14th in a series of polls examining which of the original nominees most deserved to win the Oscar. Up next: Best Picture, 1983. Comments encouraged.
TrekBBS Academy Awards #14: Best Picture, 1983
- Thread starter Star Treks
- Start date
For comparison, the top-rated English language feature films of 1983 on IMDB are:
Return of the Jedi (8.3)
Scarface (8.1)
A Christmas Story (8.0)
The Right Stuff (7.9)
The Dresser (7.6)
Zelig (7.6)
Tender Mercies (7.4)
Never Cry Wolf (7.4)
Testament (7.4)
Trading Places (7.4)
Local Hero (7.3)
National Lampoon's Vacation (7.3)
Terms of Endearment (7.3)
Videodrome (7.3)
The Big Chill scores a 7.0.
I've seen four of the five nominated movies for this year (The Dresser is the one I've yet to see).
Terms of Endearment is wonderfully acted and very moving - I have no problem that it won - but my vote goes to The Right Stuff, which is a great, soaring movie that I've seen many times.
Return of the Jedi (8.3)
Scarface (8.1)
A Christmas Story (8.0)
The Right Stuff (7.9)
The Dresser (7.6)
Zelig (7.6)
Tender Mercies (7.4)
Never Cry Wolf (7.4)
Testament (7.4)
Trading Places (7.4)
Local Hero (7.3)
National Lampoon's Vacation (7.3)
Terms of Endearment (7.3)
Videodrome (7.3)
The Big Chill scores a 7.0.
I've seen four of the five nominated movies for this year (The Dresser is the one I've yet to see).
Terms of Endearment is wonderfully acted and very moving - I have no problem that it won - but my vote goes to The Right Stuff, which is a great, soaring movie that I've seen many times.
Whoa! Out of those movies, my choices for best picture would be :
A Christmas Story: The best Christmas movie ever, next to Xmas Vacation.
National Lampoon's Vacation: A movie quoted, and refereced to many times, and integrated into pop culture.
Scarface: Come on. It's Scarface. You see teenagers whose parents were younger than they were wearing Tony Montana t-shirts. Probably the best gangster film since Godfather II. Everybody's got had a copy of this movie in every form of home video. In fact, didn't this win best picture in 1983?
Star Wars Return of the Jedi: When every sci fi/fantasy fan thinks of a film from 1983, this is it. The emotional ending, the action packed space battles, and Jabba. Every sci fi film afterwords tried to mimic it's style.
My pick? The Star Wars fan in me wants to pick ROTJ, but the movie fan picks Scarface. It's the most epic, and richley told tale of one man's rise and fall in power. Like ROTJ, every gangster movie tried to copy it, but failed. Everyone remembers the most famous line in the movie. You know the one....
Out of the list given? The Right Stuff. It's the Scarface of Astronaut movies. It's length matches it, and you could make a day watching both back to back. I hope both of these movies gets on Blu Ray ASAP.
A Christmas Story: The best Christmas movie ever, next to Xmas Vacation.
National Lampoon's Vacation: A movie quoted, and refereced to many times, and integrated into pop culture.
Scarface: Come on. It's Scarface. You see teenagers whose parents were younger than they were wearing Tony Montana t-shirts. Probably the best gangster film since Godfather II. Everybody's got had a copy of this movie in every form of home video. In fact, didn't this win best picture in 1983?
Star Wars Return of the Jedi: When every sci fi/fantasy fan thinks of a film from 1983, this is it. The emotional ending, the action packed space battles, and Jabba. Every sci fi film afterwords tried to mimic it's style.
My pick? The Star Wars fan in me wants to pick ROTJ, but the movie fan picks Scarface. It's the most epic, and richley told tale of one man's rise and fall in power. Like ROTJ, every gangster movie tried to copy it, but failed. Everyone remembers the most famous line in the movie. You know the one....
Out of the list given? The Right Stuff. It's the Scarface of Astronaut movies. It's length matches it, and you could make a day watching both back to back. I hope both of these movies gets on Blu Ray ASAP.
Didn't Krull come out in 1984?
