I’ll admit that’s the better way of putting it.
Chaplin’s omission in 1931 was par for the course by the Academy. Previously, Chaplin was given a special Oscar “for writing, acting, directing and producing” The Circus thereby effectively taking both him and his movie out of the running for Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture. Although it’s probably not true, one gets the impression that Chaplin’s movies were so well regarded that were considered to be in a higher class altogether. Thus, they were given “special” awards or ignored altogether to keep things competitive.
Or, it could also be another example of the Academy’s bias against comedies in general.
There’s a frequently expressed sentiment that Saving Private Ryan is the amazing D-Day scene, followed by an hour of mediocrity. I think that’s hogwash. The non-D-Day parts of SPR may be the most underrated movie of the past quarter century. It has MANY amazing and memorable scenes:
-the medic bleeds out, leading the rest of the unit to want to take vengeance on the “Steamboat Willie” german
-Upham has an attack of cowardice on the stairs and can’t go help Mellish who gets slowly stabbed to death
-They find the wrong Private Ryan (made more entertaining because it’s a young Nathan Fillion)
-they listen to Edith Piaf as Matt Damon reminisces about his brothers
and throughout, the production, writing and acting is absolutely top-notch.
Arguably the framing device is a bit corny… but there is a TON of amazing filmmaking in that movie.
One thing to keep in mind is that the Academy hates controversy. Zero Dark Thirty was far and away the best film of 2012 (though I haven’t seen Django Unchained yet) but the media brouhaha about its “supposedly” inaccurate depictions of torture predictably consigned it to just a handful of token nominations. Likewise, Pulp Fiction also lost because of its controversial violence.
It’s also true that the Academy seems very slow on the uptake regarding landmark, groundbreaking films with long-reaching effects on the industry itself – Citizen Kane, Star Wars, Pulp Fiction, etc. Though I guess they can be excused since nobody can predict the future with 100% accuracy.
It’s interesting that Annie Hall beat Star Wars as it’s only one of two “straight” comedies to win the top award, whereas NO science fiction film has won Best Picture, ever. Of course, not many sci-fi films actually deserved to win – except District 9, which definitely should’ve won in 2009, and 2001: A Space Odyssey which wasn’t even nominated in '69. (I’m staying out of the SW vs. AH debate…)
Annie Hall was many things- a “comedy” wasnt one of them, and LotR is SF.
Huh-wha?? In which parallel universe is either of these remotely true? 
Outside of the “storming the beach” scene, this is my favorite scene of the movie. Not because of their wanting to take vengeance, but just because Giovonni Ribisi has long been one of my favorite underrated actors, and the way he reacts when he realizes that it’s his liver that’s been hit with a bullet is brilliant. The way he goes into full-blown panic mode, and how he knows there’s nothing that they can do to help him, just rings true to me in a way that doesn’t show in a lot of other actors’ work. And Upham’s “tell us what to do to fix you” is fucking heartbreaking. Mostly because he seems to be the only one who doesn’t realize there IS nothing.
Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last several years as an EMT (and growing up in a household where my dad was a career firefighter), and I don’t want to be the grizzled, cynical, jaded “seen it all” guy compared to the brand-new “ink still wet on the certification” one, but I’ve seen guys as idealistic as Upham on a scene, and it’s always disheartening when that switch flips inside them from “there has to be something we can do” to “well, he’s dead. If he’s lucky.”
The problem with a lot of those lists is that they look at the movies with a 21st century perspective. Take Broadway Melody, the second BP winner. I see so many critiques about how cliche the story is or comparing it to later musicals. But what if you were living in 1929 and saw the movie? You would have never seen anything like that movie before. And the epic pieces Cimmeron and Cavalcade are easy to dismiss today as 42fish does but back in 1931 and 1933, people had lived through those events. Suppose someone makes a movie about 9/11 and the impact of the WTC collapse and the resulting war on terrorism. Do you think it would have the same impact to someone watching in 2081? Hell no. They would criticize the inappropriate comic relief of the buffoon TSA agent and the plothole of how freedom-loving Americans would tolerate the Patriot Act.
So “Zero Dark Thirty was far and away the best film of 2012,” and yet you admit you “haven’t seen Django Unchained yet.” Huh? I’m not sure I can process that.
However, I assure you that if you had seen Django Unchained, you would realize it was the better movie.
I forgot to add – my asterisk for Cavalcade in my post above was because one scene in the film depicts two characters walking away from a ship’s rail to reveal a life preserver with “Titanic” written on it. Maybe Cavalcade won, as did Titanic years later, because of the Oscar-generating power of movies set at least partly on the doomed ship.
(The 1958 film A Night to REmember, also featuring the sinking of the Titanic, didn’t win an Academy Award, but did earn a Golden Globe.)
And the 1953 Titanic managed to win an Oscar the Cameron film didn’t even get nominated for: Best Screenplay.
Actually, other than the scenes with Christoph Waltz, I found that film rather B-movie like.
For me, it was an enjoyable movie but certainly not Best Picture level.
Tarantino’s goal, really, is to make B-movie like films with A-movie like production values.
I wholeheartedly agree with just about the whole thread except for this one. The Academy has always made it difficult for the comedy/dramedy genre to get recognized. SPR would have just been yet another Oscar-bait statement movies successfully trolling for the award. Shakes in Love deserves it for being a tidy gem of a movie that didn’t pander in any way to some special-interest demographic to win the votes, beating 4 other nominees that were pandered so hard that you could see the bamboo shoots stuck in their teeth.
For my original content contribution…
I’d give the 2002 best picture to About Schmidt or Spirited Away. Wow, what a weak year for movies that was, going through the 2002 list on imdb, I’m hard pressed to find anything that I’d ever choose to watch again in my lifetime.
Except the pandering to actors that always love to vote for movies about actors.
I think this had to be one of the years with the largest discrepancy between the film that should have won and the film that did. Dances with Wolves had decent cinematography and the buffalo hunt scene was pretty cool. It was also boring and pretentious with one dimensional characters and more than a little noble savage racist nonsense. Goodfellas is one of the best films ever made; two decades later it retains excellent rewatchability.
I say this as a huge Scorsese fan, The Departed should not have won in 2006. It was a mediocre effort by great talents. I’m pretty sure it only won because the academy had snubbed Scorsese so many times in the past. Little Miss Sunshine was a more enjoyable film from that year, but I would have voted for Letters from Iwo Jima. It wasn’t the best war movie ever produced, but I thought it was made from a very interesting perspective.
Gladiator wasn’t a very original picture, but at least it provided a fun spectacle. I’ll confess, I can’t remember many details from Traffic but I remember absolutely loathing the film. It was cheesy when it was trying to be realistic, and preachy when it was trying to be gritty.