Comments on: Academy Awards Goes To 10, Best Picture Nominees That Is

By: chris

chris — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:02:05 +0000

Mystic River was snubbed the year Return of The King won imo. So the box office hit shouldnt have won that time around

By: Schmoker

Schmoker — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:22:33 +0000

Star Trek? I wouldn’t even nominate it for best Star Trek movie!

Sorry, but as long as I am expressing a personal opinion, my two biggest Oscar snubs both come from the Best Actor category. First they ignored Steve Martin in All of Me, then blew off Jeff Goldblum for The Fly. That was when I shut down on the Academy Awards.

Not that I don’t watch them, but that’s just to feed my inner gay man. The awards themselves are generally bogus.

By: Boris

Boris — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:28:09 +0000

Richard Steven Hack says:

“The Oscars are a joke. A bunch of well-fed, well-paid arty types get to nominate and choose, to prove what connoisseurs of art they are. The rest of us suffer.”

Who is this “us,” and how does We suffer?

By: Richard Steven Hack

Richard Steven Hack — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:14:27 +0000

The joke is how few American actresses get nominated. I remember a few years ago, there were FOUR British actresses and ONE American actress. One of the Brits, i think it was Helena Bonham-Carter, made the surprisingly honest comment, “We were nominated for our accents.”

But the American actress WON! Bwahahahahahah!!!

Then there was Judi Dench getting a nomination for a seven-minute walk-on as Queen Elizabeth – a role she had been nominated for in ANOTHER movie THE YEAR BEFORE! It doesn’t get more ridiculous.

The Oscars are a joke. A bunch of well-fed, well-paid arty types get to nominate and choose, to prove what connoisseurs of art they are. The rest of us suffer.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:30:36 +0000

Good, make a long boring show even longer and more boring.

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:29:52 +0000

Chicago isn’t really a comedy although it does have lighter moments, even Shakespeare in Love I would class it more as a dramedy than a full out comedy.

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:27:33 +0000

Wouldn’t Chicago be considered a comedy? I mean, musicals and comedies are always grouped together.

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:17:55 +0000

If you want to win an Oscar, you’ve got to have to tick certain criterias:
1. Holocaust
2. War
3. Disability or Terminal Illness
4. Sexuality
5. Produced by the Weinsteins
6. Epic
7. Racism
8. Biopic

Comedy tends to get shunned by the Academy, I believe Shakespeare in Love was the last comedy to win Best Picture.

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:28:29 +0000

Mumbo, The Dark Knight is #2 domestic and #4 worldwide.

By: Mumbo

Mumbo — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:33:28 +0000

Also interesting point, that the top two highest-grossing movies of all time, Titanic and Return of the King, both won Best Picture.

The Dark Knight is third all-time, but no comic book movies allowed apparently.

By: Mumbo

Mumbo — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:27:58 +0000

Hey, Star Trek has a shot at a Best Picture nom!

Wait, it’s not about World War II, the Holocaust, racism, or a terminal illness…never mind.

By: TomSD

TomSD — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:31:45 +0000

Too late for Wall-E, The Dark Knight and The Wrestler.

By: Pad

Pad — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:31:17 +0000

Any remaining credibility the Oscar has is going out the window with this……………..wait they gave Titanic and Crash wins ok the credibility was already gone.

By: Julia

Julia — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:43:09 +0000

Other than Gladiator and LOTR:ROFK.

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:40:46 +0000

Julia, others, I was indeed mixed up, ~~Titanic was the last *win* for a commercial blockbuster.~~

Edit: Or not.

By: huddy80

huddy80 — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:36:29 +0000

The Academy Awards show is already 3 and a half hours long, so in my estimation with the five additional movies in the Best Picture category, the show should now run approximately 6 hours 47 minutes.

By: Corey3rd

Corey3rd — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:16:10 +0000

Are you saying that Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was a small grossing art film? it made $377 Million at the US box office.

