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Posted by on Apr 28, 2021 in Blog, Movie Reviews | 1 comment

The Oscars 10 Most Outrageous Oversights and Omissions

 

 

Countdown to travesty: What follows are the 10 most outrageous oversights and omissions at the Academy Awards in the category of “Best Picture.”

 

10.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

Today, the timeless holiday favorite is celebrated as one of the best films ever made.  But when it was released, the Frank Capra classic was a disappointment at the box office and even received mixed reviews from critics.  It’s a Wonderful Life did manage to garner five nominations at the 19th Academy Awards — winning just one Oscar in a minor category for the technical breakthrough in simulating snow on the studio set (recall scenes of the snowy streets of Bedford Falls).  The Best Picture Oscar that year instead went to The Best Years of Our Lives, certainly a brave film about American servicemen returning from battle and their difficulty in adjusting to postwar life.  It was a noble gesture to give that film the Academy Award.  Nonetheless, It’s a Wonderful Life was clearly the superior film and proved to have a far greater everlasting legacy.

 

9.

Any film other than Crash (2004)

Crash gets hammered by many critics in retrospect as the worst pick of the Oscars for Best Picture in history, and rightfully so.  While Paul Haggis (Leaving Las Vegas) produced, co-wrote, and directed a marginal movie with a compelling narrative on race relations, the film wasn’t as good as any of the other nominees in this category — including Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, or Munich.  Yet, Crash won.  Would it be too much of a cliche to call this pick a train wreck?

 

8.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Filmed and released at the height of the Cold War and the so-called “Red Scare,” The Day the Earth Stood Still was a landmark cinematic commentary far ahead of its time.  Today, it’s widely regarded as one of the best science-fiction thrillers of all time and was the first Hollywood production to take extraterrestrial exploration and its related philosophical issues seriously (begging the question–are we alone?).  According to those connected to the film, many years later it was revealed the plot was actually a thinly disguised metaphor for Biblical prophesy, a twist on the Second Coming, with the almighty alien endowed with supernatural powers.  Scandalous at the time, the MPAA forced the studio to downplay this potential confusion, and thus the film became connected to the sci-fi genre.  The Day the Earth Stood Still is boosted by excellent performances, witty social commentary, and utter authenticity enhanced by being filmed on the streets of Washington, D.C.  Not to be confused with a forgettable remake 55 years later, the original movie was a reflection of the fears of that time and visionary prediction as to how alien visitors would be treated by earthlings in such a scenario.  It’s hard to say if this was the best film of 1951, which includes several strong contenders, but this film might very well be the one that was most impressive and memorable.

 

7.

Magnolia (1999)

Paul Thomas Anderson’s complex commingling of several twisted stories and their lost souls seeking safe harbor in Magnolia seemed almost too ambitious for the time.  But the casting makes for one of the finest ensembles ever included in one film over the past 25 years (Tom Cruise, Melinda Dillon, Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ricky Jay, William H. Macy, Alfred Molina, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Patton Oswalt and Jason Robards in his final role), marked with standout performances makes this one of Oscar’s worst oversights.  It wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture in 1999, which went instead to a perverse overwrought drama of dysfunction, American Beauty.  Aimee Mann’s original soundtrack also stands as one of the best movie contributions to the story since Simon and Garfunkel penned the music for The Graduate.       

 

6.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

This film’s omission from the Oscars was an appalling oversight.  The Shawshank Redemption happened to be released in a great year for movies (other nominees included Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, Four Weddings and a Funeral, which all lost the Best Picture Oscar — Forest Gump).  While Gump was a well-made, lighthearted movie certainly enjoyable to watch, The Shawshank Redemption was on a completely different level.  It checked every conceivable box needed to win the Academy Award that year.  There’s a brilliant screenplay by Stephen King.  Oscar-worthy performances by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman.  An inspirational story.  Initially, it was a disappointment at the box office due to being about life in prison.  The lack of female characters also hurt the film, no doubt.  There was also some debate about the title of the film being too confusing for audiences.  Today, it stands as the highest-rated film in the IMDB database, a testament to its power and lasting legacy.  Yet, it didn’t win a single Oscar.

 

5.