Yep. It sure did. I always wanted to have a replica of the boomerang from the movie. I loved the arcade game.
Oh yeah! Space Hunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone 3D. With 3D movies coming out now on home video, I would love to have this one the way it was mmeant to be seen.
I loved Terms of Endearment, but The Right Stuff was a much better movie. And Jane Alexander should have won Best Actress for Testament over Shirley MacClaine for Terms. Just MHO. 
I went for The Big Chill - it's the only film on that list which is now considered classic enough for TCM.
Still relevant, still has a message.
Still relevant, still has a message.
Again a year where I haven't seen all the nominees--can't wait until these polls get out of the 1980s--but of the ones I have seen, The Right Stuff is a superior, well-made film. Nationalistic to the core, to be sure, but in the context of the film this is perfectly natural.
Yeah, you kind of touched on the reason why I didn't vote for it, actually. The Oscars are supposed to be pretty international in scope...and The Right Stuff, while a great film, is very America-centric in approach. For obvious reasons this is reasonable...but for me, anyway, this also makes it less a candidate for Best Picture.
I think it would be interesting to poll the people who voted for it to find out what percentage of them are Americans.
Because this film is all about tugging at the American heart-strings.
Actually, William Goldman talks about The Right Stuff in terms of being an uplifting, pro-American story in Adventures in the Screen Trade, and it's something that Philip Kaufman wasn't interested in.
Goldman was brought in for talks to write the screenplay and Goldman's pitch was that it would be an ode to the American can-do spirit, but Kaufman sneered at that approach. What he wanted was to show the Mercury Seven as a publicity gimmick who were just "spam in a can" and contrast them with a real deal pilot like Chuck Yeager. Goldman didn't want to write that and so didn't sign onto the project.
The funny thing is that the material obviously tugged Kaufman - consciously or not - towards Goldman's pitch. There's certainly some of Kaufman's original viewpoint in the film, but ultimately it ends up being an ode to the American can-do spirit and to the bravery of the Mercury Seven.
As for the Oscars being international in outlook, I have to disagree with that. The Oscars were created as a celebration of Hollywood, and that's pretty much what they've remained (especially since any independent film companies, like Miramax, that have made a splash have usually been gobbled up by the studios pretty quickly and folded into the Hollywood system, and most of the British films nominated have been produced and bankrolled by Hollywood studios). While Hollywood absorbs talented directors, actors, writers, etc, from all over the world, it remains a distinctly American film industry.
Goldman was brought in for talks to write the screenplay and Goldman's pitch was that it would be an ode to the American can-do spirit, but Kaufman sneered at that approach. What he wanted was to show the Mercury Seven as a publicity gimmick who were just "spam in a can" and contrast them with a real deal pilot like Chuck Yeager. Goldman didn't want to write that and so didn't sign onto the project.
The funny thing is that the material obviously tugged Kaufman - consciously or not - towards Goldman's pitch. There's certainly some of Kaufman's original viewpoint in the film, but ultimately it ends up being an ode to the American can-do spirit and to the bravery of the Mercury Seven.
As for the Oscars being international in outlook, I have to disagree with that. The Oscars were created as a celebration of Hollywood, and that's pretty much what they've remained (especially since any independent film companies, like Miramax, that have made a splash have usually been gobbled up by the studios pretty quickly and folded into the Hollywood system, and most of the British films nominated have been produced and bankrolled by Hollywood studios). While Hollywood absorbs talented directors, actors, writers, etc, from all over the world, it remains a distinctly American film industry.
I have never seen this movie and really have no desire to do so. Seriously.
Here I was thinking this was a tough choice but it turns out I voted with everyone else for The Right Stuff.
For memorable movies, Scarface should win. A Christmas Story is its only competition.
For memorable movies, Scarface should win. A Christmas Story is its only competition.
I loved The Dresser, but was probably one of the few who actually saw it. All the movies here are good, but I think "The Right Stuff" is an excellent film, and will probably stand the test of time far better than "Terms of Endearment."
The Dresser was excellent. It's been a long time since I've seen it, though.
I didn't like Tender Mercies.
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