Listomania Sunday: Best Picture Winners Since 1970

Well my blog is coming to an end.  So here are my favorite Best Picture Winners since 1970. Why since 1970 because that was the halfway point in my quest.  If you want to see the list for the first that list is here.  Listomania Sunday: Oscars

1.  Silence of the Lambs- One of only the few movies to win all 5 top Oscars and one of the only thrillers to win Best Picture. Doesn't get much better then Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter.
2.  Schidnlers List - One of the most moving and inspiring films of the last 30 years. Spielberg at his best. 
3.  The Godfather- A true masterpiece. 
4.  The Hurt Locker- Even though it is a recent movie I think it deserves to be on this list. Very well done with high intensity all the way through. 
5.  American Beauty- One of my favorite movies in one of my favorite years. 1999 was a great year for movies and while most critics and my dad hate this movie I still find something about it very good.

The Hurt Locker

The little movie that could. The Hurt Locker went up against the highest grossing movie of all time and came out the victor. After a lot of criticism in 2008 for movies that get left off the Best Picture nominations (specifically The Dark Knight) the Academy decided to increase the number of Best Picture nominations to 10 in 2009. And it did what I think the Academy intended it to do, get a mix of small independent films with large blockbusters. Movies that would not otherwise be nominated like the sci-fi flick District 9, the animated movie Up, and the sports drama The Blind Side got a chance at glory. But the big showdown was between Avatar the highest grossing movie of all time vs. The Hurt Locker a small independent film and two directors that used to be married Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron, with the Hurt Locker and Kathryn Bigelow coming out on top.

The Hurt Locker is about an elite bomb squad in Iraq. When a new leader SFC William James (Jeremy Renner) joins Bravo Company his leadership style causes conflict with his two subordinates, Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Eldridge (Brian Geraghty). His aggressive style goes against what they have been used too. Every call poses new problems and new bombs and they must try to figure out a way to work together to live. Meanwhile Eldridge is dealing with guilt for the death of their former leader.

 What makes this movie work is the intensity. Each bomb they are called out to defuse brings a new heightened sense of anxiety. The acting is great. Jeremy Renner is just pitch perfect as James. He is all gung ho without concern for his own safety and sometimes the safety of others. What I love about this movie besides all the suspense is that it feels real. Every character is believable. Each has their own psychiatric issues and they all feel multidimensional. The movie is very minimalist having very little score and no opening titles. It proves that you don't need a big budget to make a great movie.

On the flip side of that is Avatar, which proves that if you have a big budget doesn't mean you will have a great movie. I was surprised after the awards were announced how many people just assumed that Avatar would win. While Avatar did have some amazing special effects and great visuals the story was kind of bland. While the characters in The Hurt Locker felt well rounded in Avatar they felt very one dimensional (ironic since the movie was filmed in 3-D). It bothered me that everyone would assume that it would win without ever seeing The Hurt Locker.

 I was pleasantly surprised to see District 9 nominated for Best Picture as it was one of the most original Sci-Fi movies I had seen in a while. I am also glad Precious got nominated for Best Picture I just wish it would have received more attention as it was a dark, disturbing but incredibly well acted movie. With all the attention Kathryn Bigelow received about being the first women to win Best Director there was hardly any mention that Lee Daniels was only the second black man to be nominated. Not surprisingly The Hangover one of the funniest movies of the year didn't get nominated. The biggest snub in my opinion was The Lovely Bones which was one of my favorite movies of the year and deserved more nominations.

Oscar Trivia:

With her nomination for Best Actress for Julie and Julia Meryl Streep broke the record with 13 nominations for a leading role and a total of 16 nominations total.

Avatar and Up became the first 3-D movies to be nominated for Best Picture

On a personal note this is the first movie to win Best Picture since I started my Best Picture quest. Here is the link to my original review The Hurt Locker

No Country for Old Men

The Best Picture nominations for 2007 were mostly dark and depressing movies. The only comedy nominated was Juno which was about a teenage pregnancy still not a real happy theme. The other movies nominated had to do with ruthless oilmen, lying siblings, and a corporate legal thriller. Then ultimate winner was No Country for Old Men by the Coen Brothers about a stealing and murder.

No Country for Old Men is dark tale about a guy (Josh Brolin) who finds money and drugs from a drug deal gone badly. After stealing the money he is hunted by a paid gunman named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) who uses and an air gun as his weapon of choice. The sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) is trying to piece everything together.

I hadn't seen the movie since I saw it in theatres and watching it again I forgot how good this movie really was. I love that the movie keeps you guessing and you're never really sure what will happen next. Javier Bardem won Best Supporting actor for his emotionless killer Chigurh, but it was Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff that I felt was the best acting in the movie. He really grounds the movie in some reality. While everything else is going horribly wrong he is trying to do his job and keep everyone safe. The Coen brothers are known for bizarre but great movies like Fargo and The Big Lebowski. But while this movie is good the ending is really strange. I felt the ending kind of took away from how great the rest of the movie was.

