Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

I've been sluggish about getting to this group, partly because I couldn't remember what my own choice that year was. I finally dug up the old notebook, and found I'd gone for Three Kings, which BJ finally mentioned. I'd also highlighted already-noted efforts like The Straight Story, The Talented Mr....

I think I've read more Philip Roth than pretty much any other contemporary novelist. Not every book was great, but the breadth of his work, over more than half a century, is incredible. Personal favorites: I Married a Communist, The Great American Novel, Letting Go, the Zuckerman trilogy (The Ghost ...

I wouldn't say I have a wildly higher opinion of this film than BJ or Precious Doll, but I have to emphatically disagree on one point: I think it is hugely enhanced by its being directed by Spielberg and not one of the many directors who've headed up the Marvel/DC films of the past decade. On the le...

Along with Hunter Thompson, and maybe Norman Mailer, he did more to change/enliven American journalism in the last half-century. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Right Stuff are glorious reads, great books. The Bonfire of the Vanities was a compulsive page-turner, but its societal view curdle...

Correct on Mrs. Robinson. The version in the film consists of the chorus only; the verses first appeared on Bookends (and didn't hit radio play till a week or two after the Oscars). Thus, the song's most famous line ("Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio...?") was missing. Of course, the same...

When Damien wrote inside Oscar, one section that always interested me was the "songs not nominated." Were these his own observations or were these the shortlists? His (their) own -- he and Mason, in fact, included many of those songs Magilla and I noted below as missing from even the shor...

There's really too much information in these lists to hunt out all the interesting elements, but a few things I looked for or noted: Two hugely famous musical themes -- The Third Man and A Summer Place -- were not only not nominated, they didn't even make the cut of 10. John Lennon and Paul McCartne...

Loved her in Sisters. A very cool 70s chick; that she was chosen to play Lois Lane was a sign of the off-beat approach taken with that version of Superman. Post-Superman, she seemed to get more publicity for her life issues than her acting. But, looking at her IMDB page, it appears she never stopped...

Those of us who've been around a long time will remember there was a time when the crafts branches, at some point shortly after Christmas, released lists of the ten finalists from which the ultimate five nominees (then released in mid/late February) would be culled. In those days, when Oscar nerd-do...

I'm late getting to this due to "busy", and much of what I think has already been expressed. Very happy to see people touting Pleasantville, which I thought I might be alone in mentioning. Sabin is probably right, that the branch saw it as a visual effects things -- though the VFX branch c...

At first I thought, how great that someone my age will finally get to see Glenda Jackson give an acceptance speech at an awards show... until I did some digging and learned that she wasn't present to accept her Oscars or Emmys either! I'm surprised you didn't know this before; it was even the subje...

My choice on the year, unavailable to me here, is The Ice Storm -- a film as exquisitely shot as it is written and directed. I'd also have gone for Boogie Nights, though Sabin's take on why it was omitted rings true. Muddy is indeed the word that comes to mind when I think of Amistad -- the images (...

Precious Doll wrote: Only hope it doesn't score a technical Oscar nomination next year....

Bank on it getting a visual effects nomination, and all of us holdouts grudgingly watching it sometime next winter.

The Original BJ wrote:But of course, it is 100% my own fault for putting myself through this interminable THREE HOURS when I obviously know better by now!

Three hours??????? This is getting to punishment level.

A year after a slate completely different from my choices, the branch came up with one exceedingly close to mine. My top alternate would be Courage Under Fire -- like many Ed Zwick movies, its impressive visual look somewhat offset its turgid narrative. I'm afraid I don't buy into the idea that Brea...