Best Picture and Director 2002

1998 through 2007

What are your choices for Best Picture and Director of 2002?

Chicago
8
12%
Gangs of New York
1
1%
The Hours
4
6%
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
7
10%
The Pianist
14
21%
Pedro Almodovar - Talk to Her
18
26%
Stephen Daldry - The Hours
3
4%
Rob Marshall - Chicago
2
3%
Roman Polanski - The Pianist
10
15%
Martin Scorsese - Gangs of New York York
1
1%
 
Total votes: 68

dws1982
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2002

Post by dws1982 »

The Pianist and Polanski are easy picks here, although Almodovar is a solid choice in Directing. Chicago is one of the better musicals of the 2000's, but if it were my favorite film in the Best Picture lineup, I'd abstain from voting. Gangs of New York is a ridiculous mess, and The Hours is even worse. The Two Towers is easily my favorite of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and a solid runner-up in Best Picture. If Peter Jackson had been nominated, I might be tempted to toss him a vote in recognition of his best movie and in recognition of the trilogy as a whole.

1. Last Orders (Fred Schepisi)
2. Domestic Violence (Frederick Wiseman)
3. Femme Fatale (Brian De Palma)
4. The Pianist (Roman Polanski)
5. Bloody Sunday (Paul Greengrass)
6. Blood Work (Clint Eastwood)
7. Late Marriage (Dover Koshashvili)
8. Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar)
9. Minority Report (Steven Spielberg)
10. Undisputed (Walter Hill) / Solaris (Steven Soderbergh)
Big Magilla
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Location: Jersey Shore

Re: Best Picture and Director 2002

Post by Big Magilla »

Heksagon wrote:Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert never feel like they are a romantic couple.
Don't you mean Julianne Moore and Dennis Haysbert?
Heksagon
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Location: Helsinki, Finland

Re: Best Picture and Director 2002

Post by Heksagon »

A respectable line-up with two very good films (The Pianist and The Two Towers), two good films (Chicago and Gangs of New York) and one mediocre film (The Hours). There's a lot worse to come.

The Pianist is a technically outstanding, although also a fairly linear and predictable film about the Holocaust. When I saw it the first time, I liked it, but - perhaps given the type of films Roman Polanski usually makes - I had expected it to have stronger suspense elements, so I wasn't fully satisfied with it. In any case it narrowly missed my Top 10 list at the time, but when I saw it for a second time, years later, I knew what to expect, and I ended up appreciating it a lot more. It gets my Best Picture vote here.

However, my favourite film of the year - at the time, and presently - is Talk to Her, so my Best Director vote goes to Pedro Almodóvar.

Magilla, I have to say that I feel completely differently about Far from Heaven. To me, it doesn't even feel like a faux 50s film, it just feels artificial and phony. The way the actors talk and behave just feels stiff and phony, it didn't remind me at all about the films made in the 50s. Furthermore, I can't think of any other film where the actors have so little chemistry with each others. Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid never feel like a married couple, while Julianne Moore* and Dennis Haysbert never feel like they are a romantic couple.

....And yeah, I have to say that the three surprise Oscar for The Pianist make this one of the most exciting Oscar Ceremonies. I really wish it had gone all the way, but I can't say I'm unsatisfied how it turned out.

*corrected
Last edited by Heksagon on Sat Nov 02, 2013 1:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Aceisgreat
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2002

Post by Aceisgreat »

The Pianist and Polanski. Without hesitation. And the 75th Oscars was the most entertaining show I can remember. Martin's genuinely funny opening. Michael Moore. The standing ovation for Julie Andrews. The honorary award to O'Toole. De Havilland's appearance. Streisand's face having to say Eminem. Brody's win. Harwood's win. Polanski's win! And the rare suspense of the final winner, played well by Kirk and Michael Douglas.
"I can't stand a naked light bulb any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action." -- Blanche DuBois
mlrg
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Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Re: Best Picture and Director 2002

Post by mlrg »

Big Magilla wrote: Roman Polanski’s The Pianist was a film that seemed to come out of nowhere. It wasn’t particularly well hyped pre-awards season as I recall, but Adrien Broady was everywhere during awards season. Everyone seemed happy for the actor who shockingly turned out to be all but cut out of The Thin Red Line four years earlier. Originally intended to be the main character in that film, he famously took his parents to the world premiere to find his part to ribbons and his hopes of becoming a major Hollywood star dashed. The Academy was only too happy to give a happy, if short-lived ending to his dream. The Best Director award to Polanski was the big surprise.
The Pianist did not come out of nowhere. It had won the Palme D'Or in Cannes the previous year.

