Million Dollar Baby

This was a pretty tight year for the Oscar race and there was no real front runners.  The Aviator was one of the bigger movies and had the most nominations with 11.  Three of the 5 nominated movies were biopics The Aviator was about Howard Hughes, Ray was about Ray Charles, and Finding Neverland was about James M. Barrie the writter of Peter Pan.  But it was the smaller boxing movie Million Dollar Baby that was the ultimate winner. 

Million Dollar Baby is about an aging boxing trainer Frank Dunn (Clint Eastwood) who reluctantly starts traing a girl Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank).   Maggie is a girl from a small town who works as a waitress to make ends meet but her dream has always been to become a boxer.  She seeks out the best trainer she can find and that is Frank.  Frank is haunted by demons of his past recently had a boxer fire him for a more aggressive manager.  Seeing as Maggie will not give and is constantly coming into the gym Frank decides to help her out.  She becomes a world wide phenomenon and finally gets her chance at the title shot.  The two develop a father-daughter relationship as Maggis father died when she was young and Frank has not talked to his daughter in a long time.  About halfway through the movie turns from a boxing movie to a medical drama with an ending I didn't see coming. 

It is hard to talk about this movie without talking about the ending, but I don't want to ruin it for anyone.  I am glad I saw the movie when I did because it was when it first came out and I had no idea what it was about.  But not only does it turn into a medical drama but also has a moral dilema at the very end.     When Award season first came around I had not heard of this movie and was one of the last movies to get a wide release in early 2005.  As Clint Eastwood proved the previous year with Mystic River he has a way of getting great performances out of his actors.  Hillary Swank won Best Actress and Morgan Freeman won Best Supporting Actor.  Clint Eastwood was nominated himself as Best Actor but lost to Jamie Foxx for Ray.  I love how this movie took me by suprise.  I went in not expecting much and just your typical boxing movie but left feeling like I saw one of the few movies that makes you question your beliefs.  Great thought provoking ending. 

The one movie that I thought should have got more attention come award season was Hotel Rwanda.  While it did have two nominations for Best Actor (Don Cheadle) and Best Supporting Actress (Sophie Okonedo) it should have been nominated for Best Picture.  A really moving story about the Rwandan genocide.  Also, the biggest upset for me was the fact that Super Size Me lot Best Documentary.  It remains one of my favorite documentaries to this day and is the first documentary I saw in the theatre. 

Not really a big suprise in  my opinion but one of the biggest stories to surround the Oscars this year was that Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Passion of the Christ didn't get nominated for any big awards.  The fact that Michael Moore wanted Fahrenheit 9/11 nominated for Best Picture and not Best Documentary means it had not chance of being nominated.  It was just pure propaganda.  The Passion of the Christ while one of the biggest movies of the year had a chance to get nominated but just a small chance since it was not in English and very rarely does a movie in a foreign language get nominated. 

Interesting many of the Best Actor and Supporting Actor nominees got there start on TV shows.
Best Actors: Clint Eastwood-Rawhide, Jamie Foxx-In Living Color, Johnny Depp-21 Jumpstreet, Don Cheadle-Picket Fences
Best Supporting Actors: Alan Alda-M.A.S.H., Thomas Hayden Church-Wings, Morgan Freeman-The Electric Company and Jamie Foxx again. 
Also of note Leonardo Dicaprio was nominated for Best Actor and did have a small role on Growing Pains right before it was cancelled. 

Oscar Trivia
For the third time Martin Scorsese lost Best Director to a former Actor (1980 to Robert Redford and 1990 to Kevin Costner)
Hilary Swank beat Annette Benning for the second time after upsetting her in 1999. Swank an unknown that year was a suprise upset for Boys Dont Cry over the heavily favorited Benning for American Beauty.  This year Swank was the favorite but Benning was unable to upset her. 
Million Dollar Baby was the last movie to date to be nominated for the Top 5 Awards (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay) winning 4 out of the 5 awards.

