12th Feb 10
Movies That Should Never Have Won Oscars
by David Davies
Hmm...
Hmm...
When we decided to write a post about the movies that won Oscars, but shouldn’t have, perhaps we should have entitled it ‘Shakespeare in Love and the Undeserving Musicals’. It’s this movie along with Chicago and the Sound of Music that have caused some of the biggest Oscar-based disputes over the past half a century, but then there are travesties like Kramer vs. Kramer that need never to be forgotten as well.
The Sound of Musicals
Starting at the beginning, there are not many people who can deny the lustre of Dr. Zhivago, apart from the Academy of Picture Arts and Sciences itself, apparently. It was beaten to the post of 1965’s Best Picture award by The Sound of Music, and while this has become one of 20th century film’s classics, no film enthusiast will forgive the Academy for this one.
Then again in 2003 there was uproar when Gangs of New York, The Hours, The Pianist and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers missed out on the Best Picture award to Broadway musical Chicago. But what happened at the Oscars in the very next year added insult to injury and made the decision for Chicago to win in 2003 all the more nonsensical…
Lord of the Last-Minute Decisions
In 2004 we saw another well known film beating its more deserving competitors to Best Picture, but not simply because the Academy made a bad judgement. It looked suspiciously like Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was chosen simply because the first two in the trilogy hadn’t won previously. Return of the King went on to beat Mystic River and Lost in Translation, simply because this was the last chance to acknowledge the trilogy. Even Lord of the Rings fans were upset that the best film of the three (the Two Towers) wasn’t chosen the year before.
1967, 1979 and 1990 Best Pictures
The Sound of Music beating Dr. Zhivago in 1965 was nothing compared to the travesty of 1967. ‘In the Heat of the Night’ (a murder investigation thriller based on the novel by John Ball) was nominated alongside Bonnie and Clyde and the Graduate and beat both in a win that was largely seen as unfair. A similar occurrence came in 1979 (again, for best picture) when American drama Kramer vs. Kramer beat one of Marlon Brando’s last productions Apocalypse Now: a Vietnam war epic peppered with fine acting from the likes of Martin Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper and Harrison Ford. This kind of undeserving victory happened yet again in 1990 when Dances with Wolves beat GoodFellas.
Best Picture, Worst Year
How I’ve managed to keep quite on this one for over 400 words I don’t know, but I certainly couldn’t let it pass completely. Any film fan with their eyes on the screen in 1998 will remember light-hearted romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love beating war epics Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, as well as rival costume drama Elizabeth where the acting was arguably much better quality.
Kicking us while we were down was Gwyneth Paltrow’s Best Actress win for her Shakespeare in Love role over Cate Blanchett’s role as Elizabeth. Then, just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, 1998 was also the year of that Paltrow acceptance speech.
Forrest Flop
What happened in 1994 caused a huge rift between the community of film enthusiasts. Beating The Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction and Quiz Show to the best picture award was romantic comedy Forrest Gump. Over a decade on nobody can argue it’s become a classic film, very quotable and certainly a tear-jerker, but for it to beat the calibre of films it was up against was perhaps a wrong decision.
1995 Best Picture: Braveheart (beat Sense & Sensibility)
We’ll finish with what many people see as an undisputed case of an undeserving win. In 1995 Mel Gibson’s Braveheart won the Oscar for best picture, beating Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility and Apollo 13. Was it Gibson’s influence that viewers didn’t like, the quality of the film portraying real historical events, or perhaps simply that they preferred the other nominees? For us it’s the latter – Apollo 13 should have won – but we know that there are a number of reasons why film buffs get bristly tailed about the Academy Awards in 1995.
If there’s one thing to learn from all this, it’s that Braveheart wasn’t the first, and it won’t be the last. There will, unfortunately, be more Shakespeare in Loves (although nobody’s stupid enough to do a Paltrow) and Kramer vs. Kramers, so we should show our support for the films we love when they’re released, and no later.
Our Stories
- Awesome Ways to Be Proper Scary at Halloween
- How much for love?
- Days of Distraction for under ÂŁ10
- Celebrities Phones You Wouldn’t Bother Hacking
- The Best Holidays to Do with the Kids
- The Best, The Worst, The Most Expensive and The Cheapest
- Happy Days, Unkempt Nights: The Best and Worst of Music Festivals
- This Summer’s Top Fashion Trends
- The Best Internet Browsers and Why You Should Care
- Best Apps for Shopping
- The Top Summer Blockbusters of 2011
- Five Nights, Four Bank Holidays: Royal Special!
Popular Topics
Amazon ASDA Bonfire Night Celebrity Weddings Cheap Children In Need Christmas Christmas Presents Christmas Shopping Costume Discount Vouchers Fancydress fireworks Flat screen Food Gifts guy fawkes Halfords Halloween Harrods KFC Lady Gaga lastminute.com LCD LG lidl mobile phones Nokia Pizza Express Pizza Hut Plasma Poundland Samsung Shopping Simon Cowell Sony Stocking Fillers T.M.Lewin Tesco Toys TVs Waitrose Walmart what-if-nans-present-is-rubbish X FactorArchive
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
