1994 Academy Awards

The Hard Day's Knight

06-23-04

I'm sorry if this thread has come up before. I ran a search and didn't find anything, so I guess I'm Ok.

In 1994, three great movies were released...

- Forrest Gump.
- Pulp Fiction.
- The Shawshank Redemption.

They were all up against each other for the main awards at the Oscars, and were all favorites to win.

Forrest Gump won Best Picture, Best Actor (Tom Hanks) and Best Director (Robert Zemeckis).

I can understand Tom Hanks winning Best Actor instead of John Travolta and Morgan Freeman.
But I can't understand how Forrest Gump won Best Picture instead of The Shawshank Redemption or Pulp Fiction.
Frank Darabont (d. Shawshank...) wasn't even nominated for Best Director, Tarantino was, but Zemeckis won.

Do you think that Forrest Gump deserved all those awards over Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption?

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uconjack

Msg

So many good movies, so little time.

06-23-04

I would have picked

Pulp Fiction
John Travolta

and especially

Samuel L. Jackson as Actor in a Supporting Role over Martin Landau in Ed Wood

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D'yer Mak'er

Msg

Bug Planet Proximus

06-23-04

everyone knows years like '94 were hard for other deserving movies ('76 as well) but the academy awards are a big pile of horse manure and you should know that as a common fact by now.
And even though i hate Robert Redford movies my favourite one of his, Quiz Show, came out that year and got no recognition because of those other movies. (Scorsese has a great character in that btw

)
Ed Wood was also quite good
Speed was one of the greatest action movies of the nineties
Natural Born Killers was much under-appreciated
The Lion King is the greatest Disney film ever
Clerks one of the greatest independant films of the nineties
The Mask was one of my favourite Jim Carrey movies
as you can see there were some other quite good movies that came out that year and '94 is one of the reasons i became interested in cinema.
unforunately it also made some crap like all years(eg. four weddings and a funeral, muriels wedding, little women,etc)

Last edited by D'yer Mak'er; 06-23-04 at 09:01 AM.

iluv2viddyfilms

RIP www.moviejustice.com 2002-2010

06-23-04

Natural Born Killers would be my top film of the year

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Holden Pike

One Ornery Sumbitch

06-23-04

Originally Posted by Parky

Do you think that Forrest Gump deserved all those awards over Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption?

In the words of another Oscar-winning film, "Deserve's got nuthin' to do with it."

And I don't beilieve the race was as close as you'd like to think. Forrest Gump was the big favorite, and while there was a chance it would experience some backlash by the time votes came in, the chances of Pulp Fiction - the clear second place contender, getting enough of the older, conservative ballots to push it to the top were pretty slim. When Tarantino and Roger Avery went on stage to accept their Best Original Screenplay Oscar, Quentin knew damn well he would not be back to collect any more trophies that evening. Similarly Sam Jackson knew for sure Martin Landau was going to win Best Supporting Actor, and if he hadn't Gary Sinise would have. John Travolta was a bit of a sentimental choice for making such a big comeback, but Hanks was the clear favorite, and Tom setting history and becoming only the second actor to win in back-to-back years was an even better story. I think Uma Thurman had the best chance of a win among the Pulp actors, but Dianne Wiest, playing a conceited actress in a Woody Allen film, was pretty well a shoo-in there too.

As for Shawshank, it has much more of a rabid following now than it did then. It even getting major nominations was a bit of a surprise, really. But I rememeber watching "Regis & Kathie Lee" for their Oscar predictions, and Kathie Lee Gifford said The Shawshank Redemption was far and away her favorite of the nominees and she hoped it would win. That pretty well sums up the kind of vote it was attracting then - mostly those who were sick of Gump already for whatever reason, but absolutely hated Pulp Fiction (and there were many, many Academy voters who though Pulp was inappropriate for The Oscars).

The only real "controversy" in that year's nominations was that Hoop Dreams was snubbed in the Documentary Feature category, and also failed to become the first non-fiction film to crack the Best Picture category (it garnered only one Oscar nomination, for Best Editing...which it lost to Forrest Gump).

I'm a huge David Letterman fan, and still have most of the ceremony on tape. I'm in the minority in that I thought Dave did an excellent job as host, but his performance was really the big news the following day (most of the reviews that he did a lousy job), and not that Forrest Gump went through, as predicted, and won most of the key big awards (Picture, Director, Actor, Adapted Screenplay) plus two more of its thirteen nominations (far and away the most heavily-nominated film that year).

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Last edited by Holden Pike; 06-23-04 at 01:02 PM. Reason: korecting spelleing eRors

iluv2viddyfilms

RIP www.moviejustice.com 2002-2010

06-23-04

Originally Posted by Holden Pike

The only real "controversy" in that year's nominations was that Hoop Dreams was snubbed in the Documentary Feature category and also failed to become the first non-fiction film to crack the Best Picture category (it garnered only one Oscar nomination, for Best Editing...which it lost to Forrest Gump).

God almighty how I hated that freakin' thing.

Holden Pike

One Ornery Sumbitch

06-23-04

Here are some of my favorite Letterman bits from that Oscar telecast...

Best monolgue joke: "One of the pictures nominated tonight for Best Foreign Film: Eat, Drink, Man, Woman. Coincidentally, as I understand it, this is also how Arnold Schwarzenegger asked Maria Shriver out on their first date."

Second-best taped bit: Dave drives around talking about movies with New York City cabdrivers. The highlight is when he tells one cabbie, "I only do one impression, really. It's Jack Nicholson. You wanna see it?" Cut to Dave beating Hell on the hood of the cab with a golf club - referencing a real-life incident from around that time where Nicholson did the same to another motorist's car after he apparently cut Jack off in traffic and Nicholson retrieved a club from his trunk (I believe it was a 9 Iron, and he showed good form, keeping his head down on the swings).

Best taped bit: After showing his own big screen debut in Cabin Boy with the clip of Dave holding a stuffed toy sock monkey and asking, "Would you like to buy a monkey?", he explains he was not the first or only choice for the role. Then we are shown what is supposedly Cabin Boy audition tapes, with many other actors giving different readings of that simple line. The actors include Jack Lemmon, Martin Short, Steve Martin, Albert Brooks ("I'm confused: I thought I was playing the monkey"), Alec Baldwin, Tom Hanks, Madonna, Danny DeVito, Paul Newman, Michael Keaton, John Turturro, Anthony Hopkins and Barry White. Friipin' hysterical.

Top ten list: TOP TEN SIGNS THE MOVIE YOU ARE WATCHING WILL NOT WIN AN ACADEMY AWARD
10. It still has the time code from the camcorder
9. Any combination of the words "police" and "academy" in the title
8. It's a movie about The Civil War, and General Grant is wearing Dockers
7. You hear somebody yelling, "Focus!", and you realize it's the director
6. It's a beautifully made documentary about two boys in the inner city trying to realize their dream of playing professional basketball
5. The last twenty minutes is a shot of Ritchie from Local 262 eating donuts
4. Your date had to jam a hypodermic needle full of adrynaline into your heart just to keep you awake
3. Before it starts you hear, "Thank you for coming to Loews, sit back and relax, this movie blows"
2. Nude scene with Uma Thurman replaced with a nude scene with Strom Thurmond
1. Four words: Dom DeLuise is Ghandi!

Last edited by Holden Pike; 06-23-04 at 01:07 PM. Reason: little mistakse

Holden Pike