"And the Oscar Goes To..."

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Tonight at 8:00pmEST on TCM, the debut of a new documentary about the history of The Academy Awards, And the Oscar Goes To....

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Thanks Holden. I'll have to keep an eye out for it.
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Don't know how many of you caught this or at least DVR'd it, but I found it underwhelming and disappointing. They had access to a lot of historical Oscar footage, both what happened on camera and what was going on behind the scenes. Honestly, I would have loved a couple hours of that material assembled, with maybe some insider commentary about the voting process, the various branches, etc. It wouldn't have to be an expose the way Kirby Dick got inside the MPAA ratings board in his doc This Film is Not Yet Rated (though that could be awesome), but simply have a point of view or, barring that, how about chronology? And the Oscar Goes To... was extremely haphazard and had nothing much to say. They had a random sampling of interviews with past winners and nominees, some film clips, and that great old footage of the ceremonies, but no structure to them. It was great that they actually talked to people from each discipline, not just actors and directors, but to then spend say six or seven minutes on editing was, to me, almost worse than not having editors represented at all. Same for cinemtographers and costumers and on and on.



I was kind of hoping it might have served as a counterpart, if not an unofficial sequel, to Oscar's Greatest Moments: 1971-1991 (basically Sacheen Littlefeather to Jack Palance's one-arm push ups), which was released on VHS in the early 1990s. Hosted by Karl Malden (who was then the President of the AMPAS), it is fairly straightforward, but lets the ceremony and its moments, be they rehearsed, improvised, or acceptance speeches, speak for themselves, providing context when necessary, but mostly just cataloging terrific moments. In fact, if anybody at the AMPAS is listening, please MAKE an actual sequel, covering the years 1992-2012. Is that so hard?

The Academy has actually been really good the past couple years in making all sorts of Oscar material available on their YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/user/Oscars. But that Oscar's Greatest Moments VHS was well done, I still watch it every year as the ceremony draws near. For the sake of my library, give me 1992-2012, already.



The TCM doc And the Oscar Goes To... isn't horrible, there is some good footage throughout, some of the interviews are decent...it just feels like a missed opportunity, to me. Perhaps for those of you not as much of a junkie for all things Oscar, who are just now getting into the history and fun of the event, it'd be more rewarding? But coming from Turner Classic Movies, honestly I expected a lot more.

But I do recommend spending hours upon hours noodling around the Oscar's YouTube channel.

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Don't know how many of you caught this or at least DVR'd it, but I found it underwhelming and disappointing. They had access to a lot of historical Oscar footage, both what happened on camera and what was going on behind the scenes. Honestly, I would have loved a couple hours of that material assembled, with maybe some insider commentary about the voting process, the various branches, etc. It wouldn't have to be an expose the way Kirby Dick got inside the MPAA ratings board in his doc This Film is Not Yet Rated (though that could be awesome), but simply have a point of view or, barring that, how about chronology? And the Oscar Goes To... was extremely haphazard and had nothing much to say. They had a random sampling of interviews with past winners and nominees, some film clips, and that great old footage of the ceremonies, but no structure to them. It was great that they actually talked to people from each discipline, not just actors and directors, but to then spend say six or seven minutes on editing was, to me, almost worse than not having editors represented at all. Same for cinemtographers and costumers and on and on.



I was kind of hoping it might have served as a counterpart, if not an unofficial sequel, to Oscar's Greatest Moments: 1971-1991 (basically Sacheen Littlefeather to Jack Palance's one-arm push ups), which was released on VHS in the early 1990s. Hosted by Karl Malden (who was then the President of the AMPAS), it is fairly straightforward, but lets the ceremony and its moments, be they rehearsed, improvised, or acceptance speeches, speak for themselves, providing context when necessary, but mostly just cataloging terrific moments. In fact, if anybody at the AMPAS is listening, please MAKE an actual sequel, covering the years 1992-2012. Is that so hard?

The Academy has actually been really good the past couple years in making all sorts of Oscar material available on their YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/user/Oscars. But that Oscar's Greatest Moments VHS was well done, I still watch it every year as the ceremony draws near. For the sake of my library, give me 1992-2012, already.



The TCM doc And the Oscar Goes To... isn't horrible, there is some good footage throughout, some of the interviews are decent...it just feels like a missed opportunity, to me. Perhaps for those of you not as much of a junkie for all things Oscar, who are just now getting into the history and fun of the event, it'd be more rewarding? But coming from Turner Classic Movies, honestly I expected a lot more.

But I do recommend spending hours upon hours noodling around the Oscar's YouTube channel.

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So, correct me if I'm wrong but the impression I get from your thread is that this documentary mostly featured stuff that you had already seen and you were hoping for more "buried treasure"? I do agree with you regarding the Oscar material available on You Tube...You tube is stupid with long forgotten great Oscar moments.



So, correct me if I'm wrong but the impression I get from your thread is that this documentary mostly featured stuff that you had already seen and you were hoping for more "buried treasure"? I do agree with you regarding the Oscar material available on You Tube...You tube is stupid with long forgotten great Oscar moments.
There was actually some great footage backstage and in the press room that I hadn't seen, though not enough of it. The clips of the ceremonies were fine, but there weren't a whole lot of them, it seemed to me. Lots of talking heads, but not really leading into each other with any cohesion. And those talking heads were random. It was too unfocused, for my taste.