Even though I love The Coen Brothers I actually felt the movie that should have won Best Picture is the equally dark and odd movie There Will Be Blood. With great performances by Daniel Day-Lewis as oil man Daniel Plainview and Paul Dano as Eli Sunday a small time preacher. There is some amazing tension between the two as we see each one manipulate others one using faith and the other using money. There are no good guys in this movie as everyone has selfish motives. This is another movie that has a strange ending but I found it more satisfying than the ending for No Country for Old Men.
The biggest upset for me was that Into the Wild wasn't nominated for more awards. I loved the movie and totally expected it to get lots of nominations. In my opinion it should have been nominated for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Director, Best Score, and Best Song for some of Eddie Vedder most haunting songs. Hal Holbrook did get nominated for Best Supporting Actor but there should have been way more nominations. The two biggest acting snubs in my opinion were for Tommy Lee Jones and Paul Dano being left off the Best Supporting Actor list. Both are amazing in their movies.

IMDB Top 250 rankings of 2007 movies
No Country for Old Men #130
Into the Wild #148
There Will be Blood #159
The Bourne Ultimatum #183
Ratatouille #195

The Departed

Martin Scorcese finally won a Best Picture and Best Director with the gritty, violent, and foul mouthed The Departed based on the Japanese film Infernal Affairs. Having lost Best Director 3 times to  actors (1980 Robert Redford, 1990 Kevin Costner, and 2004 Clint Eastwood) he finally won the rematch between him and Clint Eastwood who was nominated for Letter from Iwo Jima.

The Departed is about two cops on opposite sides of the Irish mob in South Boston.  Headed by the ruthless Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) the mob is relentlessly hunted down by the police. To get inside information Costello grooms one of his guys (Matt Damon) from an early age to become a state police office.  On the opposite side the cops send one of their agents (Leonardo DiCaprio) undercover as a mob insider.  Each side senses there is a rat in their midst but are unable to figure out who it is. After everyone is double crossed at least once will the truth ever be revealed?

Filled with shoot outs and graphic fight scenes it is one of the edgiest and the most violent films to win Best Picture.  This movie is great for many reasons including the dark twisty tale, the great performances, and intense action.  Plus for me it was cool that it took place in South Boston since I used to work there and heard lots of stories about Whitey Bulger and the Irish mob there.  The use of the Dropkick Murphys song "Shipping up to Boston" was used to maximum effect.  Winning 4 awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing and only one nomination for the acting a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Mark Wahlberg as the foul mouthed agent Dingham.  The biggest question is how did none of the other actors get nominated.  Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon should have been nominated for Best Actor and Jack Nicholson should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor.  All were great performances. 

In my opinion no other movie that year stood a chance to win over this masterpiece and it seemed a forgone conclusion baring any surprise upsets like the previous year.  While Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima was considered the closest competition for Best Picture (it would have been the first foreign language movie to win Best Picture if it had won) for me it was Little Miss Sunshine the quirky comedy that was a distant second.  The movie that I thought was grossly overlooked was Children of Men.  Nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay it is a great sci-fi movie that was one of the best movies of the year and should have been nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Clive Owen.  The most ridiculous nomination was Borat for Best Screenplay which was mostly ad-libbed. 

The other category that got lots of attention this year was for Best Documentary.  The controversial  Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth won.  The movie was an extended version of his power point presentation on global warming.  I found the movie to be very boring and thought Jesus Camp was a much more compelling documentary.  About a controversial religious summer camp the movie follows the kids and manages to not take sides about what is taught in the camp. 

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

Titanic

When I first started my Best Picture Quest one of the first things people always said to me was "your going to have to watch Titanic again". Well I finally got up to Titanic. It is the 70th movie to win Best Picture and the movie broke and tied all kinds of records. Not only was it the highest grossing movie of all time but also tied All About Eve with 14 Oscar Nominations and tied Ben-Hur with 11 Oscar wins.  It also was the first time two people were nominated for playing the same character in the same movie when Kate Winslet and Gloria Stewart were nominated for playing young Rose and Old Rose. 

A brief synopsis for the few people who have not actually seen this movie.  Titanic is a love story set aboard the doomed ship.  Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a young painter (from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin) who wins tickets on the ship in a poker game. Having very little money he stays with lower class folks on the lower decks.  Rose (Kate Winslet) comes from a wealthy family and is engaged to a well off business man is on the ship with her fiancee and mother.  Since they have money they get to stay in all the best accommodations on the ship.  Jack and Rose meet one night when Rose contemplates suicide and Jack talks her out of it.  Rose's fiancees gets extremely jealous and Rose's mom does not like Jack because he is lower class.  But despite all that Rose and Jack form a bond and fall in love.  After the ship hits the iceberg and begins to sink Rose and Jack stay together till the end while her fiancee tries to bribe his way on to one of the life boats. 

