I can see an argument that “12 Monkeys” was a better film. However, I absolutely, positively stand by “Babe” being a much better movie than “Heat.” I LIKED “Heat,” I love Michael Mann’s work, but the movie’s not perfect by any means.
“The Usual Suspects” I also love, and that’s a harder comparison. I would agree it should have been nominated - but “Babe” isn’t the movie I would have bumped.
Why are those movies so obviously better? “Babe” had a pitch-perfect script, was beautifully shot, had a great score, and was wonderfully acted. It was a sensational movie. Why is it so lacking in merit?
I firmly believe that Penn’s winning Best Actor in 2003 for Mystic River was solely to make up for his losing to Cage in 1995. Though I can’t think of who should have won that year, Penn’s acting in places was over-the-top, and stilted in others.
Edward Norton not winning for American History X, losing to Roberto Benigni. Life is Beautiful winning Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan. Not discounting Life is Beautiful as a great film, but Saving Private Ryan hit all the right emotional buttons for me.
Crash and Shakespeare in Love deserved their best picture wins (Saving Private Ryan wasn’t even the best WAR movie nominated that year!).
Sean Penn beating Bill Murray was the biggest joke I can remember…at least until he beat Mickey Rourke.
A Beautiful Mind was garbage. The best picture Oscar should have gone to Lord of the Rings (and apparently only didn’t due to a conspiracy to stop LOTR from winning anything until Return of the King was released, which in turn snubbed Master and Commander, coincidentally another Russell Crowe film, from winning best picture). And while we’re on the subject of Russell Crowe, he didn’t deserve his best picture statue for Gladiator (that one should have gone to Ed Harris) but he did deserve one for The Insider (which went to Kevin Spacey, deservingly so) and that was another conspiracy to give it to him, a year late.
People pile on to tell me how wrong I am when I say that the old, campy, comedic James Bond movies were better than Craig’s gritty, grimy, super-serious scowling Bond, yet in this parallel universe of the SDMB, Babe deserves an Oscar more than Heat.
For crying out loud, are you twelve years old? Griping about other people enjoying something you don’t is just about the most inane form of argument on the internet, and that’s saying something.
Yes, because nobody ever, ever insinuates that one movie is better than another movie on this message board which is a complete paragon of total objectivity when it comes to entertainment.
All I was trying to say was that it seems like this board skews towards cerebral, serious films, so I was surprised that a movie about a talking pig would be held in such high regard when compared to a considerably more ‘adult’ film.
The title of this thread contains the phrase “assorted outrages.” Presumably it would be expected that fans of films with a passionate cult following would be ‘outraged’ that their favorite movies lost out to a movie about a talking pig. But maybe I mis-read the word “outrages” and it actually says something else.
I’m not really a fan of any of the movies being discussed in this particular conversation but just because a film is about a talking pig or is marketed towards children doesn’t mean it’s automatically a lesser film than one that is dark and serious.
I get the complaints about Crash, but that win wasn’t even the worst call of that year’s Academy Awards. “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp?” Over Dolly Parton’s “Travelin’ Thru?” I mean … what was going on there?
Oh, Gandhi is a great film, much better overall than The Verdict. I’ll even grant (with the wisdom of years) that Kingsley was superb in the role. I just believe Newman’s acting was some of the finest I’ve ever seen, and I think it deserved the acting award. Although O’Toole was great that year as well, Newman was … brilliant.
Saving Private Ryan is two astonishing, masterful, battle sequences bookending a rather ordinary quest film. I like it, it’s a great film, but so is Shakespeare in Love. SiL has the advantage of having a fantastic script, full of wit and invention. Admittedly, Judi Dench only got her Oscar because the Academy felt that she’s an actress who should have one.
Actually, the Academy did revamp the nomination process for the documentary category. The clique that had controlled the nominations in the ‘Hoop Dreams’ era basically had a “If it’s already attracted public attention, it doesn’t need an Oscar to help it” philosophy, which is why they ignored “Hoop Dreams” (and earlier had ignored “The Thin Blue Line” and “Roger & Me”). So they probably would have not nominated such later winners as “Bowling for Columbine” (2002), “The Fog of War” (2003), “March of the Penguins” (2005) and “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006).
I think only the third LotR won the Oscar for Best Picture. (Wikipedia claims it won all 11 Oscars it was nominated for.) My distaste for Return of the King aside, I thought the award was merited, as it was implicitly for the entire series rather than that movie alone, and Fellowship certainly deserved the trophy.