Best 2004 movies according to IMDB Top 250
Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind-64 (one of the most original moves of the year and very glad it won Best Original Screenplay. Most movies this unusual do not get recognized by the Academy.)
Hotel Rwanda-127
Million Dollar Baby-153
The Incredibles-219
Kill Bill Vol. 2-236

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Well it was a no doubter in 2003. Everyone knew that The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King would win and win it did. It won all 11 awards it was nominated tying the record of 11 wins (All About Eve and Titanic) and becoming the largest sweep in Oscar history (Gigi and The Last Emperor both swept with 9 wins). It was seen as pretty much an award for the entire trilogy instead of a specific film. In total all three films had 30 nominations and 17 wins. It was also one of the few movies to win Best Picture without being nominated for any acting awards (the only acting nomination any of the films got was Ian McKellan as Gandalf for The Fellowship of the Rings). The Return of the King was the first one to win major awards including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director (all three for Peter Jackson).


To sum up the three movies (approximately 9 hours in their theatrical version) LOTR is about a hobbit Frodo who gains possession of a powerful ring what gives the owner great power. He is tasked with destroying the ring before it can get in the hands of Sauron the Dark Lord. A fellowship is formed to help protect Frodo that includes Gandolf a wizard, Legolas the elf, Gimli the Dwarf, Aragorn a man and three of his hobbit friends Pippin, Merry, and Samwise. They must travel to Mount Doom to destroy the ring and along the way they must learn to work together and fight powerful orcs and other forces of the dark. When the fellowship breaks up Frodo and Sam head off on their own and after Pippin and Merry are kidnapped Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn go and search for them. Each group faces their own tests. Frodo and Sam must find a way through the mountains and after getting lost they meet Gollum a previous owner of the ring who says he will help them find their way but very much covets his “precious”. As the powerful army of the Dark Lord descends on the cities of men the cities must put away their differences and join forces to overcome the onslaught. Frodo and Sam are led by Gollum through the mazes of the mountains the whole time Gollum is trying to figure out a way to get the ring back. After overcoming many obstacles Sam and Frodo manage to make it to Mount Doom just in time for the army of men to overtake the orc army.

The movies have many amazing battle scenes and one of my favorite are the Ents attack on Isengard in the Two Towers. Of course they saved the best for last and the battle sequences towards the end of Return of the King are amazing. The story taken as a whole is one of adventure, triumph of will, and redemption. Peter Jackson’s ability to keep all the different story lines fitting perfectly is a great achievement. There are some many plot lines in the movie but you never feel too overwhelmed. The biggest problem I had with the first two movies was the lack of ending, and the biggest problem I have with the last movie is there are too many endings. When I first saw this in the theatre I was halfway out of my seat before I realized the movie wasn’t really over yet. I really think he could have cut out one of the endings. But you have to love the scope and ambition of the movies and the great visuals. With the extended editions available on DVD and Blu-Ray now there is even more to the story and it feels more complete now.

While LOTR:TROTK was the big winner there were other good movies that year. One of the other big winners that year was a small crime drama Mystic River directed by Clint Eastwood. It won Best Actor for Sean Penn and Best Supporting Actor for Tim Robbins. The dark tale about three childhood friends in Boston who have a dark secret and many years later must face old demons when one of their daughters is killed. This was a superbly acted movie and proved that Clint Eastwood knows how to direct. Any other year this would have had a chance to win Best Picture. One of my other favorite movies of the year only had two acting nominations was The House of Sand and Fog with Ben Kingsley and Shohreh Aghdashloo getting nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress and missing from list of Best Actresses was the amazing performance by Jennifer Connelly. It definitely deserved more recognition. One of the pleasantly surprising nominations was Johnny Depp’s first Best Actor nomination as Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. One of the most talked about movies of the year was Lost in Translation written and directed by Sophia Coppola which you either loved or hated and I fall in to the latter category. The movie did nothing for me and I found it kind of boring. Coppola did become only the third women to be nominated for Best Director and did win for Best Original Screenplay. The small independent film thirteen only had one nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Holly Hunter but was a great movie and should have had more nominations then that.

