imported_Bob Banka

Forget The Oscars

In conversations with some freinds, as well as posts on forums on the Net, I'm occasionally suprised by how much faith folks put into the Academy Awards - both winners and nominations.

Yes, it's a lot of fun to watch the ceremony every year and see all the actors, directors and so on under one roof and sharing the stage, but the meaning of the awards themselves is very little with respect to how good a film was when compared to others nominated, or how good a performance was when compared to others nominated. Quite often, those who win are those who played the right kind of role in the right kind of movie at the right time of the year - and in a film with a theme that suits the movie industry's desired image at the time.

Of course, Adrien Brody was going to take the Oscar over Daniel Day-Lewis last year. No shock. True, both performances were very good, but when one compares the effort required to play the characters, and be beievable on screen, Day-Lewis clearly had the more challenging role. It's not really a question of which actor was most believable - they both were. For me, it's a question of who had the most difficult part to play. Day-Lewis - hands down.

I'm not trying to imply that the awards always go to less deserving performances, but at least as often as the do - they do not.

Other examples:

Robert DeNiro lost to Peter Finch for Best Actor in 1976. His Travis Bickle was not the type of character one honors with Oscars. Finch's nomination was posthumous. Who doubted he would get the Oscar instead. Fine work in NETWORK to be sure - but DeNiro's Travis clearly was the more difficult and brilliant performance.

Also on 1976 - Best Picture went to ROCKY. Now that's the type of feature the Oscars love to had the big prize to. ROCKY beat out TAXI DRIVER, as well as ALL THE PRESISENTS MEN, NETWORK and BOUND FOR GLORY. And best director went to John Avildsen for ROCKY. Martin Scorsese didn't even rate a nomination for TAXI DRIVER!

Martin Scorsese & Alfred Hitchcock never won Oscars, yet John Avildsen did! So did... excuse me - Kim Basinger. Oh my... and she won over Julianne Moore's stupendous work in BOOGIE NIGHTS.

Al Pacino was never "honored" with an Oscar for his work in the first two GODFATHER films. He lost to Joel Grey in CABARET, and Art Carney in HARRY AND TONTO. Instead he finally got a statue for SCENT OF A WOMAN - of course he did, he played a blind man! He just HAD to get the Oscar that year.

And Paul Newman - a great actor virtually incapable of a poor performance was passed over for his fine work in THE VERDICT, and then almost as an apology, he got the Oscar for his work in THE COLOR OF MONEY - one of his weakest perfomances to date, IMHO.

Excellent work was done by Russell Crowe in THE INSIDER, ROMPER STOMPER, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL and A BEAUTIFUL MIND. But did he get an Oscar for this work? Well, of course not. Instead he got "honored" for his comparitively simple work in GLADIATOR. Ugh!


The list goes on and on...

Ultimately all the Oscars do is up the asking prices for actors and directors when they begin signing contracts for new films after the night of the ceremony. Oh sure, they also - sometimes - bring people out to see a few movies they may have missed prior to the awards ceremony. That's it.

BB

Adam_ME

I'm not gonna argue that 90% of the time, the Academy seems to give the award to the wrong nominee. But I have to defend some of the aforementioned winners.

First of all, Kim Basinger is a terrible actress. I've never thought otherwise. But I had absolutely no problem with her winning Best Supporting Actress for L.A. Confidential. It was a great performance(Curtis Hanson is the only director capable of getting one out of her), and she brought a lot of sympathy to her character. There were of course other reasons she won. She was the only actor nominated from that cast, so it was the Academy's way of rewarding all of them for their brilliant work. And with regards to Julianne Moore, she's almost never been bad in a movie so I think the voters took her greatness for granted in Boogie Nights, whereas Basinger had always been so bad and in so many crappy movies that her work in L.A. Confidential was a revelation. Plus, who doesn't love a comeback story(albeit a shortlived one)?

Adrien Brody is another instance where I was pleasantly surprised to see an actor rewarded for an amazing performance. I disagree that Daniel Day-Lewis had the more challenging role. Brody not only did a great acting job in The Pianist, but his physical transformation is often overlooked. Yes, many actors have done this before(Tom Hanks in Cast Away being the most recent example), but that doesn't make it any easier.

