When Boyhood was just a glint in Rick's eye...A GAME ABOUT 2002 (1 Viewer)

So, just for fun let's go back to 2002 and take a look at what was going on at the movies...


Here are the films from 2002 that were nominated for Best Picture:


Gangs of New York

The Hours

Chicago

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

The Pianist


And the winner is...


CHICAGO


Did you think Chicago was the Best Picture on that list?


What would you have picked from that list?


How about Best Actor?


Nicolas Cage – Adaptation

Michael Caine – The Quiet American

Jack Nicholson – About Schmidt

Adrien Brody – The Pianist

Daniel Day-Lewis – Gangs of New York


And the winner is...


ADRIEN BRODY


Who would your choice for Best Actor have been from that list?


Best Actress?


Salma Hayek – Frida

Nicole Kidman – The Hours

Diane Lane – Unfaithful

Julianne Moore – Far from Heaven

Renée Zellweger – Chicago


And the winner is...


Julianne Moore...oh no wait, that was this year...and the winner is...


NICOLE KIDMAN


What do you think would you go with Nicole over the others on that list?


Let's do Best Director:


Pedro Almodóvar – Talk to Her

Stephen Daldry – The Hours

Rob Marshall – Chicago

Roman Polanski – The Pianist

Martin Scorsese – Gangs of New York


And the winner is...


ROMAN POLANSKI


Exiled Polanski gets his Oscar but do you agree with the pick? Is the award really for The Pianist or his body of work? Who would you take?


Here's a list of all the nominated supporting actors and actresses:


Chris Cooper – Adaptation

Ed Harris – The Hours

Paul Newman – Road to Perdition

John C. Reilly – Chicago

Christopher Walken – Catch Me If You Can

Meryl Streep – Adaptation

Kathy Bates – About Schmidt

Queen Latifah – Chicago

Catherine Zeta-Jones – Chicago

Julianne Moore – The Hours


So, some fun things to note here...


If these were the nominations today the Best Supporting Actor category would be criticized for being all old white guys...because the Best Actor category was also all white guys.


Julianne Moore our Best Actress of 2014 was kicking ass back in 2002 with nominations in both female acting categories.


My question is, of all the films and performances listed above which do you revisit or have you revisited the most?


I can say that of the films listed above the two that I have revisited are Gangs of New York and Road to Perdition...and Gangs of New York is by a wide margin the film from those above that I have watched the most.


So, let's hear your picks and then we'll move on to some more of 2002 at the movies...

Gangs Of New York was a great one. Road To Perdition and Adaptation are both excellent. Catch Me If You Can isn't on the level of Spielberg's best movies but is a lot of fun. I haven't seen The Pianist and The Hours since they first came out but I remember them as being quite good too.


I'm probably forgetting something but other movies (of varying quality) that I like from that year: Panic Room, Minority Report, Solaris, Jackass: The Movie, Frailty and The Ring.


It's not one of the best movies of the year but as a huge Star Wars nerd, 2002 automatically makes me think of Attack Of The Clones.

To get us all in the 2002 mood here are some trailers for pictures from that year not including anything from the ones above:

I really liked both Minority Report and Solaris and the two of them made 2002 a good year for Science Fiction pictures...

Wow, I forgot how many good movies came out that year! Especially semi-under-the-radar stuff like Dark Blue and Frailty.

Reggie W said:

And the winner is...


CHICAGO


Did you think Chicago was the Best Picture on that list?

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YES:

Let's go back further, to 2001, when an entire generation literally hadn't seen a Broadway musical movie adaptation since 1986's Little Shop Of Horrors--which they probably saw on cable/video--and the "Why would we watch people singing in public, that's weird!" generation we have today.

This was the generation that thought Disney's High School Musical had liberated their spirits with singing basketball teams, and later praised the pink-chiffon club-karaoke drug trip of Moulin Rouge for, quote, "Bringing back the movie musical". (Or, whatever they thought a "movie musical" looked like without actually having seen Singin' in the Rain.)

Chicago went in hard, fast, faithful, tapping actual toes (yes, people dance in musicals, too!), and hit the sing-in-public generation's argument like a smart-bomb: She's not singing in public, she's imagining a place where people sing their inner thoughts!

Which gave us the answer we'd been flailing around for for fifteen years: To bring back the musical genre, you just had to quit fooling around, and let the stage experts know their business.




("But it should have been Two Towers! "
Good lord, why? Fellowship was the fan-classic AFI 100 movie, Return was the Oscar bait, and Towers was more middle-movie than Empire Strikes Back and Deathly Hallows Pt. 1 combined.

In mainstream theaters, 2002 was the YEAR of the Pointlessly Disappointing Middle Movie, with Attack of the Clones, Men in Black II, and Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets.

