*** Official 2003 Academy Awards Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Haggai]

The fact that Keaton already got an Oscar earlier in her career (Annie Hall) surely makes an already unlikely upset here even less likely.

 

[Chris Atkins]

Another disappointment: too bad OPEN RANGE, THE LAST SAMURAI, or HULK couldn't nab a cinematography nom. I really enjoyed the look of all three films.

 

[Brian W.]

Never mind, I don't have to search through all those. I forgot www.littlegoldenguy.com has a searchable database. It is THE best Oscar database on the Internet, so good I was able to instantly search, through drop-down menus, for "Tell me which Best Picture nominees have no nominations for any acting 1927-2002." Pretty snazzy, huh? Check out the site.

And the answer is: 1969 was the last time that the majority of the Best Picture nominees (3/5) had NO acting noms -- Hello Dolly, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Z. It also happened in 1962 (The Longest Day, The Music Man, Mutiny on the Bounty). But those are the only times since the BP noms were limited to five in 1944 that this has happened, though there have been a few more times when two of the BP noms had no acting nominees.

 

[BrianB]

 

[Craig S]

CoG was eligible for FF last year, but a film must be put forward by its home country to be considered. Each country gets only one entry, and Brazil chose another film last year. However, that snub is what made CoG eligible for all other Oscars this year.

 

[Craig S]

Dave Poland has an excellent commentary on the nominations up at MCN. I love what he has to say here:
For those who don't follow Poland, his favorite film was In America.

 

[Randy Korstick]

Glad to see:
Lord of the Rings 11 nominations

Miramax and The Matrix get snubbed.

Sad to see:
No Sean Astin Supporting Actor

Biggest Surprise:
Johnny Depp (Don't understand this one just like I couldn't understand Depp in this movie without the subtitles and when I did turn them on his character didn't make a whole lot of sense). This makes Sean Astin lack of a nomination all the more puzzling.

 

[Craig S]

My only real disappointment is also Astin, although it's a minor one, as I always thought it was a longshot for him anyway. I know I've said it about a million times, but the Supporting Actor category was VERY crowded this year. Also passed over were one-time contenders Albert Finney, Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Bettany, Chris Cooper, William H. Macy, & Ian McKellan. Astin is in good company.

Minor disappointment about Lesnie, but it's tempered by the fact that he does have an Oscar for FotR. I suspect that factored into the final list. Same goes for the LotR sound editing team.

Other than that, there were some very pleasant surprises. Seth says it time & time again, but the Academy usually does a pretty good job of this, and this year I think they did especially well.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Man, I overslept the announcement.

CITY OF GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!
(in my best soccer announcing voice)

Editing AND Direction plus writing and cinematography. Not only did it get the love but they picked the right categories to show it in as well.

I cannot begin to explain how thrilled I am. And to think how many people doubt the integrity of the awards. They may miss things, but let's be honest CoG wasn't exactly being backed big time this season. We all had it written off.

Frankly, sorry Peter Jackson, but Fernando Meirelles was the best director last year. Seriously. At times it was like Eisenstein reborn, and at other times Scorsese at his best. I can't think of higher praise than that.

However, due to the Eisenstien approach, I honestly think they WILL give it the Best Editing Oscar. It certainly deserves it.

Likely Jackson will win and I understand why fully. The task was enormous (though his team was also bigger to meet that goal) and it does feel like payoff for the work on all 3 is deserved too.

The CoG script is also really good, so maybe it could win there.

Anyway, who cares. The bottom like is the Academy just made a big name for a very small film. Now it will be talked about on prime time TV with all the other critically praised work from last year.

City of God eligibility explanation
Actually this is incorrect. Here is how it went and why it resulted in this "split".

CoG WAS presented by Brazil (Craig is confusing Mexico's choice to use Crime of the Father instead of Y Tu Mama last year).

However, with so many films to be seen what happens is this. You have different nomination groups and each is responsible for about 1/3 of the films to keep viewings to a realistic level. From that they RATE the films THEY SAW, without seeing the others necessarily (by that point almost certainly they would not have seen many, if any of the submitted films outside their grouping).

So you have Group A films rated by different people than Group B or C. If Group A is being kind then their choices can get picked. Now it's not like these people don't understand this and try to make reasonable choices, and it is still a group of people choosing, not just 2-3 people with agendas.

The point is that a film can slip through the cracks. And in the case of CoG it appears that some of the FF nomination voters found the film too violent. It might also have been that a couple of the other nominees were in the same group which helped take voting attention away from CoG.

Anyway, it's very difficult to be noticed enough as a FF to get a nomination, even after you made it through your own home countries SINGLE selection process.

So CoG just didn't get picked by the FF committee even though Brazil DID submit it.

As for the year thing, well the rules make perfect sense to me. It's a foreign film, so it goes by when people in the home country would have seen the film. The point of the FF category is to recognize film achievements from around the world THAT YEAR, the year they came out in their home country.