This oscar ceremony remains, to this day, the one that gave me the biggest positive surprise (Polanski winning) and the biggest disapointment (my favourite music band, U2, losing best song).

My vote goes to The Pianist and Polanski.
Big Magilla
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Best Picture and Director 2002

Post by Big Magilla »

In real time my favorite films of 2002 were Chicago and The Hours, but later in 2003 I had seen Y Tu Mama Tambien and Talk to Her, which in retrospect became my favorite films of the year. Neither, however, was a likely Oscar contender although Pedro Almodovar’s nomination for Best Director for Talk to Her was not surprising. The uncensored DVD released version of Alfonso Cuaron’s Y Tu Mama Tambien was not the U.S. theatrical release of the film so its absence from the line-up is not something I can really argue without having seen what voters would have seen at the time.

Joining those four in my eventual top five was Far From Heaven, a film I did not like on initial viewing. My objection to the film was more in the hype surrounding it than the actual film. It was hailed at the time as the 1950s film they couldn’t make in the 1950s That was true to an extent. As late as 1958, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof couldn’t be filmed without removing all references to Paul Newman’s character’s homosexuality. The subject wasn’t broached on screen until Basil Rearden’s Victim in 1961, released in the U.S. in 1962 the same year as Otto Preminger’s Advise & Consent, the first Hollywood film in which homosexuality supplied a major subplot. However, the implication that such a film couldn’t be made in the 1950s suggests that someone wanted to make such a film, but there was never anything to indicate that either Douglas Sirk who directed All That Heaven Allows upon which it is loosely based, or Universal, which produced Sirk’s film, ever had any such notion in mind. Further, the film’s characters are more like TV characters of the 1950s than real people – real housewives, for example, did not vacuum floors in cocktail dresses, pearls and high heels. That was something only TV moms did. Julianne Moore’s melancholy housewife in The Hours was a much more realistic portrait of a 1950s housewife than her disillusioned housewife in Far From Heaven. However, taken on its’ own terms, the film is gorgeously photographed and superbly acted. In retrospect its wins in New York and Chicago were not unwarranted.

Kander and Ebb’s Chicago had been bandied about as film fodder since its Broadway bow in 1975, but it wasn’t until the show’s 1997 Broadway revival, which is still running, that Hollywood got serious about making it. The results were spectacular. It became the first musical since Oliver! 34 years earlier to win Best Picture and eleven years later we’re still waiting for the next one. To my thinking now, there should have been a forty year wait between 1972’s Cabaret and last year’s Les Misérables, but I digress.

I never read Michael Cunningham’s The Hours so my first experience with the material was Stephen Daldry’s film. I thought Daldry did a spectacular job of bringing together the diverse elements of the three sections of the film. I was enthralled throughout.

Roman Polanski’s The Pianist was a film that seemed to come out of nowhere. It wasn’t particularly well hyped pre-awards season as I recall, but Adrien Broady was everywhere during awards season. Everyone seemed happy for the actor who shockingly turned out to be all but cut out of The Thin Red Line four years earlier. Originally intended to be the main character in that film, he famously took his parents to the world premiere to find his part to ribbons and his hopes of becoming a major Hollywood star dashed. The Academy was only too happy to give a happy, if short-lived ending to his dream. The Best Director award to Polanski was the big surprise.

Martin Scorsese’s The Gangs of New York, which was famously delayed a year, had been hyped for so long it was bound to disappoint. Yes, it was nominated for ten Oscars, but it didn’t win any, nor did it deserve to. I found it an overly violent, ugly, grotesque depiction of a time in history that was horrible enough without all the fictional excesses thrown at the audience. Scorsese can, and has, done better.

Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was the weakest of the three films in the trilogy. It didn’t have the freshness of the first, nor did it have the windup of the third to give it the momentum it would have needed to break through to a Best Picture win.

My votes go to Chicago and Almodovar.
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