I remember not liking this movie when it first came out but I was a 19 year old guy and this was more of a chick flick. So, I was curious how I would feel about this movie now.  Well it turns out that I still don't like it, and for some of the same reasons.  Not because it is a chick flick but because I think it is poorly written. The dialogue is pretty bad and some of it is just silly.  I think this is reflected in the fact that out of the 13 nominations it did not receive one for Best Screenplay.  Making it one of the few Best Picture winners that didn't even have a Screenplay nomination.  While writer/director James Cameron can't write love stories his direction of the action sequences during the last hour are pretty exciting. Also, the stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio have gone on to become multiple Oscar Nominees and very popular stars so it was interesting to see them in one of their earlier movies (both had one previous nomination before this DiCaprio for Whats Eating Gilbert Grape and Winslet for Sense and Sensibility).  But while Winslet gives a good performance DiCaprio is not very good in this one which is surprising since he has turned out to be a great actor.  But Winslet did get her second nomination while DiCaprio would have to wait a few more years for another nomination (Winslet eventually won Best Actress in 2008 for The Reader while DiCaprio has still not won an Oscar). 

Of course the other big win that year for Titanic was Best Music and Best Song for My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion, which if you were alive that year made you heard thousands of times. The win for Best Song marks the first time that a non-musical winner of Best Picture also won Best Song.  Also, the last time a popular song won.  Lately there has not been any song to win Best Song that has been in heavy rotation on the radio. Not sure the reason for that but the Academy has changed the rules for the nomination of Best Song but still seem odd that a popular song hasn't won. 

Besides Titanic pretty much sweeping the technical awards (Editing, Sound, Art Direction, and Cinematography) there were other winners that year.  My favorite movie of the year and the movie I think should have won Best Picture was Good Will Hunting.  Nominated for 9 awards and winning 2. It's win for Best Screenplay was a bit of a surprise because Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were two relatively unknown actors and this was their first screenplay.  But it was smart and funny something that Titanic didn't have.  It also won Best Supporting Actor for Robin Williams in one of his best performances.  The other big movie that year was As Good As it Gets.  Nominated for 7 awards and winning 2.  The movie had some of the best acting in it with great performances by Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Greg Kinnear.  All three were nominated and Nicholson and Hunt both won becoming only the seventh time that a movie won for both Best Actor and Best Actress.  The movie was also nominated for Best Screenplay and just missing being nominated for the Top 5 awards by one Best Director nomination which is should have received also.  Today most people will pick L.A. Confidential as the movie that should have won best picture.  A complex crime drama with lots of great acting it was nominated for Best Picture and did win Best Supporting Actress for Kim Bassinger and Best Adapted Screenplay but was one of the least seen movies nominated.  The only other movie nominated for Best Picture that was smaller was The Full Monty which was one of the funniest movies of the year but not necessarily Best Picture material. 

The other interesting fact about this movie is that it is one of the reasons that I have become so obsessed with the Academy Awards. It was 1997 and I couldn't believe that this was the best movie of the year so I made it a point to see all the movies nominated for Best Picture. Making this year the first year I had seen all movies nominated for Best Picture before the awards were announced. Also, I remember watching the box office records fall and it is when I started paying more attention to the box office. So, while I might not have liked the movie a whole lot it is one of those movies that changed my life. 

The English Patient

The late 90’s was apparently a very romantic time for the Academy because this is the first of three romantic movies to win in a row. This is also the first movie on my Best Picture Quest that I finally got somebody to watch with me. My mom was in town so I made her watch it with me. I had started it before she came but watched from the beginning after she got here which worked out better since the beginning is a little confusing.

The English Patient is about a man who is badly burned in a plane crash in an African desert during WWII. After being found he is brought to a Canadian Military Hospital where he is taken care of by a nurse Hana (Juliette Binoche). When there caravan drives into a mine field in an Italian town Hana decides since there is no hope for her patient it is best just to let him die in piece and she takes him into a nearby deserted monastery. Claiming he has no memory of who he is or what happened to him he begins to have flashbacks of his life. We learn that he was a map maker on an expedition in Africa. After falling in love with his partners wife begins a secret affair with her. But as Hana is taking care of him she begins to fall in love with a soldier on the bomb squad who is trying to disarm all the mines in the area. Then there is also a mysterious visitor who stays with them and claims he knows her patient from before his accident.