And speaking of Tom Hanks and Cast Away, I'm with you on Russell Crowe's win for Gladiator being a farce. It was considered a makeup Oscar for the year before, but here's what I don't get. NOBODY was hyping the guy up for his work in The Insider when he was nominated. Everyone was talking about either Kevin Spacey or Denzel Washington(who also got a makeup Oscar of sorts for Training Day). So where did all this sympathy for Crowe being "snubbed" come from? Maybe it was just the Oscar momentum of Gladiator(which never should've won Best Picture, BTW) that carried him to victory.

But this brings up an interesting dilemma. You mention people like Al Pacino being rewarded with "lifetime achievement Oscars" for overrated work in Scent of a Woman, but then you complain about Martin Scorcese and Alfred Hitchcock never having won the trophy. Which is a worse scenario as a fan of an actor or writer or director? Seeing them go through their entire career without ever winning an Academy Award? Or seeing them win a sympathy Oscar for a film widely considered one of their weaker efforts?

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Blu

I haven't been a fan of the Oscars in quite a while.
The real water mark of how good a movie is reflects in the box office numbers.
Watch next time when Peter Jackson is snubbed for the amazing LOTR achievement but as far as box office is concerned it is a super movie that few others will achieve when completed.

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Mike Broadman

Blu, is box office really your benchmark for film "greatness?" Does that mean that Titanic, Spiderman and Star Wars are the greatest films of all time and of higher quality than the aforementioned Taxi Driver?

I'm sure there are many that would say yes to that example, and that's fine- I'm not knocking those films (at least not in this thread). But I think all of us can come up with dozens of examples of films that did poorly in the box office and were later considered to be masterpieces; and vice versa.

Heck, the other day I read that Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is the "#1 Movie in America." I highly doubt it's a "great" film.


But Oscars also don't mean squat in this regard, and I would only be repeating most of what Bob said if I went into detail.

There is not single measure for the quality of a film, be it $$ or little golden statue. Sometimes, it takes time, contemplation, and reflection for a film to be absorbed by the populace and be appreciated or forgotten. The funny thing is- there is nothing wrong with that. Why are we so eager to file and rank everything? Just take a film or any piece of art for what it is on its own merit. Frankly, one of the main reasons I hate the Oscars is not that they award the wrong people, it's that they even turn it into a competition in the first place.

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imported_Bob Banka

Adam,

I don't think for a minute that Scorsese or Hitchcock should have gotten some type of trinket-like lifetime acheivment Oscar. No Way! They should've been Oscars for their films when they were released - deserving features. For example, Scorsese's GOODFELLAS, RAGING BULL or TAXI DRIVER. Hitchcock's VERTIGO is a deserving feature. But forget "lifetime" awards. I was pleased GANGS OF NEW YORK didn't win Scorsese an Oscar. He's done much better, more deserving work, and hopefully he'll be doing more.

With Pacino's SCENT OF A WOMAN, all I'm saying is he's done much better work than the material he did to finally get his statue. Of particular note, even better than his work in THE GODFATHER films, was his performance in DOG DAY AFTERNOON.

All of what you say about the reasoning behind Basinger's award I agree with in total, and again it only points out where I'm heading with all of this. The award was given out for too many reasons other than she DESERVED it most that year. The award was not given, in my opinion, to the actor most deserving - Moore.

Brody was excellent in the pianist. But remember - it takes no acting talent to loose or gain weight. Only a shift in diet and will power. People, other than actors, do this all the time. The ability to do this should have little to do with whether one does or does not get an award - Oscar or any other. I just do not think that as much of a character had to built from the ground up in the case of Brody's role as had to be done by Day-Lewis. Once again though, there were the political issues involved here. Brody was playing a sympathetic character in a Holocaust film, directed by an individual who had family perish in a concentration camp. On the other hand, Day-Lewis has already won an Oscar, and he played a dispicable character in GANGS OF NEW YORK. There was no way he was going to get the Oscar, no matter how deserving he was.

BB

imported_Bob Banka

Blu,

I don't agree at all that box office is the bottom line, all determining factor of what is and is not Oscar-worthy. A good deal of films - trite and redioculous, do amazingly well at the box office, but deserve winning an Oscar no more than Crowe deserved winning for his work in GLADIATOR.