Oscar Trivia:
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is the longest title ever to win Best Picture (second place goes to Around the World in 80 Days)
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is only the second trilogy to have all three films nominated for Best Picture (The Godfather Trilogy is the only other one).

Chicago

Chicago became the first musical to win Best Picture in 34 years the last musical to win Best Picture was Oliver in 1968.  Again this year the stiffest competition for Best Picture was from a Lord of the Rings film. This was also the second year in a row that a musical was nominated for Best Picture following Moulin Rouge's nomination in 2001. 

Chicago is about a bored housewife Roxy (Renee Zellweger) who has dreams of becoming a big star on the vaudeville in Chicago during the 20's.  When she her dreams are dashed by the guy she thought was going to make those dreams come true she ends up killing him and is sent to jail.  Inside her head is a fantasy world where every event is turned into a musical number.  In jail she meets a some colorful characters. There Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta Jones), Matron Mama Morton (Queen Latifah) and the flamboyant lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere).  A rivalry begins between Kelly and Roxy over the attention of Billy and the tabloids.  Each trying to manipulate the press to see them not as murderess but as glamorous stars.  In the end Billy is going to "Razzle Dazzle" the jury and get both of them off. 

What I love about this movie is the creative way they used the music.  One of the biggest complaints about musicals are always "why would they start singing" and  they answered that by having it  all in Roxy's head (the only musical number that doesn't really work is Mr. Cellophane which is sung by Roxy's husband Amos when she is not around).  The movie is highly entertaining and the acting is superb.  But besides being a highly entertaining movie with great musical sequences the movie is much deeper then that too.  The movie is an exploration of how people become famous for nothing, how media outlets are always trying to find the newest biggest thing, and the public obsession with celebrity trials and how they have become just a big circus.  In the age of celebrities like Paris Hilton and celebrity trials like OJ Simpson's this movie felt very current.  And I look at it as one of the first movies of the decade to deal with social issues to win Best Picture (Million Dollar Baby in 2004 and Crash in 2005 also deal with social issues). 

So the biggest question again this year was should Lord of the Rings have won best picture.  Again I feel the answer is no. While The Two Towers was a great movie like the first one it didn't have an ending and this one didn't have a beginning. While I understand that it is part 2 of a trilogy and it won't have a beginning and end my argument (as it was when the first one didn't win) is that you have to take each movie on its own merit.  If you just watch this one with out watching the first or the third one then it doesn't make much sense.  What I don't understand is how come Peter Jackson wasn't nominated for Best Director. Granted I don't think he would have won but he deserved a nomination.  And after watching it again recently I realized Viggo Mortensen should have been nominated for Best Actor or Supporting Actor because he was really great. 

Other Snubs- Leonardo DiCaprio should have been nominated for either Gangs of New York or Catch Me if You Can.  Also, About a Boy was one of my favorite movie and I think deserved more then just a Best Screenplay Award. Also My Big Fat Greek Wedding was one of the biggest and most loved movies of the year and should have at least been nominated for Best Actress for Nia Vardalos (she did get a Best Original Screenplay Nomination).

Oscar Trivia:
John C. Reilly was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Chicago but also had supporting roles in Best Picture nominated The Hours, and The Gangs of New York.  Making him one of the few people to be in three movies nominated for Best Picture in the same year but the first since the Best Picture field was limited to 5 movies.
At 29 Adrien Brody (The Pianist) became the youngest person to win Best Actor
Julianne Moore was nominated in both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress the ninth time that has happened.
Meryl Streep was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Adaptation with her 13th nomination she surpassed Katherine Hepburn as the most nominated performer in Oscar history. 
Adaptation was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman. Donald Kaufman was an alter ego used by Charlie Kaufman in the movie and is the only fictional person ever to be nominated for an Academy Award.
Roman Polanski won Best Director for The Pianist but could not be present to accept the award because he is a wanted criminal for statutory rape.