At over 3 hours it is just long, boring and confusing. The confusion comes from all the back and forth between flashbacks and present day. Ralph Fiennes who plays the patient is very good in the flashback scenes(he doesn’t have much to do in the present day scenes except lay in bed with makeup on). The problem is that the flashback scenes are not as interesting as the present day scenes. The story of Hana and Kip and the mysterious David are more compelling that the love story of the flashbacks. To me it was like watching a movie with a split personality one good and one bad. The best things about the flashback scenes were it was beautifully filmed and the scenery was great. The movie ended up winning 9 Academy Awards tying it for third most at the time. Most of the awards it won was technical awards including Cinematography, Art Direction, and Costume Design. Juliette Binoche won Best Supporting Actress and Anthony Minghella won Best Director but it lost Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Winner of Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress (Frances McDormand) was the movie I think should have won Best Picture Fargo. The Coen Brothers black comedy about a Midwestern kidnapping that goes all wrong is both funny and violent. I was glad it won Best Original Screenplay since it was one of the more original written movies. It is actually one of the reasons why I started paying more attention to the Best Original Screenplay category. It turns out that a lot of the more original movies that don’t fit the usual Academy fare gets nominated (but doesn’t always win) Best Original Screenplay. Other winners that year included Billy Bob Thornton for writing Sling Blade (he lost Best Actor) and Cuba Gooding Jr. in a surprise win for Best Supporting Actor for Jerry Maguire. And one of my favorite movies of 1996 Independence Day won Best Special Effects.

Braveheart

Watching Braveheart again I wasn't sure if it will stand up over time. It was released the summer after I graduated high school and of course being a 17 year old male I love the violence and gore.  So, being a bit older now I was wondering if I would still love it as much.  Turns out that it still is a great movie.

Braveheart is about the life of William Wallace a Scottish warrior who fights to free Scotland from England rule.  The film starts with Wallace as a child as he witnesses the cruel effects of living under English rule when his father is murdered during a battle.  After his father dies he travels with his uncle who teaches him to read and speak in many languages.  When he comes back to Scotland to settle down and start a family once again the English kill someone he loves. This time his wife Marron.  Fueled by rage he takes revenge on the English and in the process starts a revolution.  Uniting Scottish Clans and warriors from all around his takes on the might English Army.  The only ones who would not help him are the Scottish Nobles who betray his efforts to unite Scotland.  He eventually leads an army and attacks England before being completely betrayed by the nobles and captured and sent to London to be tortured and killed. 

The one thing I remembered and loved about this movie are the gruesome fight scenes and Mel Gibson knows how to film bloody battle scenes.  Besides all the fighting and gore the movie has a love story to it and everyone can relate to the idea of fighting for ones freedom.  The film is brilliantly filmed and looks great also the music captures the mood perfectly.  The speeches that Gibson gives now seems silly since they have been parodied so often and probably also because I had a roommate in college that would constantly recite the whole battle speech.  But you can still feel the intensity.  I remember seeing it with my girlfriend at the time whose biggest problem with the movie was all the horses that died. She didn't mind all the people getting beheaded but don't hurt the horses.  Still one of the most violent movies to win Best Picture. 

Braveheart winning Best Picture came as a shock that year for most everybody.  It did not win any of the critic awards leading up to the Academy Awards so it was kind of a dark horse victory.  There were a diverse group of nominees that year with no clear standout.  The other nominees were Apollo 13, Sense and Sensibility, Babe, and Il Postino.  So you have a kids movie like Babe against the first foreign language movie to be nominated in almost 20 years.  The biggest surprise are probably the movies that didn't get nominated. Movies like Seven, The Usual Suspects, Toy Story, Leaving Las Vegas, and Dead Man Walking.  Dead Man Walking and Leaving Las Vegas both were nominated for Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director but did not get Best Picture. Leaving Las Vegas was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay so it was nominated in 4 out of the 5 top Oscars just missing out on the biggest one it did win Best Actor for Nicholas Cage.  Also of note Toy Story became the first animated film to be nominated for Best Screen Play. 

Forrest Gump

1994 was a great year for movies. Three of the five movies nominated for Best Picture are also on AFI’s 100 Greatest Movies of All Time.  The three movies are Forrest Gump the eventual winner, Pulp Fiction, and The Shawshank Redemption.  The other two movies nominated were Quiz Show another good movie and Four Weddings and  a funeral which I have to admit I have never seen.  But how you choose one movie over the others is hard since they are all so good and represent different genres.  Forrest Gump is sometimes listed as overrated and not deserving of Best Picture like in a recent article from Entertainment Weekly it was on the list of most overrated winners of best picture.

Forrest Gump is a comedy/drama about a simpleton who unaware of what is going on around him manages to find himself in incredible circumstances.  He begins telling his story to anyone that will listen next to him on a bench at a bus stop.  He starts by telling about his childhood, his mother and his best friend Jenny.  To him his mother is always right and never does anything wrong and he often quotes things she said.   Always being different either for his lower mental abilities or for the braces on his legs he is mostly ignored by everyone at school except for Jenny.  To sum up the movie quickly is hard as so much happens but here is the quick version. As he grows up he meets Elvis Presley, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and John Lennon among other famous people. Also he becomes a war hero, a ping pong champion, a fishing boat captain, a rich stock holder, and a famous runner.  In the meantime Jenny becomes a stripper, hippie, and drug user and their paths cross a couple of times.  Never really comprehending what Jenny is going through Forrest always loves her unconditionally.  Besides Jenny the only other friend he has is Lieutenant Dan who he saved during the Vietnam war.  Lieutenant Dan was injured and lost both his legs before Forrest rescued him and feels that he should have died and is mad at Forrest for saving his life.  After Forrest starts a shrimping company Lieutenant Dan comes to work for him and finally finds some peace.