The awards should be based, honestly, on the talent involved at making the films or appearing in the films.

True this is a very difficult thing to measure and compare, and therefore - perhaps the awards are not appropriate at all (many nominees, winners and losers, believe this to be the case). But if you're going to have them at all, they should be based on merit only - not poilitics and popularity.

The People's Choice Awards already exist for giving out statues for what's most popular - and they certainly have little to do with talent exhibited in a performance.

And indeed, Peter Jackson has been passed over for his work. On the other hand, it's quite likely, considering how the Academy Awards usually run, that he'll get his Best Director statue after the series has been completed.

BB

Blu

I couldn't agree more, which is why the Oscars are almost invalid with their selections.
Titanic was a marvel of technical filmmaking despite its weak story. It took tons of talented people to pull off this feat of modern filmmaking.

Now a movie that topped Titanic in those terms and in that context was Pearl Harbor. It certainly wasn't Oscar material at all and was dragged down by the love storyline as well. But it was a technical marvel of epic proportions.
Pearl Harbor only received 3 nominations, 2 for sound and 1 for visual effects. Now if it was "talent involved at making the films" it would have garnered much more inspite of the story.

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Guy_K

The problem is we are looking at these awards out of context. Many years ago, these films that we say deserved the oscar probably weren't considered the masterpieces that we consider them to be today. It's easy to say "Citizen Kane deserved best picture 60 years ago," but if we were living 60 years ago, we too probably wouldn't vote it best picture. A lot of films don't gain their masterpiece status instantly.

imported_Bob Banka

Blu,

Pearl Harbor DID win an Academy Award for Best Effects Sound Effects Editing. It was nominated for Best Sound and Visual Effects as well, but did not win.

Titanic won for Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Sound Effects, Visual Effects, and Film Editing - as well as Best Picture, Director and Score. In the case of this film, I think the efforts of the filmmakers truly WERE honored (...and rightly so). TITANIC film did very well (...to say the least) at the box office as well. It's safe to say however, that TITANIC is the exception - and not the rule. In this case, an extremely popular movie was also a very well-crafted, well-directed film (...if not so well acted) feature.

BB

Rob Bartlett

Bob, you say that Lewis' work was more challenging then Brody's, yet isn't it more challenging for an actor to make what's essentially a period Death Wish film more resonant then a connect the numbers meaty role of an insane man?

In any case, it doesn't bother me, because even though Gladiator is overrated, Crowe did carry the film like few leading men have carried blockbuster films before or since. In fact, despite the fact I think The Insider was a better movie, Crowe's better performance was in the former.

Yes, he did a better acting job in A Beautiful Mind , but it doesn't matter because the entire movie itself was a magnet for make-up Oscars; Jennifer Connelly in Requiem for a Dream , Ron Howard's long career as a workhorse and Akiva Goldsman for, oh wait, he's never written anything good before, during or since.

Come to think of it, the fact that Goldsman has an Oscar to begin with, let alone for making a movie that is considerably less interesting then it's biographical source material is an affront far greater then merely taking past talents for granted. They bestowed someone who is inarguably a hack with their highest "honor". Someone who kills franchises like ants. Someone who is literally outclassed by writers of Saturday Morning cartoons.

Your anger over Crowe not winning for A Beautiful Mind shouldn't owe anything to Gladiator , but to the reaility that he brought the movie to the Academy's attention, and seeing shit from them for his troubles. Probably in part to his manhandling activities to the BAFTAS, when a year a later we see Roman Polanski and Eminemn, consumate bad behavers, get Oscar Gold.

I can tolerate the Academy "getting it wrong", as I see many people, for instance here, "get it wrong", when espousing favourites and handing out praise. However I cannot stand cross-purposes and hypocritical cock-blocking. Actually, because of A Beautiful Mind , Gladiator is no longer the weakest films starring Russel Crowe to win a best picture Academy Award.


Besides, it was pretty much up between Hanks and Crowe that year anyways.

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Tino

These kind of threads always amuse me. I wonder if people that complain about the Oscars would change their tune if all of their choices won?

My point is that it is all subjective and should be viewed as such. You say to-may-to and I say to-mah-to.

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