I personally would not take Two Towers over Chicago. I think Two Towers is there because it was a big film AND had the highest gross worldwide that year...domestically though Spider-man was the box office champ. I've never seen Spider-man.


Out of the films nominated I would have chosen Gangs of New York...which oddly the way it was shot and staged sometimes seemed like the characters may break out in song at any moment. What I think is interesting is what films stand up over time and how more often than not recently it is not the films the Academy selects.


And the other thing I am sort of dancing around is that Boyhood was no gimmick...

I think that the Academy gets it mostly right when it comes to nominations but very often wrong when picking the winners, especially when they get stuck in weird groupthink that seems idiotic in retrospect. I mean, does anyone care about Chicago anymore? I'm referring to the best picture musical, not the city.

Ejanss said:

In mainstream theaters, 2002 was the YEAR of the Pointlessly Disappointing Middle Movie, with Attack of the Clones, Men in Black II, and Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets.

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Wow, what a trifecta! Although, to be honest, I enjoyed the second half of Attack of the Clones.


Men in Black II is one of maybe a dozen movies in my entire life that I turned off in the middle.


Chamber of Secrets was easily the most disappointing of the HP movies. The book was pretty cinematic, and the movie sucked all the cinema out of it.

Hanson said:

I think that the Academy gets it mostly right when it comes to nominations but very often wrong when picking the winners, especially when they get stuck in weird groupthink that seems idiotic in retrospect. I mean, does anyone care about Chicago anymore? I'm referring to the best picture musical, not the city.

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I do, but I'm a fan of musicals.

Well, of course someone will crawl out of the woodowork


For instance, here's an aggregated list of critics top ten lists for the 2000s:


http://www.metacritic.com/feature/film-critics-pick-the-best-movies-of-the-decade


Granted, 2002 doesn't seem to be a bumper year, but Chicago is nowhere to be found.

I watch Chicago all the time, TTT as well, but I definitely think Chicago deserved to win for the reasons that Ejanss said.

I like Moulin Rouge quite a bit more than Chicago. But I also like Chicago and think it is a very well done film.


I thought 2002 was a pretty great year for movies, just not necessarily Best Picture Nominees.


For the blockbusters:

I probably like The Two Towers more now than I did when I first saw it. It isn't as good as Fellowship, but I do think it is better than BP winner ROTK.


I hated AOTC when it came out. Don't like it much now. My least favorite Star Wars film by a pretty hefty margin.


Spider-Man hit this year, with the first $100M opening weekend. Just a monster hit that created this superhero world we live in now. Yes, 2000's X-Men opened the door nicely, but Spider-Man jumped through it.


Minority Report is vintage SS.


The Bourne Identity humiliated Die Another Day.


My Big Fat Greek Wedding was the surprise (late) summer hit. I barely remember it, but I know everyone talked about it for a month. The film everyone "discovered."


Regarding the more serious films:


Bill the Butcher was a searing, brilliant, hypnotic performance. I was shocked when Brody won. Gangs is pretty flawed, but still pretty great. If only we could have gotten Dicaprio, circa 2006 instead of 2002, and this would be a classic.


Introduced me to Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien).


Thought that the 25th Hour was a pretty great film.


Fincher made his first (and long anticipated, at least by me) film after Fight Club: Panic Room. A lesser film of his, but still well worth watching.


Misc:
Lilo and Stitch (one of the best Disney posters ever "Every family has one...")

Far From Heaven (beautiful film by Todd Haynes)

Road to Perdition (another gorgeous film by Mendes)


And lastly, Undercover Brother (written by Oscar Winner John Ridley) was released. That alone makes 2002 a great year.

Chuck Mayer said:

I thought 2002 was a pretty great year for movies, just not necessarily Best Picture Nominees.


I hated AOTC when it came out. Don't like it much now. My least favorite Star Wars film by a pretty hefty margin.


Spider-Man hit this year, with the first $100M opening weekend. Just a monster hit that created this superhero world we live in now. Yes, 2000's X-Men opened the door nicely, but Spider-Man jumped through it.


Minority Report is vintage SS.


Misc:

Lilo and Stitch (one of the best Disney posters ever "Every family has one...")

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While others harbored a deep resentment for the frustrated Disney-anger fans that magnified L&S into some zombified Tim Burton-like cult ("Eisner should resign, and let Chris Sanders take over the studio!"), who proceeded to take out their anger on the not-too-bad-at-all but hideously mis-marketed Treasure Planet five months later.

(Thus teaching Disney not to release two major animateds in the same year, but fact is, they didn't have the foggiest idea how to sell L&S, and thought it would be gone by August.)


But those five were pretty much it for me--
Like '13 and '14, it just came off as one of those years that Didn't Really Count.

I'm not sure what you were trying to say, but Lilo & Stitch is a classic.