Technically not true. In order to be considered for the Animated Feature award, you need to submit your film in that category. Avatar certainly qualifies and would be eligible (just as The Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks were deemed eligible) if it had bothered to submit.
But you’re right about the ghetto perception, and no feature film that is heavy on CG is going to want to compete in a “lesser” category if it has a shot at the big one.
Yes, much greater film.
I also agree with the last couple of people mentioning Saving Private Ryan… the movie as a whole is really pretty lackluster, and I have no problem with Shakespeare in Love winning that year.
Quick hits from a few years that were before my time, but where I’ve seen both the winner and another movie, and I’d have picked another movie (note that in all cases I’m going by movie release year rather than Academy Award Year, because it’s easier when using Wikipedia to reference):
1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark instead of Chariots of Fire
1990: Goodfellas instead of Dances with Wolves
1992: A Few Good Men instead of Unforgiven
From 1994 on, I’ve seen at least 3 and generally more of the contenders for each year, pretty much all of them since 2006 (I’ve picked up quite the movie habit over the last decade, apparently). Some more thoughts on a few years, some of which have been touched on, some of which haven’t:
1994: Anything Else That Was Nominated instead of Forrest Gump, because I don’t think that Gump was a very good movie. I actually like Quiz Show the most, but Pulp Fiction probably should have been the winner for the combination of quality and what it really meant to cinema.
1997: I get why Titanic won, and this was a kind of weird year overall, but I’d have preferred Good Will Hunting. I watched it again last week, and everything about Williams and Damon in that movie is still excellent. I also LOVE L.A. Confidential, which also holds up much better than Titanic.
2001: A few people have already mentioned LOTR: FOTR over A Beautiful Mind, but my thoughts go back more to the “animated ghetto” complaint: I would have seriously considered Monsters, Inc. that year. It was a relatively weak year in general IMO, and I see no reason why a really strong animated film shouldn’t be considered against the more traditional choices.
2003: I wish LOTR had won for one of its more deserving movies so that Lost in Translation could have pulled down this year. People seem to either really like or really dislike Lost, and I’m on the “pro” side. Also, looking at the nom list, Master and Commander and Seabiscuit? Really?! Over Finding Nemo and Kill Bill Vol. 1, among many, many others? throws hands up in frustration
I don’t totally hate Crash, and I think Brokeback Mountain has a great message and some great performances, but has a lot of weaknesses as a film.
2011: Probably The Tree of Life? How did, like, six of those nine movies even get nominated? 2009 and 2010 were so stacked, and then this is our list for 2011? This is the kind of year where if we’re listing 10, I’d think about sneaking in some really well done blockbusters like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol or X-Men: First Class. Also, even more seriously, Attack the Block? Drive? Shame? 2011 was not a weak year at all, but that nomination list makes it look like one.
2012: Zero Dark Thirty and Silver Linings Playbook are two dramatically different movies that both had me thinking “Wow, that’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen” when I left the theater. I’d have voted for either one of them in about 90% of the years in the past two decades. Django Unchained was brilliant and is my favorite Tarantino movie after Pulp Fiction. Beasts of the Southern Wild was also spectacular and could have won some of the weaker years here. Argo was… a pretty good movie. I really think that in 20 years when we’re looking back, we’ll feel about 2012 the way people now feel about 1994.
Thanks for getting me to spend way too long typing about movies!
I disagree. I feel Patton has held up better than MASH or Five Easy Pieces. MASH and Five Easy Pieces were about the culture of the late sixties (even though MASH was set in the early fifties) so they’ve lost a lot of relevance to modern audiences. Patton was about a character not a time period so its story is still relevant.
I’ll grant you that this is arguing which film has a better place in film history, which isn’t the same as arguing which film should have won the Oscar back in 1971. Maybe there should be a new Oscar category: Best Film Made Ten Years Ago Now That We’ve Had Time To Think About It.
So let it be written. So let it be done!
Not to continue the threadjack, but yes, I did have that spreadsheet done already - I think I did it in 2012, updated for the 2012 films (in 2013) and I updated it this year, only to lose my updates in a HD crash that occurred a couple of days later.
Ironically, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King has held up pretty well and could win this year’s Retro-Oscar.
But no way is Crash taking next year’s award.
Among the most recent nominees, 12 Years a Slave was the fourth or fifth best. It was a moving story, but a rather unexceptional film.
Yeah, I saw it and could only give it a mild thumb’s up. It was only OK for me and I entered with an open mind.
I still insist Riddick was the best movie of 2013.
