The Oscars in Review

Originally Posted 2/26/08:

The Oscars
Movies released this year that I think are better than No Country for Old Men (in rough order): The Lives of Others (doesn’t count, I know), Into the Wild, Juno, There Will Be Blood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, 3:10 to Yuma. Michael Clayton’s extremely close.

Other movies I’ll probably think are better once I see them: The Savages, Ratatouille, I’m Not There.

Others there’s a decent chance I’ll think are better: Eastern Promises, In the Valley of Ellah, Sweeney Todd, Once, American Gangster,

Other’s there’s a not insignificant chance I’ll think are better: Away from Her, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, The Darjeeling Limited, La Vie en Rose, No End in Sight, Taxi to the Dark Side…anyway, you get the point. I spent waaay too much time coming up with all that.

Ugh. I don’t know why I even bother. Everything rational in my head says I should just ignore the Oscars, and yet, I still care, for some ridiculous reason. I mean, honestly, in what parallel universe was Javier Bardem better than Tom Wilkinson or Hal Holbrook? Or even Tommy Lee Jones in the same goddamned movie? How in God’s name did Into the Wild get only a single significant nomination? Particularly egregious was Atonement’s adapted screenplay nod over Into the Wild. Atonement’s adapted screenplay was mediocre at best; Into the Wild was wonderfully written. Also, how was The Diving Bell not even nominated for foreign language film? Was their some technicality I’m missing? Ugh.

In the end, this certainly isn’t a Forrest Gump over Shawshank/Pulp Fiction or Rocky over Network*/Taxi Driver** situation because I don’t really think there was a truly great movie released this year (though a lot of people seem to think Oil! was). At least the Academy hasn’t permanently sullied their reputation any further with this one.

*I just looked up 1976 on the Oscars website, and Network won Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, was nominated for Best Director and Best Supporting Actor, AND had TWO nominations for Best Actor, including the winner, Peter Finch for Howard Beale (I thought William Holden was better, but whatever, the Academy loves those huge performances). Has that ever even happened before or after?

What I find so remarkable about this is that the Academy, by their own logic, clearly thought Network was a better movie than Rocky. I can understand, say purely hypothetically, giving an inferior movie awards for supporting actor, director, adapted screenplay and picture. That makes sense to me. They may disagree with me, but at least their opinion’s consistent. But how can you give practically every significant award to one movie, nominate it for the other two—only one of which Rocky won (admittedly the most important one, directing)—and then not give it Best Picture? That’s just absolutely baffling to me.

**You know, I’m looking at the movies that beat Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, and while probably at least one of Scorsese's films deserved to win, it doesn’t seem like there were any obvious years where it had to win. (For the purposes of this, I’m going to treat Network as the winner of 1976—both movies probably got jobbed by Rocky, but based on the above it seems clear the Academy preferred Network to Taxi Driver anyway). I haven’t seen most of the movies involved, but just based on general opinion, Network is at least comparable to Taxi Driver, Ordinary People is at least comparable to Raging Bull if significantly less important, and Dances with Wolves is in the same league as Goodfellas. It seems like Goodfellas is the one that really should have won, but like I said, it doesn’t seem that Scorsese got robbed nearly as much as people will lead you to believe, at least concerning Best Pictures. Maybe he did in the directing category. Anyway, I’ll see more of the movies and get back to you. I still wish one of them had one though, so we could have avoided the lifetime achievement award that was The Departed.

You know, I’m noticing that there’s something like the Derek Jeter Effect going on with me right now, where people irrationally overrate something, and the response to that overrating is to underrate it. (i.e. Derek Jeter is a Hall of Fame offensive baseball player who plays bad defense at shortstop but isn’t anywhere near what New Yorkers or baseball purists think he is, which has led a lot of more statistically inclined baseball observers to hate him irrationally and think that he sucks, which simply isn't true.) I now find myself hating No Country, even though I know that, for what it was, it was actually pretty good and wonderfully directed. That’s actually happened in regard to The Departed too (see snide remark above), even though that wasn’t actually a bad movie, just a B/B+, which shouldn’t put you in the Best Picture discussion. So, No Country lovers (if you’re out there), try to forgive me.

Maybe Later
I was gonna do Saving Private Ryan (absolutely loved it—A+) and Thirteen (thought it was surprisingly good, if a little caught between being a cautionary tale and a real movie—B+), but I don’t feel like it. Maybe later this week.