Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in a scene from Brokeback Mountain.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in a scene from Brokeback Mountain.
There has been some controversy leading up to this year's Academy Awards. Dominic Corry notes ten instances where the Oscars got it wrong.
It's much more fun to rag on the Academy Awards than to celebrate them, especially considering how often the organisation gets things so spectacularly wrong.
With this in mind, I am going to cite here - in order of the degree of umbrage felt - what I consider to be the ten most grievous mistakes made by the Academy over the past few decades.
He's delivered a lot of deserving performances, but it seems the stars need to align just right for Bill Murray to get an Oscar nomination, which amazingly has only happened once. In 2004, for Lost In Translation. He should've already won by this point for Rushmore, and since for The Life Aquatic. Sean Penn's mixture of wailin' and grimacin' in Mystic River won out in 2004, and Billy Crystal cruelly rubbed salt in the wound by immediately taunting Murray about it in front of everybody.
Eddie Murphy - there's no actor working today more deserving of an Oscar who is less likely to ever get one. The Academy fudged the only chance they'll probably ever get to recognise his undeniably superlative talent when they got all nostalgic over Alan Arkin (a very fine actor, it should be noted, but clearly a sentimental choice) instead of rewarding Murphy's typically spirited James Brown impression in Dreamgirls. Oh well, he got the Golden Globe, and that's practically as good as an Oscar.
A scene from the movie Dreamgirls.
8. 2001 Best Actress
To fight against the force of Julia Roberts having her moment with Erin Brokovich is to fight against Hollywood itself, but acting-wise, Ellen Burstyn absolutely blew her out of the water with her devastating performance in Requiem for a Dream. Burstyn had already won the award in 1975 for Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, and been nominated on four other occasions, but that doesn't make her stunning work in Darren Aronofsky's harrowing masterpiece any less deserving of a statue. Keith David should've been nominated also.
7. 1997 Best Actor
Sure he got to console himself with a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, but Billy Bob Thornton really deserved to win Best Actor for his iconic turn as the deceptively slow-witted Karl Childers in Sling Blade. Even over Geoffrey Rush in Shine. But maybe not The Cruiser in Jerry Maguire. That would've been sweet too.
6. 2003 Best Actress
A scene from the movie Adaptation.
Meryl Streep has won three Oscars and received approximately 87 nominations, but for some reason that doesn't quell the fire that rages inside me over her being denied an award for her hilarious supporting performance in Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation. She was seriously funny in that movie. And yet Catherine Zeta-Jones still remains in possession of an Oscar even she can't believe she won.
5. 1990 Best Picture
A scene from the movie Dead Poet's Society.
Even in my pre-pubescent state of general cluelessness, I could tell that the tosh that was Driving Miss Daisy did not deserve to win Best Picture over its fellow nominees, all four of which are bonafide modern classics, and thought of in terms nobody would apply to Driving Miss Daisy in a million years. The Jessica Tandy/Morgan Freeman (non-sexual) love fest beat out: Dead Poet's Society, Born on the Fourth Of July, My Left Foot and Field of Dreams. Blimey.
4. 2003 Best Actress
When Julianne Moore deservedly takes it home this year for Still Alice - an all but assured eventuality according to a Google search - it will be as much for her phenomenal body of work as it will be for Still Alice. But the one prior performance most unfairly denied a gong was her stunning turn in Todd Haynes' luxurious Douglas Sirk riff Far From Heaven. Nicole Kidman won that year for wearing a fake nose in The Hours, a film Moore was nominated for in the Best Supporting Actress category, an award she should've won in 1998 for Boogie Nights (nominated) AND in 2000 for Magnolia (not nominated). This lady's gold statue is way overdue. Plus she should've been nominated this year for her super-intense performance in Maps to The Stars.
3. 2006 Best Picture
A scene from the movie Brokeback Mountain.
Although Brokeback Mountain had received the classic conciliatory prize of a Best Adapted Screenplay award, it seemed like a lock for the big prize when Ang Lee won Best Director. Then Crash won. The upset was a novelty at the time, when the Oscars were almost never surprising, but that is vastly overshadowed in retrospect by the grave injustice that lives on. Does anyone even admit to liking Crash these days?
2. 1995 Best Supporting Actor
A scene from the movie Pulp Fiction.
As Samuel L Jackson, nominated for his killer supporting performance in Pulp Fiction, visibly remarked upon losing to boring old Martin Landau at the 1995 ceremony: "Shit."
This quibble is almost pointless, but that also makes it suitable for the number one spot on a list of things I want. We should probably just be happy that Star Wars got a Best Picture nomination at all - it's an incredibly rare feat for a genre film in the pre-Return of the King era (and since then too, now that I think about it). Plus the winner on the night was the very-deserving Annie Hall, an underdog champ to root for if ever there was one. And if any Star Wars film should be winning Best Picture, it's obviously The Empire Strikes Back. Yet despite these counter-arguments, I would still like Star Wars to have won Best Picture at the 1978 Oscars. Because Star Wars.
• Agree/Disagree? What do you consider Oscars biggest mistakes?
- nzherald.co.nz
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