The movie is heartfelt and fun.  The circumstances that Forrest finds himself in are both funny and poignant.  The fact that Jenny doesn’t return the love that he has for her is tragic.  The variety of emotions that the movie takes you through is what makes it work. Also, all the acting is great. Tom Hanks won his second Best Actor award in a row.  Making him only the second actor to win two years in a row the first actor to do it was Spencer Tracy for Captains Courageous and Boys Tow in 1937 and 1938.  Gary Sinise was also nominated (but lost) for Best Supporting Actor as Lieutenant Dan.  The movie is also has lots of memorable quotes that helped it win the Best Adapted Screenplay award.  Overall the movie had 6 wins out of its 13 nominations.  Despite its great visuals and great use of computer effects I don’t think it should have won the Best Special Effects Oscar since The Mask has some amazing effects.

Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction each had 7 nominations.  Pulp Fiction won for Best Original Screenplay and Shawshank Redemption did not win any.  I remember at the time there was a lot of talk about which should win Pulp Fiction or Forrest Gump. I always thought that Pulp Fiction was the better movie. Since I own both movies I decided to rewatch both Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction again.  And it turns out I still think Pulp Fiction is the better movie of the three.  It is truly an original and is very shocking.  I remember watching it for the first time and just being blown away by the crazy stuff that happens in it.  I am glad it won Best Original Screenplay as it was one of the most original stories put on screen.  It also should have won Best Supporting actor for Samuel L. Jackson.  Shawshank Redemption is a great movie and any other year it probably would have won. And I am not sure how Tim Robbins did not get nominated for Best Actor. It seems that the movie has gotten more fans as time has gone by and it is now rated at number 1 on IMDB Top 250.  And it is the first movie based on a Stephen King book to be nominated for Best Picture. 

The other movie that was super popular that year was The Lion King had four nominations.  Three of the nominations were for Best Original Song “Can you Feel the Love Tonight”,  “Hakuna Matata”, and “Circle of Life” were all nominated.  This tied a record with Beauty and the Beast for most songs nominated for one film.  Another one of my favorite films form 1994 was Speed which won for Best Sound and Sound Effects Editing.

By the Numbers
Forrest Gump was ranked  number 71 on AFI Top 100 Greatest Films in 1997 and number 76 in 2007 and the line “Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.” was listed at #40 on their greatest quotes list.  It is currently ranked at  number 30 on IMDB Top 250.
The Shawshank Redemption was ranked number 72 on AFI Top 100 Greatest Movies in 2007 and is currently ranked number 1 on IMDB Top 250.
Pulp Fiction was ranked at number 95 on AFI Top 100 Greatest Movies in 1997 and 94 in 2007. It is currently ranked at number number 6 on IMDB Top 250.
The Lion King is currently number 130 on IMDB Top 250.

Whats your favorite movie from 1994
	Forrest Gump
	Pulp Fiction
	The Shawshank Redemption
	The Lion King
	Clerks
	Speed
	Natural Born Killers
	True Lies
	Dumb and Dumber
	The Mask
	Heavenly Creatures
pollcode.com free polls

Schindler's List

1993 was a good year of Steven Spielberg.  After having 7 movies nominated for Best Picture and 6 nominations for Best Director he finally won both with Schindler’s List.  In addition to that he had one of his most successful movies with Jurassic Park which in my opinion should have been nominated for Best Picture also.

Schindler’s List is about Polish Jews during the Holocaust.  The movie starts with the Jews first being round up and put in ghettos.  During this time a manufacturer Oscar Schindler(Liam Neeson) hires a Jewish  accountant Itzhak Stern(Ben Kingsley) to fix his books and hire him some staff. Itzhak helps his friends who would otherwise been killed for not having any “useful” skills and gives them fake papers so they can work at the factory.  At first Schindler doesn’t care as long as he is making money.  After he witnesses the destruction of the ghetto with senseless killing he begins to care for the workers.  He then regards them as his Jews and does everything in his power to help them.  He becomes friends with Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) the man who oversees the labor camp where his Jews are kept.  Despite hating the man he is very convincing and becomes a trusted friend of his.  When the labor camp is being shut down and the Jews are being sent to a concentration camp Schindler uses his own money and purchases as many Jews as he can and sets up special arrangement for them. He uses the excuse that they are vital to the war effort as they help him manufacture bombs (it turns out the bombs weren’t made very well).  He manages to keep the façade up long enough for the war to end and the Jews were set free.

The three hour long movie is a very powerful and moving movie.  It had twelve nominations and seven wins. Everything in this movie is so good from the acting to the directing.  Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor and Ben Kingsley should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Neither of the two nominated actors won. Liam Neeson lost to Tom Hanks in his first of two consecutive wins for Philadelphia.   Ralph Fiennes surprisingly lost to Tommy Lee Jones for The Fugitive. John Williams won for the haunting score(he also should have been nominated for the score of Jurassic Park but wasn’t).