Do the Right Thing (1989)

Spike Lee’s provocative expose on the modern complexities of race and tribalism in America (gee, sound familiar?) shook us up and made us think.  Perhaps it even shook some people too hard and made people think too much to the point of discomfort.  From opening credits to the closing epigraph from Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, Do The Right Thing is a rare film that hops from one iconic scene to another with no time to catch your breath.  As tensions gradually reach the boiling point on a hot summer’s day, the film grapples with issues that can’t be addressed in two hours nor assuaged with a happy ending.  Instead, it raises critical questions and pushes boundaries without violating the precept that we’re engaging in the art of entertainment.  Do The Right Thing has risen to lofty heights and connected with disparate audiences that were perhaps impossible to imagine back when it was released.  It’s everything the Best Picture winner should be.  However, the real slap in the face is that Oscar that year instead went to Driving Miss Daisy, a film about a subservient Black man doddering over a pompous old White lady.  Spike Lee later noted he took some satisfaction in knowing that his film is shown and taught in film schools, while the actual Oscar winner that year is sometimes cringeworthy to watch.  “Hey, the ref made a bad call,” he said — which was the understatement of the year.

 

4.

The Shining (1980)

Take a guess how many Oscars The Shining won?  Answer–zero.  Take a guess how many Oscar nominations The Shining received?  Answer–zone.  In one of the Academy Awards’ most embarrassing oversights, the famed slow-boiling thriller about a family cooped up in a frozen Colorado resort for the entire winter stands the test of time as one of the greatest horror films ever made.  Yet, director Stanley Kubrick’s classic was panned by critics.  He was even nominated for a Razzie, a monumental insult to Kubrik and his film which would go on to outlive virtually every other film released that year and still garners gasps from audiences.  You’d think this terrific Stephen King adaptation would have picked up an Oscar for something/anything — but it was completely shut out.  Instead, the Best Picture Oscar went to Ordinary People.  Four decades later, The Shining shines.  Ordinary People by comparison seems, well, very ordinary.

 

3. 

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Francis Ford Coppola’s flawed but epic Vietnam War tale based on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness is everything the art of moviemaking and great cinema should be — electrifying, breathtaking, thoughtful, controversial, exhausting, and still triggers conversations and debates several decades later.  This movie nearly bankrupted the famed director coming off a string of successes during the 1970s.  It caused star Martin Sheen to have a heart attack.  Filming on location in the Philippines was chaotic and took three years to complete.  Then, in the middle of production, Marlon Brando went on strike and insisted on being paid an extra million dollars because everything had gone way over time and over budget.  Coppola later confessed, “it wasn’t just a film about Vietnam — my experience making this movie was Vietnam.”  That artistic vision and mastery of craft deserved recognition.  It should have been honored.  But it overwhelmingly was rebuked at the Oscars.  Instead, the 1979 Best Picture award went to the tedious drivel known as Kramer vs. Kramer, an unimaginative legal soap opera buried in banality, now mercifully erased from memory.  “The horror…the horror.”

 

2.

Planet of the Apes (1968)

It’s difficult to fathom just how shocking Planet of the Apes was when it debuted on movie screens back in 1968, known as one of the most tumultuous periods in American history.  Then at the height of the space program and race to the moon, astronauts land on a mysterious planet run by apes. and then try to make sense of the madness where humans are treated as slaves and zoo animals.  Astonishingly smart, beautifully shot, well-acted, realistic, with a breakthrough soundtrack using unconventional musical sequences, Planet of the Apes finally delivers the ultimate payoff — a chilling final scene and surprise revelation that’s a bold political statement for the times.  It’s a film of great imagination and a harbinger of things to come from Hollywood that would push technical boundaries and raise audience expectations.  Yet incredibly, Planet of the Apes wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture in 1968, which went to an utterly forgettable throwback musical, Oliver!  Planet of the Apes spawned eight sequels (to date) and two television series and is still talked about today as a movie marvel.  It’s a travesty this mind-blowing film didn’t win, let alone get nominated for Best Picture.

 

1.

The Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane, The Caine Mutiny, Judgement at Nuremberg, To Kill a Mockingbird, Doctor Zhivago, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Network, Star Wars, Field of Deams, The Hours, The Social Network (and many others) — are all great films that likely would have won any other year, but had the misfortune of competing against other great films in the same year. 

In some years, several great films get released.  For instance, 1939 is widely regarded as the most spectacular year in movie history.  Consider this fact: The “losers” in the Best Picture category that year were as follows — Dark Victory, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Love Affair, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights.  So, why didn’t any of these movies win the Oscar?  Because Gone With the Wind was also released in 1939 and steamrolled every major category.  Most movie fans would probably agree The Wizard of Oz is a much better film than The English Patient or Out of Africa.  Unfortunately, those movies won Best Picture Oscars against pitifully weak fields.  Some years one film can dominate the awards, yet if that film had been made a year later, it wouldn’t be as regarded.  The lesson here is that luck plays a role in winning an Oscar.  Timing can be just as important as the quality of a film when winning (or losing) the Academy Award for Best Picture.

1 Comment

  1. Wonderful Life is a fine film, but not that great. The only reason it became a classic is that went out of copyright early, and so TV stations overplayed it until it became stuck in our heads.

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