TrekBBS Academy Awards #27: Best Picture, 2002

[Star Treks]

27th in a series of polls examining how you, the TrekBBS users, would have voted, were you in the Academy. Up next: Best Picture, 2002. Which nominee most deserved the Academy Award?

Comments encouraged.

 

[Aragorn]

I voted for The Two Towers. If it had won this year, then Chicago wouldn't have won. And the next year they could've given it to a more deserving movie like Mystic River. Personally I would've gone with Master & Commander for the next year, but that wasn't going to happen.

 

[Mistral]

I didn't think any of these were on a par with winners from other years-most of them bored me to tears, 2Towers included. I tossed a bone to The Pianist on the grounds that, while boring, it featured some excellent individual performances.

 

[Thrall]

I hate musicals, but Catherine Zeta Jones does the best non-strip tease-strip tease I've seen in a while. That was the only thing I remember about it. Because I hate musicals.

Gangs of New York is Scorsese's worst film, but even that's saying alot. He perfected this little story in The Departed.

The Two Towers and Lord of The Rings in general puts me to sleep. These are really some of the most dull, coma-inducing action films I've ever seen.

The other two were generic art house fluff pieces, that sadly, have come to be the norm at the Academy Awards ever since.

I'll go with Gangs of New York, because it's Martin F'n Scorsese.

 

[Harvey]

The Pianist, without a doubt. Unlike a number of Holocaust films I could name, this one is neither exploitative nor lacking in subtlety. If only Roman Polanski wasn't such a problematic individual, but I won't fault the film for his personal failures.

The Two Towers may be the weakest of the LOTR films--it's certainly not as good as the first installment. Gangs of New York was a rather weak Scorsese film (even he admits to disliking it and the process of working with the Weinstein brothers). Chicago was a flashy musical, and not particularly to my liking. The Hours was good, but The Pianist was far better.

 

[Piper]

A very weak list in my opinion, the only film that comes close to being worthy of getting the award is The Pianist.

 

[Orac Zen]

The only one of these I've gotten around to seeing is The Two Towers and it seems to me that it got the gong for the trilogy rather than its own merits, which were, IMO, limited.

I must watch The Pianist some time. None of the others interested me much.

 

[DeafPoet]

The Pianist, no question. I love that movie.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

The Pianist.

Really, a fantastic movie.

 

[Star Treks]

I'm the only one (so far) who voted for The Hours.

This is a case of "I don't care what anyone says, I really liked it".

 

[Aragorn]

The Hours -- Nicole Kidman's in it for what, 30 minutes? And gets a Best Actress Oscar.

Jamie Foxx is in 99% of Collateral AND it's his character's journey and he's a Best Supporting Actor nominee.

I'll never understand what they're smoking.

 

[CaptainCanada]

The Two Towers is one of my favourites of that series, particularly for Helm's Deep, probably my favourite action setpiece of the trilogy.

My choice for the award is Chicago, which was a very entertaining film with some great performances.

Jamie Foxx is in 99% of Collateral AND it's his character's journey and he's a Best Supporting Actor nominee.

I'll never understand what they're smoking.

He wanted to be nominated twice, and so submitted himself for competition in two different categories.

The distinction between lead and support can get pretty bizarre when you compare screentime over the years; Kate Winslet in The Reader and Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs are two prominent examples of "Lead" performances that don't really fit (Hopkins' was called a lead role by the other awards organizations too; the Academy was virtually alone in treating Winslet as such).

 

[Neroon]

Looking at that year alone, I had to go with The Two Towers. Granted, the next year Return of the King received the award, most likely for the trilogy as a whole. I ahve no problem with that whatsoever, as the Lord of the Rings series is a seminal achievement in movie-making that we won't see again for a very long time. Should that eliminate Two Towers from consideration for 2002 - which is understandable - then it becomes a difficult choice. I'd have to give the nod to The Pianist barely over Gangs of New York.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

I bought the giant trees, orcs and shit more than I bought Cameron Diaz in a serious role. Daniel Day Lewis's flaw is that if the rest of the cast can't keep up with him than the movie looks the worse for it.

 

[Neroon]

Lewis can easily go over the top, leaving others in the dust, that's for sure.