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Why do I watch the Oscars each and every year? It is a complete and utter mystery to me. They never give the statues to the deserving films, let alone nominate the best films of the year for anything important. The Departed is just about the closet they’ve come in the past decade (though I still contend that Children Of Men was better, though Scorsese’s history of being screwed by the Academy made his film slightly more deserving). Politics and buzz usually play too big a part in the Oscar process. Films like Crash, Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King, and A Beautiful Mind take home the gold while gems like Match Point, Mystic River and Mulholland Drive get jack.
I really hate the academy.
I cannot stand to see the best films get snubbed by Hollywood’s liberal agenda every year. Case and point: Michael Moore, whose fabricated quasi-documentary Bowling For Columbine won an Oscar for best documentary (search Google to learn more about how Michael Moore fabricates his movies through creative editing). Spellbound was the movie that deserved it for moral and artistic reasons.
Remember when Million Dollar Baby won the Best Picture Oscar, while the superior Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind didn’t even get nominated? Or how about in 1998 when Shakespeare Love (a film I very much enjoyed) beat out Saving Private Ryan, one of the greatest war movies ever made. The list of greats not nominated from the last decade alone is endless: Adaptation, Black Hawk Down, The Matrix, Closer, The Life Aquatic, etc. etc.
That’s why this year I’ll tell you who should win each major category and tell you who should have won the Best Picture Oscar for each of the past ten years.
2008: A Year In Review
BEST PICTURE: The Orphanage
Runner Up: There Will Be Blood
BEST ACTOR: Daniel-Day Lewis (for There Will Be Blood)
Runner Up: Viggo Mortensen (for Eastern Promises)
BEST ACTRESS: Ellen Page (for Juno)
Runner Up: Julie Christie (for Away From Her)
BEST DIRECTOR: Paul Thomas Anderson (for There Will Be Blood)
Runner Up: Joel & Ethan Coen (for No Country For Old Men)
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg (for Superbad)
Runner Up: Diablo Cody (for Juno)
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Paul Thomas Anderson (for There Will Be Blood)
Runner Up: Joel & Ethan Coen (for No Country For Old Men)
BEST DOCUMENTARY
I didn’t see any documentaries this year except Sicko, which I know for a fact (since I’ve studied Health Care Economics) was a grossly out of context piece of propaganda. Most of this year's nominated doc's were those of a leftist manifesto.
BEST ANIMATED FILM: The Simpsons Movie
Runner Up: Ratatouille
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Javier Bardem (for No Country For Old Men)
Runner Up: Phillip Seymour Hoffman (for Charlie Wilson’s War)
BEST SUPPORTING ACRTESS: Amy Ryan (for Gone Baby Gone)
Runner Up: Cate Blanchett (for I’m Not There)
WHO SHOULD HAVE WON THE PAST 10 Oscars?
1997: Good Will Hunting
1998: Saving Private Ryan
1999: American Beauty
2000: Traffic
2001: Mulholland Drive
2002: The Pianist
2003: Mystic River
2004: Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
2005: Match Point
2006: Children Of Men
Sound Off
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Last post: Feb. 21, 2008 at 2:30 am
Fairfield (Chris Fairfield) said on Feb. 20, 2008 at 4:15 pm:
Eternal Sunshine was robbed plain and simple.
Though, actually, I think if you take politics out of the equation, Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring should have won 2001. Don't get me wrong, I loved Mulholland Dr., but FotR is better.
Though, to be honest, I'm still bitter about Pulp Fiction incorrectly losing to Forrest Gump.
Jeffrey Gross (Jeffrey Gross) said on Feb. 21, 2008 at 2:27 am:
Plain and simple:
1994 was as stacked a year as 2007 in terms of great films (2007 haters are just unappreciative of art cinema films like No Country and Juno and Darjeeling Limited)
Forrest Gump was a VERY important film in terms of American culture -- every Vietnam film before it had a cynical anti-American ending to symbolize the disillusionment of Americans. If Forest Gump had been any other war film, it would have ended with Lt Dan's scene where he bitterly rejects America. Instead, it persisted and found redemption -- symbolic of how Americans again found hope and faith in America during the 1990s.
Jeffrey Gross (Jeffrey Gross) said on Feb. 21, 2008 at 2:29 am:
Also, Mulholland Drive is one of, if not the, greatest films of all time.
LOTR: FOTR was clearly the best of the trilogy and of a quality on par with the org. star wars trilogy, but it was not in any way better than Lynch's magnum opus of sight, sound, story and imagination. MD is the ultimate affirmation of the surreal.
Also, i didn't much care for the other 2 LOTR movies...FOTR set a bar that neither could clear or match IMO.
Jeffrey Gross (Jeffrey Gross) said on Feb. 21, 2008 at 2:30 am:
ALSO ALSO, a note for the editor of the website:
You have a "1" after Runner Up for best org. screenplay...
Jeff Brandt (Jeff Brandt) said on Feb. 19, 2008 at 7:47 pm:
I agree with you on a lot of points, but not completely.
I don't think Saving Private Ryan was that great. Sure, it was epic and very interesting, with that great invasion of Normandy scene. But the whole concept of attaining justice by wasting the lives of a few men to find one doesn't do it for me. Yes, Private Ryan's mother must be really sad because most of her sons are dead. But why ought his life to be valued more than anyone else's? Now instead of 1 devastated mother there are like 6.
However, I echo your disappointment that Crash won, and that Eternal Sunshine was never nominated.