There’s something about the Academy Awards, or the ‘Oscars’ as they’re known to everyone outside the ceremony which really steams my pudding. The glitz, glamour, the false smiles and claps when people lose, the ridiculously gushing speeches, the obligatory Jack Nicholson joke and the occasional surprising winner, the Oscars is to film buffs what the ten minute Television X freeview is to teenagers.
Usually the academy chooses winners we can all pretty much agree on, or at least understand how they won. Take Sean Penn for Milk a few years back for example, even though almost everyone wanted Mickey Rourke to win and some of us thought he should have, there was no real arguing over the academy’s decision to award the Best Actor gong to the former Mr Madonna, it was a superb performance regardless of whether we believed it to be the best.
Sometimes though, the academy gets it so wrong, you have to wonder, whether the members actually bothered to watch the films, or just did what I did in my eleven plus exam and ticked one of the boxes that hadn’t been ticked for a while.
Of course there’s no logic or science to choosing the winners, its based on opinion, so here’s a list of winners and the nominees they robbed over the years, in my humble opinion of course.
Best Picture 1997. Winner : Titanic Should have been: LA Confidential.
What??! Titanic was a behemoth, a film industry changing juggernaut that swept all before it in awards, box office and ridiculous acceptance speeches. Well that’s arguably why and how it won, as for me LA Confidential is quite simply a much superior film. Better script, better cast, better direction better film. Curtis Hanson picked up Best Adapted Screenplay, in essence a runners-up prize, for his adaption of James Ellroy’s novel, but by rights he should have been him standing on the stage shouting “I’m King of the world!” or something far less arrogant, and not James Cameron. Don’t believe me? If you can be bothered and have a spare eight hours watch both films back-to-back and tell me I’m wrong.
Best Picture 1991: Winner: Dances with Wolves Should have been: Goodfellas.
One has a 78% rating among film critics, one a 97%, one is without doubt one of the seminal films of the last 30 years, one is difficult to watch more than once, one is full of superb performances, cracking dialogue and the sort of direction that makes you wet your pants, one has a shot of Kevin Costner’s bottom. How the academy thought Costner’s overlong, overblown half-decent western was better than the greatest gangster flick since the Godfather II AND one of the most enjoyable films of all time, is quite frankly comical…”funny how?” Exactly.
Best Picture 1980 Winner: Ordinary People Should have been Raging Bull
Remember the Seoul Olympics in 1988? Not really? Well let me remind you, Roy Jones Jr batters all his opponents in the boxing ring including his South Korean one in the final and is rightly awarded the ‘boxer of the Olympics’ title – is he proud of his gold medal? No because he doesn’t have one as the judges in a decision so shockingly bad and obviously biased it forced Olympic organisers to change the scoring system, Jones was awarded Silver in the final.
Similarly Martin Scorcese’s Raging Bull was voted ‘film of the decade’ in almost all critic’s polls at the end of the 80s yet lost out to golden boy Robert Redford’s directorial debut on Oscar night. Don’t get me wrong Ordinary People is an excellent film, but ‘film of the decade’ – or even the year for that matter, it ain’t.
Best Picture 1990: Winner: Driving Miss Daisy Should have been: Do the Right Thing
The most shocking aspect of the academy’s decision to award Bruce Beresford’s film the Best Picture gong, is the fact that Spike Lee’s masterpiece and I use the word lightly wasn’t even nominated, instead having to settle for a best original screenplay and best supporting actor nomination for Danny Aiello – it won neither. Driving Miss Daisy is a good film, carried above mediocrity mainly by the performances of Jessica Tandy and the ever-reliable Morgan Freeman, but Do the Right Thing is one of those rare films that not only raises issues, asks questions, and makes candid observations but does so with the perfect mix of humour and drama with unilaterally superb performances form an ensemble cast. One of the saddest indictments of the pre-2000s academy’s reluctance to really recognise thought-provoking contemporary film making.
Best Picture 1999 Winner: Shakespeare in Love Should have been: Saving Private Ryan
Yes, Gwyneth Paltrow is lovely and Tom Stoppard’s and Marc Norman’s screenplay is full of wit, but Shakespeare in Love is simply not in the same class as Steven Spielberg’s World War 2 offering. The opening twenty-minute D-Day battle sequence is one of the most awe-inspiring opening scenes in movie history – then you’ve got Tom Hanks giving a career best performance, yes even better than Philadelphia or Gump. Spielberg’s film makes you want to donate your entire wages to the poppy appeal and take your grandad out shopping for the day, Madden’s Shakespeare is a fine film, but it just isn’t nearly as moving, or memorable as this classic war flick. Spielberg was handed the best director Oscar, almost as compensation, although by rights his film should have won the picture oscar as well.