Jane Campion became the first female to be nominated for Best Director and have a movie nominated for Best Picture for The Piano.  Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin won acting awards for the Piano. Hunter winning Best Actress and Paquin winning Best Supporting Actress.  Holly Hunter was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The Firm. Also that year Emma Thompson was nominated for Best Actress (The Remains of the Day) and Best Supporting Actress (In the Name of the Father) marking the first time two actresses had to compete with each other in both categories.  At age 11 Paquin became the second youngest actress to receive the supporting award Tatum O’Neal won in 1973 for Paper Moon at age 10.

Biggest snub in my opinion was Jurassic Park being left out of the big awards.  It was nominated and won 3 technical awards including Special Effects but no other awards.  But the action movie The Fugitive was nominated for Best Picture and 6  other awards and even won Best Supporting Actor for Tommy Lee Jones. Maybe it’s just me but Jurassic Park deserved that nomination over The Fugitive.  Also, I don’t think Tommy Lee Jones should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor let alone win.  Denzel Washington should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor alongside Tom Hanks for Philadelphia.

Other Random Facts
Schindler’s List is Spielberg’s first Rated R film
Besides a few scenes the movie is in Black and White making it the first black and white movie to win since 1960’s The Apartment(which is still the last FULL black and white movie to win Best Picture).
The Wrong Trousers won Best Animated Short and is the first Wallace and Gromit movie to win.
Leonardo DiCaprio got his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.
Robert Altman was nominated for Best Director the second year in a row for a movie that was not nominated for Best Picture (The Player in 1992 and Short Cuts in 1993)

Unforgiven

 
After watching 4 movies in a row in my best picture quest life got in the way I am behind in writing about them. So, a little late (not that anyone will notice) here is the 1992 Best Picture winner.
 
1992 The western got its third win for Best Picture with Unforgiven. The other two westerns to win (Cimarron in 1931 and Dances With Wolves in 1990) were not so much westerns as epics that took place in the West.  Unforgiven was a true cowboy movie and more typical of what most people think of when they think of a western.  Trying to watch this movie took a lot of work. I had it on my DVR but it was cut off at the end and as I later found out it was an edited version.  And Netflix had already sent me the wrong movie so I ended up going to the library and renting it on VHS.  This is the third movie that I had to watch on VHS since I started my Best Picture quest. 
 
Unforgiven is about a washed up cowboy William Munny(Clint Eastwood) who gives up the cowboy life to start a pig farm after his wife dies.  Trying to raise his kids and uphold the wishes of his late wife to lead a sober crime free life.  But after his pig farm starts doing poorly an offer comes along for one more job.  A young cowboy “Schofield Kid” asks for his help to collect a bounty for two guys who had roughed up a prostitute in the town of Big Whisky.  After the sheriff of Big Whisky "Little Bill" Daggett(Gene Hackman) learns that there is a bounty out for the two guys he bans all firearms in the town to stop any further violence.  Munny asks his old friend Ned Logan(Morgan Freeman) to go for one last ride with him and the kid.  When they get to Big Whisky they clash with the sheriff which leads to a violent climax. 
 
The movie started a streak of great Clint Eastwood directed movies.  One of the things that I Eastwood is able to do when he directs is get great performances out of his cast.  Gene Hackman won the Best Supporting Actor for his role as the rough and tough “Little Bill” who only wants to protect his town from violent outsiders. The movie is notable for being a western that actually shows the negative side of violence.  There is no cowboy who is a perfect shot. One of the more interesting side characters is a guy who is trying to write about cowboys. Each cowboy he interviews tell about the same events from a different perspective. What we learn is that a lot of the tales from the old west are just that. While events actually happened they are usually told with a positive spin for the person doing the telling. 
 
The other nominees that year included the controversial The Crying Game and the courtroom drama A Few Good Men.  While A Few Good Men was nominated for Best Picture and also Best Supporting Actor for Jack Nicholson(his 10th nomination) it did not get nominated for Best Director for Rob Reiner or  Best Screenplay for Aaron Sorkin.  As with all of Aaron Sorkin’s movies the dialogue is great and fast. I don’t know how he didn’t get nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay although I have to admit I did not see Howards End.  The big upset this year was the surprise win for Marisa Tomei for My Cousin Vinny with other bigger stars in more dramatic movies it was a huge shock. There was some discussion about Robin Williams getting a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Aladdin which would have made him the first person to be nominated for voice work but that did not happen. There was similar discussion about Ellen Degeneres for Finding Nemo in 2003.
 