For example, one of the interview subjects is Whoopi Goldberg, and one of the things she talks about is how Spielberg approached her for The Color Purple and that she didn't think she would be able to carry the cetral performance of a huge film, etc. OK, fine, in and of itself. Does it lead to a run of several actors and actresses talking about the big break or casting coincidence that led to their Oscar nominated performance? Nope. It's just kind of there by itself. Alright, then why include it? What does it have to do with Oscar history, overall? If that had been followed by several more actors and actresses who were Oscar nominated for their debut performance, OK, I get it, makes sense, finish the thought. Then possibly followed by veteran actors who didn't win or get their first nomination until much later in their careers, both sides of that experience: great! But Whoopi's story by itself? So what? Why did you use two or three minutes for that? Great for a doc about Whoopi or Spielberg or The Color Purple. But for the history of the Academy Awards? Not so much.

It seemed to me that far too many of the interviews are like that. Isolated anecdotes, sometimes not even about the Oscars themselves, directly, but about their career or craft in general. But, hey, we have this footage. Now let's just run them into each other punctuated by some Oscar show highlights and movie clips. That's what I mean by unfocused intent, nothing specific to say.


Has anybody else seen it? It aired again last night approximately after the Super Bowl I believe, and I'm sure it will be on again during TCM's annual 31 Days of Oscar.


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Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
I saw it. You covered it pretty well. I think it's good enough for most MoFos though because many like to criticize the Academy without considering anything about their historical importance and influence. I'd give it a B- or
, so I do recommend it.
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Yea, I could see them interviewing Goldberg regarding THE COLOR PURPLE if that had been the film she had won the Oscar for, but it wasn't. Personally, I think she should have won but since she didn't, I don't understand why they would interview her or anyone associated with THE COLOR PURPLE for that matter. The film received 11 nominations but didn't win a single award, so why would it be included in a documentary like this?



Anybody else catch this special on TCM last night? A fascinating look at Oscar history jammed with lots of clips of acceptance speeches, presenter banter and, best of all, a lot of backstage moments with the press that we don't get to see that often. Loved seeing Hattie McDaniel's acceptance speech and Sidney Poitier's classy dodge of a question from the press regarding how much his race had to do with his Lillies of the Field win. I had also forgotten how moving Tom Hanks' Philadelphia speech was as well as Dustin Hoffman's Kramer VS Kramer speech. Also loved John Wayne dodging the press regarding the Sacheen Littlefeather debacle and watching the various hosts over the years, I realized how much I LOVED Johnny Carson as host. Also liked Jane Fonda's response to the press regarding her speech. There have been a lot of documentaries on Oscar history before, but this one contained a lot of stuff I had never seen before.



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You beat me to the post! I even set a reminder!

They truncated a bit of Dustin Hoffman's speech, the part where he talks about his criticism of the Academy, "and for good reason" - I have a Oscar Special on VHS of Karl Malden hosting also showing a whiny Frank Sinatra say that "I do not think as Mr. Hoffman does, that's it's an obscene night..." etc...

Sounded like Jane Fonda chickened out "I didn't have to say anything" b.s.... If you want to make it short, "End the war in Vietnam" would have sufficed...

I was going to bring this up on a 'General Movie Discussion' Thread on whether the Academy in themselves hurt film? It was nice to see Jane mention that her father and one of the greatest actors, Henry Fonda, didn't believe in competition. It's 4 hours of comparing clothes, very little content about movie. They overplay the show with musical shows where it had a 10 second part in a movie, with all the dancers and trumpet players, hosts...

I looked at the Best Picture in the last 15-20 years, and the only great film was American Beauty.



This TCM documentary is a year old, already. We discussed it a bit, HERE, in a thread you contributed to Gideon. I still think it's mostly a disappointment, but again I recommend checking out the Oscar's YouTube channel and playing the myriad of clips archived there.

Or actually, archived HERE.



This TCM documentary is a year old, already. We discussed it a bit, HERE, in a thread you contributed to Gideon. I still think it's mostly a disappointment, but again I recommend checking out the Oscar's YouTube channel and playing the myriad of clips archived there.

Or actually, archived HERE.
Really? I don't remember watching it or contributing to the thread...sorry.



If it has been a year since a similar thread, then I don't see a problem with a new thread. I mean there are 1000s of joke threads on the site. So no big deal if someone makes a new thread for an old topic that's been forgotten.



Will try to find it if i can... but at home, most of my time is spent on Investigation Discovery. But i do recall watching something similar. But it was the same.
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ADMIN EDIT: please use quote tags! It's horrendously confusing otherwise.

I looked at the Best Picture in the last 15-20 years, and the only great film was American Beauty
Seriously? You don't consider any other film since 1999 to be great? Not one?



This TCM documentary is a year old, already. We discussed it a bit, HERE, in a thread you contributed to Gideon. I still think it's mostly a disappointment, but again I recommend checking out the Oscar's YouTube channel and playing the myriad of clips archived there.

Or actually, archived HERE.
Merged (in case anyone was wondering why this thread links to itself).



Artist, The Kings Speech? Wow.. they were almost as good as American Beauty if not better.



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After American Beauty (1999), there was "Crash" which I didn't care for, "Million Dollar Baby" wasn't bad, but Best Picture.. Lord of the Rings, Chicago, The Departed = didn't like at all... No Country For Old Men was good, but not better than "There Will Be Blood" -- Slumdog was alright, didn't care for Argo...

Take 1976 for example - Network, Taxi Driver, All The President's Men, Bound For Glory, all LOST...