CoG was held back to get a JAN release on the assumption that it would have this FF nomination and could help in advertising the film with limited funds. Rather than release it before this in DEC, have no one notice it, then have it fade away even before noms came out. Why bother when you would have all the free hype that would come from the Oscar nomination....that never came. Whoops.
(at least IIRC this was my understanding of what happened)

So they did put it out once they missed the cut which made it an Academy rules 2003 film for all the other categories, but at the worst time of the year to make a run for the next season. Likely had they known that the film wasn't going to get a FF nomination but could get others, they would have held it till DEC this year instead.

And when you think about it, a DEC release last year would have put it up against Talk to Her AND Y Tu Mama Tambien. Pretty stiff competition.


So nothing stupid about the process, just some tough choices to be made by FF distributors.



Second of all, I have been saying that Depp deserved it but I never, ever would have expected the Oscars to really nominate him. Another outstanding choice. His acting choices and efforts probably made Pirates 3 times the film it might have been otherwise. Really just incredible.

Man, I still need to read the rest of the nomination list.

 

[ZacharyTait]

I too overslept and missed the nominations announcement.

This is to anyone who watched them. Was there any big reactions from the audience over any nominations or lack of nominations?

 

[Mark_vdH]

Glad to see another Dutch nominee (Twin Sisters).
Haven't seen it yet though... :b

BTW: Our last foreign language Oscar winner (1997 - Character), like City Of God, was not chosen to be sent to the Oscars either. Fortunately, the director of the movie that was chosen (All Stars) decided that Character would have a much better chance.

EDIT: I see that I was incorrect abot City Of God. Thanks for clearing that up, Seth.

 

[Holadem]

Well, look at it this way: Who would you have replaced Depp with? Ahaaaaa...

--
H

 

[Eman_Ramos]

I see that "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" from A Mighty Wind has been nominated for Best Song.

And it better WIN!

Other notes:

- I'm sorry, Seabiscuit? Best Picture? While definitely a great visual movie, I had placing just outside being nominated for BP. It has a good chance for Cinematography.

- And go, Keisha Castle-Hughes! So glad she got in.

- LOTR runs away with this one, though...

 

[Brandon Conway]

I am SOOOOOOOOO disappointed that Open Range didn't get a nomination in either sound catagory. Talk about a horrible snub. It seems to me the Academy can never get the sound catagory nominees right.

 

[Jay E]

I've always disliked the nominating procedure for Best Foreign film. No country having more than one nomination is absurd and the main reason why I feel it should be changed. It should be the 5 best foreign films period.

 

[Seth Paxton]

I agree that there needs to be a way for the 2nd or 3rd best film from a country to get through.

HOWEVER, this ignores 2 critical issues.

1) That's a LOT of films to screen. The FF nomination process is one of the FEW in which people actually watch ALL the contenders, at least in their grouping which comes out to 17-19 films alone. If you triple that it becomes undoable.

2) Diversity. The point is to celebrate films from AROUND THE WORLD. A "good film" from Spain may mean far different things than a good film from Afghanastan. It would defeat a lot of the purpose of the award to limit it to a few regions or countries.

Plus, while WE might think a country picked the "wrong" film to submit, we must remember that it is representative of THAT COUNTRY'S CULTURE, the choice they make I mean. That film represents TO THEM what great filmmaking is TO THEM. Or perhaps it shows how that country feels about being commended, maybe Almodovar stops getting submitted because Spain feels (for good reason) that he can compete with American films straight up and does not need the FF nomination to be recognized.

That choice tells us about Spain's film culture as much as the film they do submit does.

So I support the idea of picking 5 films from different countries. In the end it is the process of our chosing the Best Film from a foreign culture and from a group of foreign culture submissions each with their own set of standards that makes the least sense.


Would it really be right for US to go pick the submissions for them? And would it really be right for one country to overshadow the recognition a film from a different culture might receive?

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Depp is the biggest surprise. I love his performance, but I wasn't sure if it was an "Academy" performance.

When I get the opportunity, I'd like to check out Whale Rider and City of God.

If I'm glad about one thing, I was wrong about Cold Mountain being sure for an Oscar nom in Best Picture.

 

[Law]

I'm a little dissapointed that 'Man of the Hour' from Big Fish didn't get nominated for best song. I'm not usually one to sit through the credits but as soon as the opening chords of that song were played, I sat back down in my seat. Really a great song from a great movie.

 

[Chris Farmer]

As for the Matrix split, there have been two major reasons speculated for it. The first is the obvious backlash that occurred, the other was Warner's inexplicable decision to send both movie for noms instead of picking one, so you have a vote split. Did people go for Reloaded's Burly Brawl, and Car Chase, or Revolutions' Super Burly Brawl and attack on Zion? Combine the vote split with a palpable backlash against the Matrix franchise, and out go the noms.

 

[Jay E]

That's a real shame (and IMO stupid). I just wish it was also nominated for Best Picture, although I'm very happy it got 4 other nominations.