it, or why they have such a boner for TSR. I do notice that a lot of people who don’t like it thought it was meant as a comedy, when it was (rather obviously) meant more as a serious film, but YMMV.
I also think Marisa Tomei was a good choice for Best Supporting Actress. Geez, has anyone even SEEN that movie before they rip her? She was hilarious, and that’s no easier than acting British in a costume drama.
And “Rocky” was a great, great movie. I think people assume it was just like the sequels. How wrong you are.
The number of BAD choices exceeds the post character limit, but one thought: Peter Sellers didn’t win for Dr. Strangelove, and from that point on the Oscars will always be tainted.
A number of you have pointed out that the original Rocky was, in fact, a very worthy awardee for best picture. OK, maybe I was being a bit too harsh. I will try to rent it and watch it again. Afer all, 1976 was the height of my snooty time (sophisticated, (pseudo)intellectual), and I probably remember it unfairly.
But you’ll never convince me that Taxi Driver is anything but a masterpiece.
The Tomei/Basinger question led me to take a look at Supporting Actress winners over the years and I came to a conclusion. Supporting Actresses win on the strength of a standout scene. Time and again, you’ll see that there was one scene in which the winner just wowed the audience.
Basinger, in LA Confidential, and Tomei in My Cousin Vinny each had two such scenes.
Basinger’s were the scene in her hallway where she and Russell Crowe take digs at one another and ends with her telling him that she wasn’t given plastic surgery, she just changed her hair, and the scene when Russell Crowe hits her, specifically the line “I thought I was helping.”
Tomei’s were the “My biological clock is ticking like this! stomp stomp stomp” bit on the cabin porch with Pesci, and the excellent courtroom examination scene when she demonstrates her considerable (and, up to that point unseen) knowledge.
Were they the best performances overall in their respective years? It’s a good question that can never be answered accurately. But given two power scenes that stick in voters’ minds, an actress becomes a key player in awards consideration.
Did Gone With the Wind really deserve Best Picture? Or should the award have been given to The Wizard of Oz?
Isn’t it a crime that the original King Kong won no Oscars at all, not even technical awards? Besides the animation effects, the score and sound effects are amazing when you consider that talkies had been around for only five years.
Walt Disney received more Oscars than anyone else, but for his two best works, Pinocchio won only for its music and Fantasia won only an honorary award.
There is no way The Full Monty deserved Best Musical/Comedy Score for 1997. While far from my favorite Danny Elfman score, Men In Black was the clear favorite that night. (Though it was clear there was no way the lackluster Good Will Hunting would win over Titanic in the Dramatic Score category.)
And The Little Mermaid for Best Score of 1989? You’re kidding! And Batman wasn’t even nominated?? (Neither was Glory, but Horner got the nom for Field of Dreams that year.) Then to doubly snub Elfman, his excellent Nightmare Before Christmas score isn’t nominated for '93, despite being the token Disney musical that year!
Speaking of '89, it seems odd that Glory beat out The Abyss for Best Cinematography and Best Sound. I mean, which movie had to invent its own sound and camera equipment?
Lastly, despite its flaws, Apollo 13 is a better Best Picture than Braveheart. Though for 1995, I’d have gone with Dead Man Walking, which wasn’t even nominated for the top prize that year.
I’m convinced the Academy didn’t even see Judy Garland’s performance in A Star Is Born. Because if they did, they would’ve never given the Best Actress Oscar to Grace “I slept my way to the top” Kelly.
While not all of these are bad movies, Titanic, Chariots of Fire, Oliver!, Tom Jones, West Side Story, Around the World in 80 Days, Greatest Show on Earth, and Going My Way did not deserve to win Best Picture in their respective years.
It’s also a travesty that Barbara Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell, Claude Rains, and Alfred Hitchcock never won Oscars (although Stanwyck & Hitch were given lifetime achievement Oscars).
Yeah, but Batman didn’t have cute songs performed by crustaceans.
Personally, I think it was criminal that James Horner’s score for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan wasn’t nominated for the Best Score Oscar. It was his best work ever – far better than Titanic, which he did win for.
ALIENS didn’t win for 1986, but it was a waste of a nomination. It was nothing more than recycled bits of Khatchaturian and Horner’s own Klingon motif from STIII. The score was cut & pasted (though that wasn’t neccessarily Horner’s fault), with one cue (Bishop’s Countdown) repeated twice within 10 minutes – having replaced the other climactic crescendo, which is later heard at the ending of Die Hard! And there’s some of Goldsmith’s original ALIEN score used for some cues!
But it didn’t win, so there’s no point calling it outrageous. Ironically, Leonard Rosenman’s limp score for ST4:TVH also was nominated that year, so that’s two slots down the drain.
