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Top 10 Best Picture Oscar Flubs

1. Life is Beautiful to Shakespeare in Love (1998)
2. Quiz Show to Forrest Gump (1994)
3. Traffic to Gladiator (2000)
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark to Chariots of Fire (1981)
5. Dead Poets Society to Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
6. A Few Good Men to Unforgiven (1992)
7. 12 Angry Men to The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)-latter good, former great
8. Munich to Crash (2005)
9. The Two Towers to Chicago (2002)
10. The Exorcist to The Sting (1973)
 
Too Much Fun said:
I think that Lord of the Rings movie won just because the trilogy had made so much money, the Academy felt they had to give one of the movies an award as a way of acknowledging the success of all three. Also, the other nominees in 2003 weren't very good. My pick for that year would have been "21 Grams", which wasn't even nominated for best picture.
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As much as I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I think that Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World was robbed in 2003. Return of the King was, in its theatrical version, a comparatively weak film. M&C is far more consistent overall.

If an LOTR film deserved Best Picture, it was Fellowship in 2001.
 
Orac Zen said:
This is all pretty much completely subjective, of course - one person's great movie is the next person's idea of a waking coma.
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Bingo!

Kira's Mom said:
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.
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Again, complete agreement, especially for Blanchett.

C_Miller said:
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.
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I am pretty much of the same mind on this, especially with the award to Densch. Another I might add is Henry Fonda's for "On Golden Pond". Good film, good performance... but it was clear to me the Best Actor Oscar was awarded to him because the Academy felt he was not long for this world. Another was Paul Newman's for "The Color of Money", when he should have won for "The Verdict", "Cool Hnad Luke" and/or "The Hustler".

Allyn Gibson said:
As much as I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I think that Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World was robbed in 2003. Return of the King was, in its theatrical version, a comparatively weak film. M&C is far more consistent overall.

If an LOTR film deserved Best Picture, it was Fellowship in 2001.
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I am convinced ROTK won all of those Oscars in recognition for all three individual films. IF you separate the films into three movies - which is logical and understandable - then I can agree that the theatrical FOTR is the best of the three. BUT... I cannot separate them. To me they are one single movie, and were recognized as such primarily because they were filmed pretty much at the same time. Just released over time. To see it go without the awards if received would be criminal at best.
 
I believe the big reason that the first two LOTR films didn't win was because the Academy was worried that the subsequent installments would fall flat on their faces and retroactively make the award look bad. Since they knew they would have the option of giving the third film BP, it was an easy choice to pass on it for the time being.
 
Neroon said:
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.
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I am pretty much of the same mind on this, especially with the award to Densch. Another I might add is Henry Fonda's for "On Golden Pond". Good film, good performance... but it was clear to me the Best Actor Oscar was awarded to him because the Academy felt he was not long for this world. Another was Paul Newman's for "The Color of Money", when he should have won for "The Verdict", "Cool Hnad Luke" and/or "The Hustler".


QUOTE]

One infamous consolation award that I've read about was Elizabeth Taylor winning Best Actress for Butterfield 8 a performance that has been reviled but she won supposedly because she nearly died around the time of the nomination/award ceremony.
 
Harvey said:
UssGlenn said:
Too Much Fun said:
6) "How Green Was My Valley". "The Maltese Falcon" and "Citizen Kane" are BOTH nominated and neither of them win? WTF? I haven't seen the movie that won, but I can't imagine it being better than both of those (1942).
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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.
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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.
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I agree Kane was groundbreaking. How Green Was My Valley had conventional cinematography but it was done very, very well, so its easy to see why it would get votes from people not used to a new style.
 
One pattern that I'm seeing with the winners is that the Academy tends to give awards to movies, performances, etc. that are safe and conventional. Take How Green Was My Valley's win for picture and cinematography. Or more recently Forrest Gump and Dances With Wolves over the more edgy Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas. But there are exceptions like Midnight Cowboy, the only X rated film to win for best picture (though by today's standards the film would be an R)
 
One factor in that is success; the Academy likes films that are big hits. A strong, conventional film that makes lots of money will get a very warm reception (in recent years, there's been a slackening of the correlation between box office and success, most pronouncedly last year).
 
Orac Zen said:
I wouldn't call How Green Was My Valley one of my favourite movies or anything, but it is greatly underrated.
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Agreed, a great film whose sophistication is often lost amid the perception that it's just a sentimental tear-jerker. Its narrator's idealized nostalgia, told through subjective, sometimes expressionistic shots, is balanced by a remarkable editorial distance in the depiction of the tragic and unhappy side of events. It doesn't have the technical innovation of Citizen Kane, which is so much more appealing to modern tastes, but it is hardly an injustice that such a fine film won the Oscar that year. And Orson Welles is certainly on record as a big fan of John Ford's mastery of cinematic storytelling.

Neroon said:
Another was Paul Newman's for "The Color of Money", when he should have won for "The Verdict", "Cool Hnad Luke" and/or "The Hustler".
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And/or Hud.

--Justin
 
Trek4Ever said:
One infamous consolation award that I've read about was Elizabeth Taylor winning Best Actress for Butterfield 8 a performance that has been reviled but she won supposedly because she nearly died around the time of the nomination/award ceremony.
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That reminds me, another site had a great joke when Ruby Dee was nominated for "American Gangster" a few years back. It's the "Oh shit, you're dying soon!" nomination! :rommie: She was all right, but she was hardly even in the movie!
 
Would it be possible for folks to list what criteria they use in judging what film is worthy of winning the Best Picture Oscar? Seriously... what makes you say, "that's my winner right there"? Historical? Big box office take? Strong moral message that you favor?
 
I'm serious though. What for you makes it a "really, really good movie"? Just from looking in this thread, different people have variety of criteria. Or is this something that can even be quantified at all?
 
#6 was a toss-up (were there really no more serious movies that year?) and #9 was the right call.

Rocky over Taxi Driver or Network. That's mostly just a preference thing.
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Oh yeah, that could have been the worst choice of all time. And no, it's not a "preference thing" at all. :rommie:
 
Neroon said:
But precisely why do you feel that way? Why is it such a bad choice, but not because of personal preferences?
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If you're interested in a debate about the concept of quality, it has been going on for centuries and is not easy to sum up in a couple of forum posts. Start with Plato.
 
The Mirrorball Man said:
Neroon said:
But precisely why do you feel that way? Why is it such a bad choice, but not because of personal preferences?
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If you're interested in a debate about the concept of quality, it has been going on for centuries and is not easy to sum up in a couple of forum posts. Start with Plato.
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You misunderstand me. It's not so much a debate over "quality" I'm interested in, but what specific factors move a person to rate a film one way or the other. On top of that, there are many folks who know a great deal more what to look for in evaluating a film, things I'm not aware of.
 
Rocky isn't as sophisticated or as deep as Taxi Driver. But that doesn't mean it's not as good. I think it's a worthy winner. If Taxi Driver had won, I wouldn't be complaining either. Both movies are superb.
 
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