1941 - Best Film
Who Won - How Green Was My Valley
Who should have won - Citizen Kane. The most influential film ever made got beat by a load of sentimental slush about family values in a Welsh mining village. Kane's legacy lives on to this day in its redefining of what can be done in cinematic narratives, its multitude of groundbreaking camera techniques, and countless Simpsons references. But Oscar is as much about subject matter as it is about actually being good, and weepy family values bullsh#t will win out on talent every time.
1951 - Best Actor
Who won - Humphrey Bogart for The African Queen
Who should have won - When you watch Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire you notice that he instantly makes every other actor of the time seem horribly dated. Brando brought method acting to the big screen and instantly made the stiff old Hollywood acting styles of shouting to show your angry, shouting while balling your fists to show you're frustrated and all the other scenery-chewing that prevailed up until then look foolish. Brando's great leap forward was too far for Oscar though and Bogart won his one and only Oscar, which in itself is an example of the Academy's senility.
1973 - Best Picture
Who won - The Sting
Who should have won - Take your pick. American Graffiti, Last Tango in Paris, Mean Streets, Badlands, Don't Look Now and The Exorcist were all released that year so the Academy definitely had a tough choice to make. One can only assume that they picked a name out of a hat. The wrong name. 1973 marked the start of Oscar's long running hatred of Martin Scorsese by not even nominating Mean Streets.
1979 - Best Picture
Who won - Kramer vs. Kramer
Who should have won - Apocalypse Now. A sentimental family drama winning out over an existential war movie? Do you love the smell of custody battles in the morning?
1980 - Best Picture
Who won - Ordinary People
Who should have won - I haven't even heard of that film so I'll admit it could be the greatest movie ever made. But on the off chance Oscar got it wrong it's worth noting that Empire Strikes Back didn't even get nominated and 1980 was another kick in the balls for Scorsese as Raging Bull got beat out by this apparently excellent movie that no-one can remember. Its tag line is "Some films you watch, others you feel." That's just gay.
1990 - Best Picture/Best Director
Who won - Dances With Wolves
Who should have won - Poor old Marty would have been getting desperate by now. You know when you're losing to Kevin Costner there's some f#cked up sh#t going on. Goodfellas' wonderful, operatic camera work should have at least earned him something but alas the Academy waited another 26 years to finally give him his statue for the vastly inferior and ironically undeserving The Departed.
1993 - Best Supporting Actor
Who won - Tommy Lee Jones for The Fugitive
Who should have won - Sean Penn did some of his best work as the hyper twitchy cokehead lawyer David Kleinfeld in Carlito's Way and in the same year Ralph Fiennes made Amon Goeth into a very human personification of evil in Schindler's List. It's worth pointing out that both actors had stepped outside their comfort zones for these roles and produced textured, subtle performances while Tommy Lee Jones managed to go through The Fugitive using only one expression, steely-eyed resolve, like every other film he's done.
1994 - Best Picture
Who won - Forrest Gump
Who should have won - The obvious choice here would be Pulp Fiction which is definitely one of the most influential movies of the 90s. Some would also make a case for The Shawshank Redemption but the best film of that year is the criminally overlooked Quiz Show which featured yet another masterful performance from Ralph Fiennes that went un-nominated. You just can't beat a feel-good film about a retard.
1995 - Best Picture
Who won - Braveheart
Who should have won - Toy Story is a flawless film. Utterly charming and wonderfully constructed, and remember this was the first fully CGI film and it was done right at the first time of asking. Honourable mention goes to The Usual Suspects for not even getting nominated.
1997 - Best Picture
Who won - Titanic
Who should have won - L.A. Confidential is the best film to come out of Hollywood in decades. The dialogue crackles, the plot is dense but bullet fast, the direction is stylish and evocative and it had one of the best casts in recent memory. Titanic is a leaden mess of corny lines sitting on top of a clichéd plot garnished with some admittedly awesome action sequences. That Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe and even Academy darling Kevin Spacey weren't even nominated while Kate "Come back...Jack" Winslet and ManBoy DiCaprio were is a facepalm of epic proportions.
Honourable mention - Alfred Hitchcock
The tubby one never won a Best Director Oscar and that is retarded enough to invalidate the Oscars entirely. You could have populated this entire list with just his movies.
Honourable mention - Science Fiction in general
Doesn't matter whether you go for surreal and arty like 2001 or you go for populist and entertaining like Star Wars, the voters run a mile at the first sight of a spaceship.
Honourable mention - Stanley Kubrick
Often nominated, Stanley picked up just one Oscar for visual effects for 2001. Maybe it was Kubrick's dislike of Hollywood, maybe it was that his films were too emotionally cold for an Academy that is more sentimental than your grandma but most likely he failed to get more statues because the people who vote for the Oscars are f#cking tw#ts.
User Comments / Add a Comment »
who ever said titanic sucked at the bottom must be a total idiot for saying that.
titanic was one of the best movies ever made and earned lots of money, oscars, nominations.
and yeah i hated the actors but i thought it was very good and how they made it.
Added: 384 days ago by princehex
Though many of your points are valid, I don't think it's entirely fair to, in hindsight, criticize the academy for failing to award movies that turned out to be influential.
Added: 417 days ago by some_dude_12345
Does anyone ehre really believes that the Oscars are rewarding movies???? Do you know who votes??? Oscars reward the best emdia lobbying, and croonism. Full stop.
Added: 417 days ago by Leclem
Plagiarised.
Added: 418 days ago by Live101Proof
Where from?
Added: 417 days ago by Strickly K
Prove it or STFU.
Added: 417 days ago by andopolis
titanic sucked. kate winslet doesnt bother me so much, but we all know that the boat hits and iceberg and sinks. the love story was just plain f#$%ing stupid. l.a. confidential was a far superior film. dances with wolves a great cure for insomnia. great blog.
Added: 419 days ago by robtheslayer
Someone out there hates Brando....
Added: 419 days ago by el_piggy
A very insightful, thought-provoking article.
I absolutely agree with many of your observations particularly Oscar's oversight on the incredible work done by Sean Penn in Carlito's Way. The problem of comparing different eras is that certain aspects of the day contributing to the choices made have a tendency to being anachronistic, forgotten as a result of the passage of time.
For example, "Ordinary People" an overbearingly depressed affair on the effects of suicide on family members was directed by one of Hollywood's most likable, popular actors, Robert Redford, a fact that weighed very heavily in being chosen as Best Picture, as was with Humphrey Bogart as Best Actor.
Added: 419 days ago by whoamI
Great blog!
Added: 419 days ago by Elliebear
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