Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
BBM didn't win Best Picture Oscar - but not to fret!
nakymaton:
I don't think the last ten years have been very impressive for the Oscars. I mean, look at the list:
1995 Braveheart
1996 The English Patient
1997 Titanic
1998 Shakespeare in Love
1999 American Beauty
2000 Gladiator
2001 A Beautiful Mind
2002 Chicago
2003 Return of the King
2004 Million Dollar Baby
2005 Crash
I confess that I haven't seen The English Patient or Titanic. (Both movies looked too sappily romantic for me.) Oh, and I refuse to see Crash. Out of the rest, well, I'm a die-hard Tolkien fan, so I'm happy that the Lord of the Rings movies were recognized, even if Fellowship of the Ring is (arguably) the best of the three. But as for the others:
Braveheart isn't that great of a movie, besides being anti-gay and revisionist history and all that. Gladiator is maybe better as an action/period piece, but still not a classic. Shakespeare in Love was very entertaining, at least, but I liked Elizabeth (not Saving Private Ryan, actually) better. American Beauty was... hmmm. A good movie, I guess, but such a bleak view of human nature. Chicago was just another musical, not particularly great stacked up against the classic musicals of a generation or more ago. A Beautiful Mind and Million Dollar Baby were hideous, emotionally manipulative pieces of crap that might have seemed moving at first viewing, but which left a really bad taste in my mouth. (And I wouldn't have seen Crash simply because it was written and directed by Paul Haggis, and I didn't like the writing in Million Dollar Baby. So it isn't just sour grapes.)
So in my opinion, in the last ten years the Academy has made one good choice (RotK), two choices that I'm not sure about (but Titanic is movie history from the shear amount of money it made, I guess, so at least it's memorable in that respect), a bunch that are watchable but probably not classics, and a couple real stinkers.
Honestly, given the Academy's recent record, I'm not going to pay much attention to their choices in the future.
dly64:
--- Quote from: nakymaton on September 07, 2006, 01:26:09 pm ---Honestly, given the Academy's recent record, I'm not going to pay much attention to their choices in the future.
--- End quote ---
You are cracking me up, Mel. And just as Jeff has said, this is all subjective. But where I can follow your logic is the whole idea that the Oscars haven't necessarily had the greatest track record. There are usually some specific patterns: more dramas win than any other genre. The academy usually loves high budget, over-long epics (although 2005 had nothing that would fit that “category”).
Here is a link that you might find humorous … “The Worst of the Academy Awards.”
http://www.filmsite.org/worstoscars.html
I can’t agree with all of their “worst of the worst,” but it’s rather funny to read it anyway.
ednbarby:
Ooh, DOGGIE! That list of the last ten years' winners is quite telling. And lest we forget that in 1994, "The Shawshank Redemption," still one of the best damned movies I've ever seen, lost to FORREST F***ING GUMP!!!!! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! (Sorry.)
Oh, and that my husband's favorite movie, "Snow Falling on Cedars," WASN'T EVEN NOMINATED for Best Picture for 1999. (I still get an earful every now and then from him on that, and by the way, that's when he stopped watching the Oscars, so he totally felt my pain when BBM lost.)
dly64:
--- Quote from: ednbarby on September 07, 2006, 02:27:11 pm ---Oh, and that my husband's favorite movie, "Snow Falling on Cedars," WASN'T EVEN NOMINATED for Best Picture for 1999. (I still get an earful every now and then from him on that, and by the way, that's when he stopped watching the Oscars, so he totally felt my pain when BBM lost.)
--- End quote ---
There's a whole new thread in that comment ... think of the great films that were never even nominated!
"Rear Window"!!!! (One of my all time favorites)
"North by Northwest"
"The Third Man" and "Asphalt Jungle" (and yet they nominated "Born Yesterday", "Father of the Bride", and "King Solomon's Mines")
I could go on and on. Not a particularly high percentage of Oscar winners are considered the "Greatest Films of All Time."
CD_one:
dly64 - I LOVED Rear Window, Vertigo, North by North West, and Bell Book and Candle.
Seriously though, BBM has to be in the top ten movies of all time. I only saw it recently and have been powerfully moved by it. It's on my wish list for my birthday coming up in October. In my first viewing I got a bit annoyed as I couldn't understand a lot of what was being said, but hey, it gave me a reason to watch it again (and again!).
I think that great movies are a combintation of powerful scenery, powerful actors and performances and plots mixed with sub-plots and even more plots, allowing for a variety of interpretations to be placed on various scenes and lines, again and again. You get something new everytime you watch it and that, my friends, is what good moviemaking is all about!
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