The Silence of the Lambs

1991 was a pretty diverse year for Best Picture nominees.  A thriller, an animated film, a conspiracy film, a gangster movie, and a romantic drama.  The five nominees were The Silence of the Lambs, Beauty and the Beast, Bugsy, JFK, and The Prince of Tides.  It honestly doesn't get more different than those five movies.  Beauty and the Beast became the first animated movie to be nominated for best picture.  The ultimate winner was Silence of the Lambs which many people consider to be the only horror movie to win Best Picture. I consider it more of a psychological thriller more than a horror movie, but the point is movies like this do not usually even get nominated let alone win.  The only other psychological thriller to win was in 1940 when Hitchcock's Rebecca won.   Also, going against Silence of the Lambs was the fact that it came out in January (most movies nominated for Best Picture usually come out in the latter half of the year) and it is the first movie to win that was already available to watch at home on tape. Despite all of this it still won best picture and became one of only 3 movies to win the Top 5 Academy Awards(Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress).

The Silence of the Lambs is about  an FBI trainee Clarice Starling(Jodie Foster) who is sent to interview Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter(Anthony Hopkins).  The FBI is trying to use knowledge gained from other serial killers to help create a psychological profile  for a current serial killer called "Buffalo Bill".  They send Clarice to develop the profile of Hannibal Lecter. Lecter is an ex-psychiatrist who would also would kill and eat his victims.  Lecter uses his ability to analyze people to prey on the weak minded.  When he first meets Clarice he tries to intimidate her but she barely flinches.  Having met someone who he feels is almost equal to him he starts to play a little cat and mouse game with her.  There are many back and forth between the two of them and Clarice is able to decipher the cryptic clues he gives about "Buffalo Bill".  After "Buffalo Bill" kidnaps a senators daughter the warden of the jail tries to use Lector for his own gain.  Of course Lecter is aware of this and uses the warden's over confidence to plan what is one of the most gruesome escape in movies.  But before he escapes he has one last meeting with Clarice and hands her his psychological review of "Buffalo Bill".  But can she catch "Bill" in time before he kills the senators daughter? I won't ruin the end.

This is such a great movie.  Some many things I love about this movie.  First off it gets right into the story.  You meet Clarice as she is summoned to the head of the FBI and then she is meeting with Lecter shortly after.  And once Anthony Hopkins come on screen you see the menace in his eyes and the movie never backs down.  At just under 2 hours in someone else's hands this could have been a 3 hour movie.  But Jonathon Demme keeps it compact and quick.  Also, the scenes with both Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster are amazing.  It is great to see two great actors inhabit the same screen and go head to head.  Even though we see that Clarice is still learning and does not equal Lecter she stands her ground and he comes to respect her.  The conversations are not only well acted but well written and directed.  The tension you get just from their interaction is better than any of the actually "horror" scenes in the movie, and Lecter is more scarier when he is toying with people psychologically then when actually killing them.  Of course when we do get to the killing part it gets pretty gruesome and we begin to see the real craziness of Lecter.  And the movie has one of the best last lines of any movie "I'm having an old friend for dinner".  The movie deserved all of the wins it got.

Two of the best picture nominated films Beauty and the Beast and The Prince of Tides were not nominated for Best Director.  This created a bit of a controversy since Barbara Streisand directed The Prince of Tides and it was the third time in five years that a women directed a movie that was nominated for Best Picture but was not nominated for Best Director.  Randa Haines for Children of a Lesser God and Penny Marshall for Awakenings were the other two women who directed a Best Picture nominee but did not get a Best Director nomination.  The only female director to be nominated up to this point was Lina Wermuller for the foreign  film Seven Beauties in 1976.  The Academy was perceived as being prejudicial to women directors.  The two directors that replaced them was Ridley Scott for Thelma and Louise and Jon Singleton for Boyz N the Hood.  Jon Singleton became the first African-American director to be nominated for Best Director and also at 24 the youngest director to be nominated.

Other Notable Oscar Trivia
Terminator 2: Judgment Day won four technical awards
After winning Best Supporting Actor for City Slickers Jack Palance did push-ups on the stage to prove he wasn't old.
Anthony Hopkins win for Best Acting is considered the shortest time on screen for a leading actor win. He had less time on screen then Jack Palance did in City Slickers.
Laura Dern was nominated for Best Actress for Rambling Rose and her mother Diane Ladd was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for the same movie.  The only real life mother and daughter to be nominated for the same film.
And personally I think Val Kilmer should have been nominated for playing Jim Morrison in The Doors.  Great performance.

Dances With Wolves

The 90's are my high school and college years. It is the decade that my movie tastes grew and these are the movies that would come to shape my views on movies. Half of the movies to win best picture in the 90's I actually saw in the theatre and the 1997 Oscar race is what really started my obsession with the Academy Awards. I don't want to get ahead of myself too much. Dances With Wolves won in 1990 and I did see it in the theatres when it was originally released. But for some reason when I was trying to watch it this time I had all kinds of troubles. First it was on Netflix Streaming then right before I was going to watch it they took it off, then I tried to get the disc from Netflix and they sent me the 1993 winner. So, I ended up finding a $15 gift card to Best Buy someone had got me for Christmas and went and bought the movie on Blu-Ray and finally got to watch it.

