Robbed of an Oscar

I put the year when the movie came out, so the Oscar was the next year.

1976: Beatrice Straight won Best Supporting Actress for Network. She's in the movie for like 10 minutes!

1992: Denzel Washington deserved the Best Actor for Malcolm X. Al Pacino won it for Scent of a Woman, his first Academy Award.

1993: Tommy Lee Jones won the Best Supporting Actor for The Fugitive. John Malkovich (In the Line of Fire) and Ralph Fiennes (Schindler's List) were more deserving.

1994: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't even remember Hoop Dreams getting nominated for Best Documentary.

1996: Eddie Murphy should've at least gotten a Best Actor nomination for The Nutty Professor. Comedic actors rarely get the credit they deserve. His performance in this movie was incredible.

1998: Shakespeare in Love winning over Saving Private Ryan.

2001: Denzel Washington winning the Best Actor over Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind.

2003: City of God didn't even get nominated for Best Picture. Did it got nominated for Best Foreign Film? C.O.G. was better than Return of the King in my opinion.

It was nominated in 1995 for Best Film Editing. It should have gotten an award for Best Documentary, I agree. It's one of my all time favourite documentaries.

On the other hand A Beautiful Mind won the Best Picture Award in competition with four other films of which at least three were way better (Moulin Rouge, The Lord of the Ring: The Fellowship of the Ring and Gosford Park. Haven't seen In the Bedroom). And even if I wasn't blown away by Washington's performance in Training Day, I still think he deserved it over Russell Crowe's clumsy performance.

I couldn't agree more.

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

I really thought Robert Downey Jr should have won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Chaplin, but instead Al Pacino won it for Scent Of A Woman. Now, don't get me wrong; I really love Al's performance, but he should have won for numerous films before this, I really think Downey disserved to win.

I enjoyed Holly Hunter in The Piano but I really would have loved to see Stockard Channing win a Best Actress Oscar for Six Degrees Of Separation.

I would have rathered either John Malkovich for In The Line Of Fire or Leonardo DiCaprio for What's Eating Gilbert Grape to have won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, instead of Tommy Lee Jones.


Will think of more later...

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Drive Well, Sleep Carefully (Justin Mitchell, 2005) ****
Grilled (Jason Ensler, 2006) ****
An Inconvenient Truth (David Guggenheim, 2006) ****
The Family Stone (Thomas Bezucha, 2005) ***1/2
Rocky III (Sylvester Stallone, 1982) ***
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AMEN, sister!! That was a travesty.

I also think Bill Murray deserved the nod for Lost In Translation. His performance was understated, but heartbreakingly detailed and honest. I was thrilled to see Johnny Depp win and I have a ton of respect for him as an actor, but I felt Murray lost to a showier performance, rather than to a greater skill.

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Review: Cabin in the Woods 8/10

Er, ummmm....not sure which Oscars you were watching last year, but neither Bill Murray nor Johnny Depp won Best Actor. The trophy went to Sean Penn, for Mystic River (though surely some of that was a sort of unwritten vote for his work in 21 Grams as well). The other two nominees were Ben Kingsley in House of Sand & Fog and Jude Law in Cold Mountain.

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Here is my list of Academy mistakes:

1990- Best Picture Dances With Wolves...should've went to Goodfellas
Best Director Kevin Costner...over Martin Scorsese? NOT!!

1998- Best Picture Shakespeare in Love...what was the Academy smoking? Saving Private Ryan should've won HANDS DOWN!!
Best Actress Gwyneth Paltrow...sorry, but not over Cate Blanchett. Cate's performance was definitely the better of the two.

2000- Best Picture Gladiator...I LOVED this movie. But I don't think it deserved the Oscar that year (over Chocolat, Traffic, Erin Brockovich, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon)
Best Actor Russell Crowe...this should've been between Tom Hanks (Cast Away) and Ed Harris (Pollock).

2001-Best Actor Denzel Washington...This is where Russell Crowe should've gotten his award, for his role as John Nash in A Beautiful Mind. Or even Will Smith's skills as ALI could've been rewarded.

This is just a short list which I'm sure the Academy will help to fill over time.

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I just found out that Elizabeth Taylor wasn't even nominated for her performance in Cleopatra! I am totally shocked over this!

That's not so shocking. It's not her best work, she had just won the Oscar two years before (for BUtterfield 8) and already had four nominations ('58, '59, '60 and '61). The next time she did something really remarkble and daring on screen, for Who's Afriad of Virginia Woolf? just three years after Cleopatra, she was nominated and very rightly won again. Bravely going against her icon status as one of the most beautiful women on the screen to play such a flawed and repugnant character so perfectly was truly deserving of an award. Cleopatra...not so much.

The actress who really got screwed out of a Best Actress nomination for the '63 year of films was Deborah Kerr, who is fantastic in The Innocents (Robert Wise). But that's also one of those rare years that it's pretty easy to say the best performance actually was nominated and even won: Patricia Neal in Hud, so not a year to complain too much about - Best Actress-wise anyway.

Anyone who has seen A Streetcar Named Desire knows that Marlon Brando should have won the oscar. Some of my other gripes are Forrest Gump over The Shawshank Redemption in '94 and Peter Jackson over Clint Eastwood for last years Best Director.

Peter O' Toole not winning best actor for Lawrence of Arabia.

2006: Emanuel Lubezki, Director of Photography for Children of Men, loosing out to Guillermo Navarro of Pan's Labyrinth.

Though i loved the latter, Lubzeki deserved the Oscar for all the innovative work he did on his flick.

1988- Mississippi Burning should have won best picture

1990-Best Director should have gone to Scorcese for Goodfellas

1992- Denzel Washington should have got best actor it for MalcolmX

1993- Ralph Fiennes or Ben Kingsley should have got the supporting actor for Schindlers list.

1998- Edward Nortan should have got best actor for American History X

2001- Ben Kingsley should have got best supporting actor for his role in Sexy Beast.

I'm sorry, but there have not been any bigger ripoffs than Norton losing out for American History X and Fiennes losing for Schindler's List.

Both of those are haunting performances that just will never leave my memory.

Even if you don't like Schindler's List or American History X, you still have to totally appreciate the incredible work Fiennes and Norton did in those roles.

A vastly overrated performance. Literally any reasonably charismatic black actor could have stepped into that role and been a cult favorite - the excellence of the writing, not the quality of Jackson's characterization, is what makes Jules Winnfield such an appealing figure.

Can you name one?

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Fishburne? Danny Glover? Hell, had the roles of Ving Rhames and Jackson been reversed, we'd be talking about Rhames in this context.

I doubt that either Glover or Rhames could deliver the same script in the same brisk fashion. Regardless of that, isn't every brilliant performance based mostly on brilliant script?

Come on... everyone knows that all it takes to play a black character is a black actor. What's the point in arguing about that??

I think that the character was tailor made to Samuel L Jackson's personality and acting style. Anyone else would not have been the same. Ving Rhames probably could have been good in the role, but it would have been a vastly different character.

The stdio that originally put up the money for Pulp Fiction, Tri Star Pictures, originally wanted John Travolta's part to be played by Daniel Day Lewis. That would have changed the tone of the film radically, as would any other black actor playing Jules.

Not really. Great performances very often are independent of the quality of the script (see Training Day. But what do we really remember about Jules? Not the performance, but the LINES he delivers. That's the script, not the actor.