Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

I guess the main reason I'm not terribly upset at the Bullock victory is that I had no strong rooting interest for any of the other nominees in this race. I would have voted for Streep, but none of these nominated performances is one for the ages. I don't disagree with your general take -- whoever ...

Well, this one looks like it'll be all over the map. I'm with BJ: Crowe would have been a fine winner in '99, but citing him for Gladiator was silly; it was barely a performance...the only lead male winner this year whose victory made me groan. (But then, I'm not as contrarian on consensus critics'...

Well, off the top of my head, four of 1997's nominated five dealt fairly directly with class distinction -- Titanic's steerage and stateroom romance, Helen Hunt's rant about the HMOs in As Good As It Gets, Matt Damon's townie janitor taking on the Harvard gowners, and The Full Monty's on-the-dole-e...

First, to dws, I don't know how to resolve our quite different views of how Blind Side was reviewed. Not that it's definitive, but I looked up MetaCritic and saw it rated a 53 -- on a par with The Book of Eli and Alice in Wonderland, films I don't expect to see at the Oscars next year, and a few po...

dws, we're apparently patronizing different boards (or else just retaining what annoys us the most). To my ear, the level of tolerance for Bullock's win is astonishing, given how utterly undeserved I think it is. I'd even cite Ed Gonzalez as a case in point. Ed, who I know and like from here, is to...

Tom Hanks said he was doing as he was told, that it was the plan all along to just open the envelope and announce the winner. Laurence Olivier did the same thing 25 years ago when he announced Amadeus winning for best picture and rumor has it was his fault. It was clearly a senior moment for Olivie...

Also, to me the problem isn't that Meryl Streep lost. It's that Sandra Bullock won, and she didn't deserve to. So I don't understand all the support she gets on this board. Wrong is wrong, even if the person is nice. Nathaniel at The Film Experience made the point today that Kate Winslet -- whose (...

Hats off to the winners. For my info: who did the best among the blind luck categories (doc. short, live short, animated short)? I scored a magnificent 0-for-6 in those categories -- watched my chances of winning here vanish in about three minutes -- and would be curious if anyone did well in what ...

I'm too tired to post in every different thread, so I'll offer my full reactions here. I was pretty alienated going in -- partly from the dreary sameness of the season and lack of interest in the top race; partly from life issues; and, in the end, from being sick for about the last two weeks, which...

Picking blindly, as usual, in docs & shorts. Film: The Hurt Locker (Inglourious Basterds) Actor: Jeff Bridges (Colin Firth) Actress: Meryl Streep (Sandra Bullock) S. Actor: Christoph Waltz (Woody Harrelson) S. Actress: Mo'Nique (Maggie Gyllenhaal) Director: Kathryn Bigelow (James Cameron) Ad. S...

I think the only way Avatar could lose would be if people decide it's drawn, not designed-and-built -- in which case Sherlock Holmes is the most likely alternative (in the Tim Burton, Sleepy Hollow/Sweeney Todd tradition), with perhaps a few traditionalists opting for the rent-a-mansion look of You...

To raise a dead issue, let me say I think the Coens were being a bit playful when they said, after the fact, that they'd never even read The Odyssey. There's an awful lot on O Brother that clearly DOES crib from Homer -- the Cyclops, the sirens, Penelope's suitors. It obviously wasn't a literal ada...

Sorry to interrupt this dick-swinging match, but I haven't yet commented on the '99 race. The nomination slate was deeply disappointing, beyond Swank and Moore, for being so generic -- especially in picking one of Streep's least distinctive performances -- when Sigourney Weaver had given one of her...

For what it's worth, I saw Time Stands Still and found it disappointing. Touches on some issues, but almost in a random way; in the end, it's a simple detiorating-relationship story, dressed up with political observations. Linney is of course good, as are Silverstone and Bogosian, but D'Arcy James ...