Top 10 Best Picture Oscar Flubs
- Thread starter Trek4Ever
- Start date
I liked Ordinary People, but I thought Raging Bull was a better movie. Tough call either way.
Saving Private Ryan portrayed the pain and sacrafice that our soldiers endured during WWII and taught a lesson to a lot of people who had miconceptions about the brutality of war. Shakespeare in Love pales in comparison.
Saving Private Ryan portrayed the pain and sacrafice that our soldiers endured during WWII and taught a lesson to a lot of people who had miconceptions about the brutality of war. Shakespeare in Love pales in comparison.
The only good thing about "Shakespeare In Love" was that it inspired a funny scene in "Scary Movie". That movie winning is an iconic "WTF?" moment in Oscar history. It's always one of the first choices on lists of most bewildering Oscar picks, along with Marisa Tomei's win for "My Cousin Vinny".
People disappointed that "The King's Speech" won said, "have fun being this decade's Shakespeare in Love". This is the movie's only legacy. A punchline. I think "The King's Speech" deserved to win, though, and it didn't rob an infinitely better movie like "Shakespeare in Love" did.
People disappointed that "The King's Speech" won said, "have fun being this decade's Shakespeare in Love". This is the movie's only legacy. A punchline. I think "The King's Speech" deserved to win, though, and it didn't rob an infinitely better movie like "Shakespeare in Love" did.
Ditto. It's also a far more intelligent movie than people give it credit for. And the acting was top-notch all around. Heck, it was probably Affleck's best performance. Ironically, SPR was one of Damon's most uninspired. (Hanks too for that matter.)
So have half a dozen films that did so much better. I hear a few even won best picture.
If you only knew the irony.
If you only knew the irony.
Rocky over Taxi Driver or Network. That's mostly just a preference thing. I'm not really a fan of sports movies (I think they all generally tell the same story) and I don't think Sylvester Stallone can act well enough to carry his own movie. However, it wasn't a bad movie.
Also for 1994, The Shawshank Redemption is my favorite movie ever, so I would have had that win, but I also love Forrest Gump, so I can't complain too much and I am upset that Almost Famous wasn't nominated in 2000. I'd be okay with it not winning, but I would have liked a nomination.
The one thing I hate more than anything is the consolation prize Oscars. Like The Departed is far from Scorsese's best film, but that wasn't a great year for movies in the first place. Hugh LotR fan, but Fellowship was the best of the trilogy and RotK was not the best film that year. But it one for the whole series. It seems like that happens a lot though. You hear entertainment pundits talking about how it's a certain someone's "time" and usually they win based on that. Like 2008 with The Reader. That was Winslet's time. Whether or not she was the best performance that year is not important.
Also for 1994, The Shawshank Redemption is my favorite movie ever, so I would have had that win, but I also love Forrest Gump, so I can't complain too much and I am upset that Almost Famous wasn't nominated in 2000. I'd be okay with it not winning, but I would have liked a nomination.
The one thing I hate more than anything is the consolation prize Oscars. Like The Departed is far from Scorsese's best film, but that wasn't a great year for movies in the first place. Hugh LotR fan, but Fellowship was the best of the trilogy and RotK was not the best film that year. But it one for the whole series. It seems like that happens a lot though. You hear entertainment pundits talking about how it's a certain someone's "time" and usually they win based on that. Like 2008 with The Reader. That was Winslet's time. Whether or not she was the best performance that year is not important.
The sad thing is, winning Best Picture actually seems to have hurt Shakespeare in Love's reputation. It's actually a delightful, witty film, full of fine performances, but it's become a punching bag because so many people will never forgive it for beating Saving Private Ryan (which I confess I've never seen).
Yes, that's another signature of the Oscars. You could make a whole thread about that (I think I've even seen a few). Some examples:
- Denzel Washington for "Training Day" instead of "Malcolm X" or "The Hurricane".
- Julia Roberts for "Erin Brockovich", just because of her popularity/status as 'America's Sweetheart' in the 1990s. No way was she better than Ellen Burstyn in "Requiem for a Dream".
- Al Pacino for "Scent of a Woman" instead of "The Godfather", "The Godfather Part II", "Glengarry Glen Ross", or "Dog Day Afternoon".
- Sean Penn for "Mystic River" (WAY over-the-top) instead of "Dead Man Walking".
- Whoopi Goldberg for "Ghost" instead of "The Color Purple".
- Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman for two movies that suck instead of "The Shawshank Redemption".
In all of those cases (except Sean Penn and Julia Roberts), I think these were actually good performances. What sucks most about them being chosen is that they were picked over much more worthy nominees.
