Greatest Academy Award injustices in your view

[T & P]

All categories welcome: cast, crew, technical, artistic production writing, directing and the rest.

I’ve thought of many over the years, but two of them will always feature at the top of my list. In no particular order:

Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List, losing to Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive. This is no smear on the latter’s acting ability in general or his performance in that film, but still, really??

My other one involves a multi-award outrage involving Pulp Fiction. I don’t have a major issue with John Travolta losing against Tom Hanks in Forest Gump regardless of whether I might disagree, and I haven’t seen Bullets Over Broadway so I can’t comment about Uma Thurman vs Diane Wiest.

But how in the name of fuck did Pulp Fiction not win Best Picture, and get Tarantino a Best Director statuette, and Samuel L Jackson another for Best Supporting Actor is nothing short of a disgrace in my book.

Off you go…

 

[Sue]

But how in the name of fuck did the film win Best Picture, Tarantino Best Director, and Samuel L Jackson Best Supporting Actor is nothing short of a disgrace in my book.

Having just looked up what else was nominated that year, Krzysztof Kieślowski should've definitely won Best Director for Three Colours: Red.

 

[T & P]

Having just looked up what else was nominated that year, Krzysztof Kieślowski should've definitely won Best Director for Three Colours: Red.

Admittedly he would have been a very worthy candidate even if I would have still gone for Tarantino. But Forest fucking Gump? A good film, and on a barren year perhaps, but come on…

 

[Elpenor]

The academy have certain sensibilities that mean they like certain types of films don’t they?

There are also often acting / directing awards given for an entire career of work - sort of they should have won it years ago and are getting on a bit and this is their first decent role in a while so let’s give them the award

 

[Yossarian]

If I had been judging Forrest Gump would have won Worst Picture.

 

[Sue]

Admittedly he would have been a very worthy candidate even if I would have still gone for Tarantino. But Forest fucking Gump? A good film, and on a barren year perhaps, but come on…

Never seen it cos it looks shit. (I'm not really a Tarantino fan mind.)

 

[Yossarian]

Harvey Weinstein's aggressive promotional tactics may not have helped Pulp Fiction in 1995

Although Weinstein had about half of Gump’s campaigning budget, he used his resources shrewdly. Miramax staff would visit the motion picture retirement home in the Valley, where some elderly Academy voters lived, and, according to Tarantino’s agent Mike Simpson, “have lunch with little old ladies and make a personal connection with each one of them, saying, ‘Watch the movie and vote for our film.’” The tactic, like others for which Miramax became notorious, wasn’t new, but Weinstein was relentless. The studios were now showering voters with so much swag — including Disney’s fifty-dollar coffee table books for The Lion King — that the Academy had to warn against items that “tread dangerously close to the definition of a bribe.” “I’m always going up against the huge Hollywood establishment, and this time it’s no different,” Weinstein said mid-campaign. “You have Bob Zemeckis and Tom Hanks, who could both be mayor of Beverly Hills.”

....Late into the night, Weinstein told the New York Observer that he hadn’t given up on those Oscars after all: “At 4 a.m., we’re going to Hanks’ and Zemeckis’ houses. We’re taking them back.” He smirked. “And if they don’t give them up, we’re going to get medieval on them.” He enjoyed playing troublemaker, but he knew what to keep hidden. Among the revelers was Uma Thurman, who later revealed that, amid the Pulp Fiction juggernaut, Weinstein had assaulted her at his suite at the Savoy.

‘It Would Have Been Like a Scene From One of My Movies.’

A stranger–than–Pulp Fiction Oscars tale confirmed.

www.vulture.com

 

[Sue]

There are also often acting / directing awards given for an entire career of work - sort of they should have won it years ago and are getting on a bit and this is their first decent role in a while so let’s give them the award

Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman being a case in point.

ETA Or Scorsese for The Departed.

 

[Ted Striker]

How galling it must be for some of the great second placed films (e.g. the Goodfellas Oscar year group of death iirc) to wish they released their film in the year Argo won a few years back.

 

[belboid]

I find it hard to care any more, it's all just advertising blah blah, but....

Green fucking Card. A vacuous film about shouldn't everyone be lovely. And racism is bad, m'kay. And it beat Roma. The Favourite would have been a far better choice too.

 

[Sue]

Green fucking Card. A vacuous film about shouldn't everyone be lovely. And racism is bad, m'kay. And it beat Roma. The Favourite would have been a far better choice too.

A lighthearted cross-cultural romcom. I mean not my cup of tea but y'know.

(Can't say I've seen Green Book cos it looked rubbish.)

 

[T & P]

The academy have certain sensibilities that mean they like certain types of films don’t they?

I certainly wouldn’t argue against it, but at the same time you could say the bias has swinged to the opposite side of the feelgood populism at the time when Forest Gump came out. Some of the recent Academy love-ins, in particular The Artist, and to a lesser degree Everything Everywhere All at Once, felt like you were watching the Cannes Film Festival awards ceremony rather than the Oscars.

As Yossarian has already expressed, if Forest Gump had been released this year, I’d be surprised if it’d scooped more than one major award.

 

[krtek a houby]

All categories welcome: cast, crew, technical, artistic production writing, directing and the rest.

I’ve thought of many over the years, but two of them will always feature at the top of my list. In no particular order:

Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List, losing to Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive. This is no smear on the latter’s acting ability in general or his performance in that film, but still, really??

My other one involves a multi-award outrage involving Pulp Fiction. I don’t have a major issue with John Travolta losing against Tom Hanks in Forest Gump regardless of whether I might disagree, and I haven’t seen Bullets Over Broadway so I can’t comment about Uma Thurman vs Diane Wiest.

But how in the name of fuck did Pulp Fiction not win Best Picture, and get Tarantino a Best Director statuette, and Samuel L Jackson another for Best Supporting Actor is nothing short of a disgrace in my book.

Off you go…

Seeing it at the time, it was visceral, dark, shocking, occasionally funny, and also boring in parts.

Now, QTs films just seem derivative and unwieldy. Still watch one when it comes out and there are always watchable moments but they feel like fan fiction sometimes. And am never comfortable with the N word being dropped, or women characters being beaten/abused. Feels like the director has certain issues to get out of his system.

Some people found it a bit long, which is never a problem for my tastes. It just feels like he has nobody saying to him, maybe you could trim this bit, its not working or you dont have to include every thought in your head/script...

SLJ was electrifying in the film, though. Perhaps the Academy was still relatively conservative when it came to awarding black actors back then. Hanks is alright but that film, FG, is manipulative, right wing nonsense. IMHO.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Brendan Fraser beating Colin Farrel this year.

 

[krtek a houby]

Brendan Fraser beating Colin Farrel this year.

Havent seen the BF film, but loved CF in BoI.

Fraser had been out of the game for a while, iirc? Hadnt seen him in any major films since Crash and thats what, 15 years ago?

 

[Indeliblelink]

Neither Hitchcock or Kubrick ever won a best director award.

 

[Steel Icarus]

SOOOO many

Edward Norton not winning Best Actor for American History X

Scorcese not winning for anything until The Departed

Not a single nomination for Don't Look Now

There are loads, the Oscars are wank anyway