Shakespeare in Love

After watching Shakespeare in Love I know have seen every movie that won best picture. I had seen pieces of this movie before but it was on a red eye flight from Phoenix to Boston. So between falling asleep and it being edited for content and time I didn't see the full movie. In fact after Gwenyth Paltrow won Best Actress some one said she had nude scenes and I was surprised since I it wasn't in the version I saw.  But now I have seen the official version and have now seen every movie that won best picture but my quest isn't over yet, still 12 more movies to see to see all the movies in order. 

Shakespeare in Love is a fictional telling about William Shakespeare's (Joseph Fiennes) writing of Romeo and Juliet.  As a struggling playwright he is paid in advance to write a comedy called Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter. Having writers block he begins looking for a new muse.  When he meets Viola De Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow) he falls in love and finds his muse.  Viola is a huge fan of plays and disguises herself as a man so she is able to act.  Shakespeare casts her as Romeo in his play.  The problem is that Viola was promised to marry Lord Wessex (Colin Firth).  As Shakespeare continues to write the play he uses the problems they face with their relationship as inspiration for his play.  In the end instead of writing a comedy he writes a tragedy. 

Shakespeare in Love is the last romantic comedy to win Best Picture and the third romantic movie in a row to win Best Picture (after The English Patient and Titanic).  Romantic comedies are not  my favorite type of movies so I did not have high hopes for the movie.  The movie did have it's funny parts and the romance kind of worked.  Overall the movie was not bad.  Joseph Fiennes did a good job although I think his brother Ralph Fiennes is a better actor. And Gwyneth Paltrow was good but not sure she deserved the Best Actress Award.  Also while Judi Dench had some of the funniest parts her 8 minutes of screen time should not have been enough to win Best Supporting Actress.  Actually the funniest people in the movie were Geoffrey Rush and  Ben Affleck who was dating Gwyneth Paltrow at the time. 

The biggest problem I have with Shakespeare in Love was the fact that it beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture and Best Screenplay.  This has to be one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history.  No one was expecting a little romantic comedy to beat a action packed war drama.  Saving Private Ryan did win 5 Academy Awards including Best Director for Steven Spielberg which is a little surprising because usually the winner of Best Director wins Best Picture.  The other movie that had surprise wins was Life is Beautiful which won Best Actor for Roberto Benigni beating Tom Hanks for Saving Private Ryan. Benigni also became one of the firs foreign language performers to win an acting award and the second person to direct himself to a Best Actor Award (Laurence Olivier was the first to do it for Hamlet in 1948).  Beningni was also the fourth person to be nominated for Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Screenplay Orson Welles, Woody Allen and Warren Beatty were the other three. Life is Beautiful also upset Saving Private Ryan for Best Score beating favorite John Williams. 

The biggest snub of the year in my opinion was The Big Lebowski did not get any nominations specifically for writing and Jeff Bridges for Best Actor.  Other snubs was Jim Carrey for The Truman Show and even though Edward Norton was nominated for American History X it should have been nominated for Best Picture. 

Random Fact: All the movies nominated for Best Picture this year had two subject matters. Three were about WWII (Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, and Life if Beautiful) and two were about Elizabethan England (Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth).  Also the first time that two people were nominated for playing the same person in two different films. Judi Dench played Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love and Cate Blanchett played Queen Elizabeth in Elizabeth (1997 was the first year that two people were nominated for playing the same person in the same film when Kate Winslet and Gloria Stewart were nominated for playing young Rose and Old Rose).