Western Union, dude. Western Union.
Until this afternoon I had no idea that anyone held a grudge against the movie. It's really incredible, the infinite catalogue of resentments that seem to exist...most for silly reasons.
I was aware of some resentment against Gandhi, back in the day, for beating out a Spielberg flick - E.T., I think. Enough of that actually came from people in the business to move one comedian to joke that most of Hollywood hated Gandhi for being what they all wanted to be but most weren't: thin, tan and moral.
Everybody complains about this, but nobody has ever seen the movie. While it doesn't have the reputation of "The Maltese Falcon" or "Citizen Kane", "How Green Was My Valley" is a very good film. It won for cinematography, and art direction (which were both very deserved) and Best Director which is only questionable in hindsight given Citizen Kane's reputation. With a story about Welsh Miners and tragedy it would be termed "Oscar bait" today.
I guess one thing these lists demonstrate is the obvious: that folks voting for the awards have no clue how the films released that year will weather the passage of decades.
I've seen it; has some interesting points, but overall I thought it was dull.
I think much of that anger is the fact that the Weinstein Bros. ran a scorched earth marketing campaign that actually led to some kind of reforming of the rules (don't remember what they were). I remember reading that Spielberg was esp. POed at them and ran (through Dreamworks) his own scorched earth campaign the next year with American Beauty against Weinstein's Cider House Blues.
I can't think of a single film I'd award the Best Cinematography statue to over Greg Toland's work on Citizen Kane. It was groundbreaking at the time and it remains so. The movie was snubbed when it came to the Academy Awards because of politics, plain and simple.
The French were ahead of the curve when they noted that John Ford's westerns were all better than his Academy Award-bait dramas (and that's all How Green Was My Valley was at the time--"Oscar Bait" might be a new colloquialism, but it's not a new phenomenon).
Well, not the next year - American Beauty and Cider House Rules were released in 1999; Gandhi was an '82 film. I'd hate to think that Spielberg carried a grudge that long.
OTOH, people did joke when Temple Of Doom was released in 1984 that the film's unsavory caricatures of Indians were Spielberg's working out of his anger at Gandhi.
And Mola Ram is a thinly-veiled caricature of Gandhi.
Really? I didn't know that.
Makes Spielberg seem pretty petulant and foolish, and I've certainly never had that impression of him before.
Makes Spielberg seem pretty petulant and foolish, and I've certainly never had that impression of him before.
Er... no. That was a little joke. I'm sorry. I kinda assumed that people would not believe that a psychotic sorcerer who eats people's heart while they're alive was not, in fact, based on a famous advocator of nonviolence.
Well because of this thread I watched Shakespeare in Love last night for the first time in about a decade. And I loved it.
The cast is amazing: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Judy Dench, Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Simon Callow, Ben Affleck, Imelda Staunton, Tom Wilkinson...
It looks good, the score is great, it's funny. And it's really held up well.
The cast is amazing: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Judy Dench, Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Simon Callow, Ben Affleck, Imelda Staunton, Tom Wilkinson...
It looks good, the score is great, it's funny. And it's really held up well.
This is all pretty much completely subjective, of course - one person's great movie is the next person's idea of a waking coma. Having said that, any of the other movies nominated that year should have won over The English Patient, a movie that should have been marketed as a cure for insomnia.
As for Shakespeare in Love, I enjoyed the hell out of it at the time and I daresay I still would. However, I reckon Elizabeth was the better movie, and Paltrow's win ahead of Cate Blanchett was laughable. Again, YMMV.
Eh, to each their own. Redford's typically one-note and dull performance aside, it's (IMO, anyway) a terrific movie. Much as I like(d) The Colour Purple and Witness, I wouldn't have picked either ahead of it, but that's just me.
I wouldn't call How Green Was My Valley one of my favourite movies or anything, but it is greatly underrated. Harvey makes a fair point about Citizen Kane's cinematography, but otherwise it is, along with Gone With the Wind, the most overpraised and overrated movie ever made, IMO.
As for Shakespeare in Love, I enjoyed the hell out of it at the time and I daresay I still would. However, I reckon Elizabeth was the better movie, and Paltrow's win ahead of Cate Blanchett was laughable. Again, YMMV.
Yep. That's been going on since the earliest years of the gongs- err, Oscars. Among the many examples available, I'll throw in Judi Dench's win for her 7-8 minute turn in Shakespeare in Love - pretty clearly a consolation award after she didn't get the gong for Mrs Brown the previous year.