IMDB Top 250 for 2002 movies.
City of God-number 18
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers-number 30
The Pianist- number 51

A Beautiful Mind

In the First Academy Awards post 9/11 the inspirational true story A Beautiful Mind won Best Picture against some stiff competition from Moulin Rouge and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. 2001 also was a big year for black actors. It was the first time a black actress won Best Actress (Halle Berry for Monster’s Ball) ,the first time that two black actors were nominated for Best Actor (Denzel Washington for Training Day and Will Smith for Ali), and the first time Best Actor and Best Actress were both black (Berry and Washington both won). Also an honorary award was given to Sidney Poitier for his various performances in during his career.


A Beautiful Mind is about the life of Nobel Prize winner mathematician John Nash (Russell Crowe). It starts with Nash attending Princeton University where he obsesses over coming up with a truly original idea and skips most of his classes because he feels that he will learn nothing original. When he finally does come up with his original idea it is revolutionary and opens a lot of doors for him. After getting a teaching job at M.I.T. he starts doing some work with the military deciphering codes and becomes increasingly paranoid about a Russian invasion. Then he meets a beautiful student in his class Alicia (Jennifer Connelly) who would become his wife. As his behavior becomes more bizarre she has him checked out by a psychiatrist where we learn that he has been having hallucinations and created his own fantasy world. He struggles with what is real and imaginary and tries to get some sort of life back. Frustrated with the medication they gave him because it makes his mind foggy he goes off the medication and starts having hallucinations again. He finally moves back to Princeton and finds some comfort being in familiar surroundings. It is here that he learns that his original idea he was working so hard on has become very useful and he was selected to receive the Nobel Prize in Mathematics.

The movie ultimately won 4 awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. I loved that you don’t know who is real and who is imaginary till half way through and it took me by surprise. Then to watch him struggle and cope was very inspirational. It was incredibly well acted and is Russell Crowes best performance in my opinion. I think if he didn’t win the year before for his weaker performance in Gladiator he would have had a chance to win (it was his third Best Actor nomination in a row only the second person to do that). Besides Crowe and Connelly I was most impressed by Ed Harris and Paul Bettany as Nash’s hallucinations and should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actors. There was a lot of controversy around awards time about the movie saying they glossed over his life and struggles but in the end it didn’t matter and it still won.

A lot of people still ask how it beat Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring for Best Picture and I think it has to do with a couple of things. First after 9/11 people were looking for inspiration and a feel good movie and this movie provided both. A movie about a guy who overcomes tremendous obstacles was moving. Second The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring had no ending. I know it was only the first part of a trilogy but it kind of has an anticlimactic end. And when taken by itself in its original 3 hour run time it was kind of confusing if you don’t already know some of the story. Characters just show up and are not really introduced. The first time I saw the movie I didn’t know Gimli was a Dwarf till about half way through. After seeing some of the deleted scened and the extended versions the movie makes a little more sense but going from the theatrical version that was released that year I don’t think it should have won.

The other movie that got a lot of attention that year was Moulin Rouge which you either liked or hated. And I fall into the latter category. I found the movie just silly and hard to take serious with all the modern day songs being sung in the early 1900’s.

In my opinion two movies that should have been nominated for Best Picture that got overlooked were Black Hawk Down and Memento. Black Hawk Down did get a nomination for Best Director but didn’t get one for Best Picture. I think that is partly due to the violent nature of the movie and being so close to 9/11. But it was a great action and intense movie. Memento was a truly original movie that should have at least won Best Picture. I think it was a crime that something so original lost Best Original Screenplay to Gosford Park, but Christopher Nolan was an unknown and Robert Altman was a legend.

Oscar Facts
Russell Crowe’s Third Best Actor Nomination in a Row

It was also the first year that they had a Best Animated Feature Oscar which was won by Shrek beating Monsters Inc. and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

IMDB Top 250 for 2001
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring- #17
Memento- #31
Donnie Darko-145
A Beautiful Mind-243
Monsters Inc. - 247