By: Julia

Julia — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:11:55 +0000

I think it’s more recent than Titanic, Bill. Saving Private Ryan (#1 BO for the year) was nominated in 1998, The Sixth Sense (#2 BO for the year) was nominated in 1999, Gladiator (#4) was nominated and won in 2000, LOTR:FOTR (#2) in 2001, LOTR:TT (#2) in 2002, LOTR:ROTK (#1) was nominated and won in 2003, etc. I agree that the past few years there have not been any big blockbuster hits in the BP race, but Titanic was not the last one.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:07:51 +0000

Bill –

The Departed in ’06 wasn’t really a flop, and Return of The King in ’03 was clearly not one either.

Though I agree with you that the couple popular films that get in the extended list are intended to do so for viewership, not for serious consideration.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:03:20 +0000

Yeah, I see the list of nominees now expanding to 5 serious films that have any real* chance of winning, 2 additional runner-up serious films (that have no chance of winning, a Woody Allen slot, and then two “popular” entries. Last year it would be films like Dark Knight & Iron Man, this year it would be Up.

*Of course, no guarantee things work out like the Academy plans. Nearly every year it seems there is some actor/actress shocker (think Marisa Tomei), and it wouldn’t surprise me if one of those throwaway popular pics wins some year. Probably not in the short term though – the change is too new for Up to win, and Pixar’s lineup is relatively weak in the next couple years (Sequels to Cars & Toy Story).

By: ABCFanatic

ABCFanatic — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:54:03 +0000

And the Nominees are:
1. Drag Me to Hell
2. Star Trek
3. Up
4. Amelia
5. Julie & Julia
6. Avatar
7. The Princess and the Frog
8. Nine
9. The Lovely Bones
10. New York, I Love You

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:52:45 +0000

I’m not sure if there’s anything in particular you can point to as a tipping point, but since Titanic it seems that commercial success has disqualified a movie from Best Picture consideration. After doubling the number of nominees, it probably won’t disqualify one from being nominated, but still probably winning.

By: Schmoker

Schmoker — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:46:19 +0000

Right, and that reason is because it was so embarrassing that the best pictures in any given year were not getting nominated. It was so ridiculous that neither Toy Story nor The Lion King received a nomination that they Academy, to their credit, realized they had to do something. They were looking ridiculous, and would have even looked more insane if pics such as Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Wall-E had been snubbed entirely due to a lack of a category.

Still, Best Picture is Best Picture, and there is no doubt that Wall-E was one of the five best pictures of 2008. It’s crazy that it could not get nominated. Just goes to show that the majority of voters don’t actually like movies very much.

By: cool

cool — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:38:02 +0000

I don’t think so, it’s the same history every year with a Pixar movie.

By: Julia

Julia — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:34:43 +0000

Up will still end up in BP if there are 10, Cool

By: cool

cool — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:34:02 +0000

^They have a ‘Best Animated Picture’ category for a reason

By: Pad

Pad — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:14:32 +0000

The Pixar loonies will finally get their nomination, no way Up gets left out now. The Lovely Bone’s is a lock

By: thedemonhog

thedemonhog — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:12:50 +0000

Blegh!

By: Schmoker

Schmoker — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:12:30 +0000

This is just so more films can trumpet the nomination in advertising. Not that the awards were not already and always a promotional tool more than anything else, but this watering down of the brand will likely not prove useful at all in the long run. Hell, maybe not even the short run. I can only imagine some of the shitty films that will get noms now. Crap already gets nominated (and wins), so now the crap may end up dominating. For every one great film that would have been overlooked that slides in, four pieces of junk are now going to make the cut.

And I bet they still don’t nominte UP or any other animated film.

Ahh, the dumbing down of America. It never stops.

By: America47000

America47000 — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:11:15 +0000

too little too late for The Dark Knight

By: dollhouse sucks

dollhouse sucks — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:49:02 +0000

i’m sure this has nothing to do with sagging ratings