Dances With Wolves is about a Civil War Lieutenant John Dunbar who after trying to commit suicide is rewarded with a medal and given the choice of where he would like to be stationed at. He chooses a remote post in the west. When he gets there he finds it abandoned and decided to stay and keep the fort operational until others arrive. His only companions at first is his horse and a wolf who he names Two Socks because of his two white feet. When no one comes for a long time he begins to make friends with the nearby Sioux Tribe. At first he sees it as the first steps to being an ambassador but after falling in love with one of the members of the tribe they become his family. The Sioux people begin calling him Dances With Wolves after they see him playing with Two Socks. When the army finally arrives they see him as a traitor who turned his back on his military duty and joined the Indian tribe. They arrest him and after a daring rescue by the Indians he is faced with the decision of where his loyalties lie.

Originally 3 hours long the Blu-Ray Directors cut is almost 4 hours long. While the beginning is slightly boring the movie never really feels long. I always loved the west and wished I could have seen it back then in the wild with the large herds of buffalo so I don't mind the slow sweeping shots of the scenery. The story itself is engrossing. I love how we learn about the Sioux as Dunbar does. At first they are just silent but over time we begin to understand. There are some funny scenes with the tribe where we see they are not much different the us. The movie shows the softer side of Indians and how we have always misunderstood them and just need to look at life from their point of view. It is that idea that the movie is trying to get across and one of the few "message" movies that gets its point across without hitting you over the head with the message. Kevin Costner did a great job directing and acting in the movie. All the members of the tribe were terrific. Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, and Graham Greene all got Nominated for Oscars and all lost. The movie did win a total of 7 awards.

It was odd that a Western won best picture in 1990 since it seemed like it was the year of the gangster flick. The movie was up against The Godfather Part III and Goodfellas for Best Picture also that year Millers Crossing and State of Grace came out but were not nominated for anything. The other movies nominated for Best Picture were Awakenings and Ghost. With Ghost winning Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress for Whoopi Goldberg. Must have been a bad year for Original Screenplays as I don't think Ghost was that good and I haven't seen any of the other movies nominated. Although Jacobs Ladder and Millers Crossing probably should have been nominated. Maybe one of the biggest surprises of the year was the Best Actress win of Kathy Bates for Misery(who beat Julia Roberts in Pretty Women). Very rarely does acting in a horror movie get recognized. A very deserving win for Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.

Oscar Facts:
Dances with Wolves was only the second Western to win Best Picture the first was Cimarron in 1931,
Kevin Costner became of the few people to direct himself to an Oscar Nomination
With the nomination of The Godfather Part III the Godfather Trilogy became the first to have all three movies nominated for Best Picture.

By the Numbers:
Dances with Wolves was ranked number 75 on AFI's 100 Greatest Films in 1997 but not ranked on their 2007 list.
Goodfellas was ranked number 94 in 1997 and number 92 in 2007 on AFI's 100 Greatest Films list. And is currently ranked number 15 on IMDB Top 250.

Driving Miss Daisy

So I finally made it to the last Best Picture winner of the 80’s.  This is also the first Oscars that Billy Crystal hosted and I can still see him singing a song about all the Best Pictures. The big winner that night was Driving Miss Daisy a great feel good movie.
 
The movie is about a wealthy elderly Southern women Miss Daisy(Jessica Tandy) whose son hires a black man  Hoke(Morgan Freeman) as her Chauffeur.  At first she is in denial that she even needs a driver and claims she can drive herself.  When she finally starts letting him drive they start becoming friends.  Her friendship with Hoke opens her eyes to the injustices and prejudices of the South and she becomes a supporter of Martin Luther King.  In the end they become very close friends till the very end. 
 
The growth of their friendship and the incredible acting is what makes this movie so good.  Both Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman are great and you really feel as if they are best friends.  The movie won 4 awards including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, and Best Makeup.  Of the 9 nominations it received it was not nominated for Best Director and became only the 3rd movie to win Best Picture without being nominated for Best Director (Wings in 1927 and Grand Hotel in 1932 are the other two).  I was surprised it didn't get nominated for best score as I thought the music was prefect.  Jessica Tandy was 80 years old when she won and became the oldest actress to win.
 
Other winners that year included Oliver Stone’s second Best Director win for Born on the Fourth of July. And beating Morgan Freeman for Best Actor was the incredible performance of Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot.  Denzel Washington won his first Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for Glory.  The Little Mermaid won Best Score and Best Song for “Under the Sea’.  And Dead Poets Society won Best Original Screenplay. 
 
Other notable nominations. Tom Cruise received his first nomination for Born on the Fourth of July.  John Williams was nominated against himself in the Best Score category again for the Scores of Born on the Fourth of July and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. 
 
As far as I am concerned the movie that should have been nominated for Best Picture but wasn’t is Glory.  An amazing war film with great acting that deserved more  nominations.  It would have been great to see Morgan Freeman get nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Glory in addition to his Best Actor nomination for Driving Miss Daisy two very different roles both played perfectly.