This time Oscar recognizes Brokeback Mountain (not Crash)!

[bbm_stitchbuffyfan]

I am excited to see that a Brokeback quote is on the poster!  And it's such an adorable quote too... *sigh*

You know, if the contenders for 2007 intrigue me, I may watch the Oscars. But it's been such a dull year in films, and the movies that I did like (i.e. The Devil Wears Prada, Little Miss Sunshine) probably won't be in the running. (I haven't seen Babel yet though.)

The main reason I dislike the Academy is not because Brokeback lost. It's because of the campaigning, which I think sways voters and makes the race unfair. I mean, I can understand that films are submitted and what not, but I think that the voting system should be like, "Vote for your nominees" and the most popular ones are the nominees. Then, of those nominees, winners are chosen based on artistic merit, not bias. I assume there's a hell of a lot of bias in the Academy, because the Academy is comprised of Hollywood people. It should consist of people who aren't friends with Steven Speilberg or whoever yet know a hell of a lot about filmmaking. So, I don't know, professors at really prestigious film schools?

Furthermore, the Academy NEVER awards the movie I want to win, from The Hours (though Chicago was great), to Moulin Rouge, to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, to Beauty and the Beast (Silence of the Lambs was also great), to Saving Private Ryan (or anything aside from Shakespeare in Love), to our beloved Brokeback Mountain...

[nakymaton]

The main reason I dislike the Academy is not because Brokeback lost. It's because of the campaigning, which I think sways voters and makes the race unfair.

Yeah. And it's not just the campaigning... it's the dirty campaigning. Even when my horse won the race (Return of the King in 2003), the campaign was just nasty. All sorts of attempts to bash the other movies without actually bashing them, rumors flying around that the actors branch wouldn't go for this, or the effects people wouldn't go for that. I felt sick after the whole thing was done. (And it wasn't helped by the nastiness around the 2001 campaign, bashing A Beautiful Mind underhandedly. I mean, I thought the movie was mediocre and didn't deserve to win -- in fact, I would have happily seen any of the other nominees win -- but the campaigning was nasty.) And then seeing how BBM lost, with the rumors that Crash would win cropping up before voting closed, as if everyone was picking up on the hint that there was a way to be politically correct and homophobic at the same time... ugh.

I'm not sure it would be any better with film professors picking winners, though. Or critics. Every major award has politics and bias surrounding it, from the Oscars to the Nobel Prize in Physics. Some awards I often agree with, but a lot of them I take with a major grain of salt. (Grammys? They never choose music that I like, so I ignore them. Pulitzer Prize? Sometimes I agree, but I don't decide what books or newspapers to read based on what wins. Nobel Prize? They get it right when something is so big that it can't be ignored, like, say, the Theory of Relativity. But I couldn't tell you the winner of a single Nobel prize in any of the sciences in the past ten years. They don't give Nobel prizes in my field, true, but still, anything really significant in chemistry or physics trickles down to us.)

[Front-Ranger]

Another missing quote:

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." Chinatown

[Brown Eyes]

I have a potentially scary question... Has anyone heard any rumors about either Heath or Jake (or both) presenting at any upcoming award shows?

By the way Lee, this is adorable....
 

I love that he says "it" because they're on one horse and the horse's name is love.

[Ellemeno]

I have a potentially scary question... Has anyone heard any rumors about either Heath or Jake (or both) presenting at any upcoming award shows?
 

I'll let you know if they are there.

What I'm starting to understand from reading all the posts here is the level of caring some of you had about the Oscars in the past.  I was never very invested in it.  And I got jaded way young on the idea of elections being swayed, so I'm not surprised about that.  I have a pretty shallow view of the whole thing, and mostly just want to see the older "movie stars." the few who are still around.