I just want to go on record ahead of time as saying they actually did get it right at the 1978 Awards. Annie Hall was a vastly superior movie to Star Wars. Really.
You’ve got the right loser, but the wrong winner. The Right Stuff should have been Best Picture. It works as a satire (of the times) and an adventure (of the astronauts and pilots); and each part making the other work better. It’s an epic, but with moments of reflection, too.
Bull. Shit. Annie Hall was a a well made relationship comedy. Star Wars was an epic that changed moviemaking forever (and the change started in 77, so its not like the Academy didn’t see it).
Annie Hall kept surreally knocking the audience off-balance, though: approaching a couple on the street to ask why they seem so happy together, only to hear her reply that I’m shallow and empty and have no ideas before her boyfriend chimes in with a well-timed I’m exactly the same way; or Alvy and Annie having a conversation about one thing while the subtitles reflect something else entirely; or the boor prompting our hero to produce McLuhan for the You Know Nothing Of My Work quip – followed by Alvy of course turning to address the audience, like he does throughout the film, whenever he isn’t turning into a rabbi at Easter dinner before that goes split-screen for a hypothetical Tell You The Truth, Neither Do We chat – and et cetera, plus whatever; it’s all got more than a touch of the whacko to it.
Stars Wars was a hack job. Annie Hall totally deserved the win. And the less said about the “acting” in Star Wars the better. This is coming from someone who saw the movie 26 times in the theater during its initial run, too.
Agreed. Out of the ones I saw (missed Philomena, Nebraska, and Her) I really felt Dallas Buyers Club was the best of the bunch. Comparing the two, while both were based on real-life events, with the protagonist(s) struggling against nearly-insurmountable odds, I was much more immersed in DBC, and my “suspension of disbelief” was wholly realized.
Over on ESPN/Grantland, The Sports Guy Bill Simmons has said for years that they should give the Oscars 5 years removed from the actual year so that the movies and their legacies can resonate
Indeed. The wife and I still revisit Annie Hall, with each viewing eagerly anticipated. Not being an adolescent fanboy, I don’t care if I ever see Star War again. (And I saw Star Wars 19 times when it first came out.)
I’ll also express love for Annie Hall. There is just so much crazy, inventive stuff in there. I do love me some Star Wars as well, but its not nearly as well made a film.
Maybe that should be the follow-up thread: “Tell us when the Academy actually got it right.”
Anyway, since the Academy’s recent ‘what were they thinking?’ moments are largely covered, let’s go back…
1931
Won: Cimarron. The Oklahoma land rush scenes are exciting visuals. After that, it settles into a ho-hum soap of Irene Dunne’s rise in society.
Shoulda Won: City Lights. One of Chaplin’s masterpieces. Not even nominated, presumably thanks to anti-silent film bias.
1933
Won: Cavalcade. Noel Coward’s drama plays as a shorter – but far less interesting – episode of “Upstairs, Downstairs”
Shoulda Won: King Kong. Holds up to repeated viewing and Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion effects remain unexpectedly convincing. Even with ten nominees, the Academy overlooked the grandaddy of all “big critter goes wild in the city” films.
(Close second: Duck Soup. The Marx Brothers at their anarchic peak. Unfortunately, between being a comedy and a box office flop during its initial release, there was no way the Academy was going to touch it.)
One of the chapters of Goldner and Turner’s excellent book The Making of King Kong was entitled “Remember Cavalcade?”, complaining about the way Kong was passed over by the awards. I haven’t seen much of Cavalcade, so I can’t address it on its merits*, but I suspect having an effects-heavy action film win over a Noel Coward drama would’ve been a hard sell in 1933, even if King Kong is, in retrospect, clearly a more influential film. It also arguably saved RKO from its financial woes.
It’s not really the grand-daddy of “Creature on the Loose” films. It was preceded by Willis O’Brien’s own The Lost World, with its brontosaurus run amuck in London, and by Wnsor McKay’s truly ground-breaking The Giant Pet. But it’s probably the most influential of them all.
Kong should’ve won some award. As Goldner (who was one of the effects workers on the film) and Turner point out, the film was the first to extensively use some new effects innovations, and definitely WAS the first for some others (like miniature rear-screen projection). But in 1933 there was no major category for “Best Special Effects”, and I don’t know which, if any, technical awards they were giving. Willis O’Brien definitely deserved an award, but he was denied any over the following years. Mighty Joe Young got an award for Best Special Effects – they had the category by 1950 – but it went to the producers, not O’Brien. O’Brien evidently did get a statue, though.