Since the confession is being good for my soul, and we're in this topic's neighborhood, I'll admit that though I didn't see Crash (and still feel quite grrrr toward it), I did love the song "In the Deep" from it that Kathleen York wrote and sang at the Oscars.  I downloaded it that night from iTunes and have played it many times.  It goes very well with "Spiritual" by Charlie Hayden and Pat Metheny (Annie Proulx's dozy embrace song), and "Mad World" from Donnie Darko.  I learned all three of these songs this year through you, my friends.

[Mikaela]

Presenting at the Oscars - of those two it would be Jake I'm sure. But he presented something or other last year, didn't he - so possibly not. Now if Zodiac is released just before the actual Oscars ceremony, and that films gets goods reviews and attention and publicity for him, then possibly Jake might be asked to present again for being in the public eye just then.....
I can't recall the most recent release date for Zodiac, it's been moved so many times. 

I'm not sure it would be any better with film professors picking winners, though. Or critics. Every major award has politics and bias surrounding it, from the Oscars to the Nobel Prize in Physics.

I think it would be much worse if professors of critics picked the winners. The great thing about the Oscars IMO is the fact that the films or rather the actors and directors etc are voted for and awarded by their peers - and that the voting is secret. It made me beleive that all these people would both recognize and want to show appreciation for true artistry in their own field when they saw it; - and that despite any obligations and campaigning and favours owed enough of them would also actually *vote* for that excelllence, since noone would know for sure how they voted anyway. That was when I still naively believed that they at least watched the films nominated in the major categories before casting their votes, of course.  I still think that if everyone who voted had actually sat down and watched BBM, BBM would have won BP last year.

[David]

Revised : Saturday 12/30/06

"No prisoners,  no prisoners!" =  Lawrence of Arabia

"I wish I knew how to quit you!"  =   Brokeback Mountain.

"All right, Mr.DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up"  =  Sunset Boulevard.

"ROSEBUD"   =   Citizen Kane.

"I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"  = Network

"No, if anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving."  = Sideways,

"I'll get you my pretty... and your little dog, too!" = The Wizard of Oz

"Good evening, Clarice." = The Silence of the Lambs

"I coulda been a Contender.  I coulda been somebody.  = On the Waterfront

"Frodo" =  Lord of the Rings

"My momma always said life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you're going get."   =  Forest Gump

"What we've got here is failure to communicate." =  Cool Hand Luke

"Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." =  Gone with the Wind

"The horror. The horror."  = Apocalypse Now.

"You had me at hello."  = Jerry Maguire

"Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush." =  L.A. Confidential

"Open the pod bay doors, Hal." =   2001: a Space Odyssey

"They call me Mr. Tibbs!"  =  In the Heat of the Night

"Snap out of it!"   = Moonstruck

"You make me want to be a better man"  =  As Good as it Gets

"Show me the money!"  =  Jerry Maguire

"Shut up! Shut up and take the pain! Take the pain!" =  Platoon.

"If you build it, he will come." = Field of Dreams

"Greed is good."  =  Wall Street

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, This is the war room." = Dr. Strangelove

"I'm the King of the World!"  =  Titanic

"The force is strong with this one"  - Star Wars (Episode IV, A new hope)

"Attica.  Attica"  - Attica (?)

"Give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle"  =  Chicago

"Think you have enough dynamite there, Butch?" =  Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid

"ET phone home" =  ET

"Von Trapp children don't play.  They march" = Sound of Music

"I'm goina make him an offer he can't refuse" =  The Godfather

"Stella!" =  A streetcar named Desire

"Frailty, thy name is woman" = Macbeth

Keep em coming gang!

[Lynne]

"Here's looking at you, kid." is from Casablanca.

Since the confession is being good for my soul, and we're in this topic's neighborhood, I'll admit that though I didn't see Crash...

I did see Crash, mainly because pre-BBM obsession, an interest of mine was LA as a setting, even a character, in film and novels - think Raymond Chandler, Nathaniel West, LA Confidential, etc.  It was a mediocre movie - watch it if it's on and you have nothing better to do, but don't expect much.  Both Capote and Munich were far superior works also.