The 78th Annual Academy Awards: Winners List on Page 7

[modage]

it really doesnt matter what wins because the academy tends to gloss over history and when they put together those clip reels they include the movies that are still good and that people actually like and not the ones that won the awards. look at the AFI list of the Greatest Films of All Time and then see how many of them actually won Best Picture.

I count 33 of 100 won.

actually that sounds about right.  probably across all categories they're wrong 2/3 of the time.  everybody shouldn't worry though because in 15 years or so a gay romance will win best picture and it will be directed by Paul Haggis.  it just takes them a little while to catch up. 

[Jeremy Blackman]

My concern is that this is one of the ones they'll be proud of in the future.

2004 - Million Dollar Baby
2002 - Chicago
2001 - A Beautiful Mind
2000 - Gladiator

Let's hope it will fall neatly into place among these other mistakes...

[The Red Vine]

My concern is that this is one of the ones they'll be proud of in the future.

2004 - Million Dollar Baby

Let's hope it will fall neatly into place among these other mistakes...

that's one of the few times I've actually agreed with the Academy. 

[Alethia]

me too

[Ravi]

in 15 years or so a gay romance will win best picture and it will be directed by Paul Haggis.

No.  It will be Walker, Texas Ranger:  The Movie that takes the prize.

the third montage: social justice.  aaah, now it makes sense.  they're disguising the fact that they wanted to pat themselves on the back and say 'see?  we're always right.'  i thought it was preparing us for brokeback to win, like 'you'll thank us later'.

Since when has Hollywood been on the ball with social issues?  If anything, they're always about 10 years behind.  Guess Who's Coming to Dinner came out in 1967, and Philadelphia came out in 1993.  Just another sign of the delusional self-congratulatory nature of the Oscars.

[snaporaz]

i thought 2005 was a better year for movies - when compared to just about all other years since 1999.

anyways, i loathed crash. i wanted brokeback mountain to win, but would have been satisfied with any of the other nominees. except for crash...unbelievable.

[matt35mm]

Additionally, based on everything I've read and by comparing reviews of the respective films, Tsotsi was also a wuss-out for the Academy.  Paradise Now was overall better reviewed, but also a more incendiary topic.

I can't say for sure since I haven't seen either movie, but this may have been an early sign of wussy voting this year.

[grand theft sparrow]

Tsotsi was also a wuss-out for the Academy. 

Yeah, though I was surprised that it didn't go to Sophie Scholl... not because I heard anything about it but because you can almost always bank on the Foreign Language and Documentary awards going to the most WWII/Holocaust related nominee.  They shot my theory to hell on that one this year.  Yeah, they're just playing it safe left and right this year.

[Derek237]

Wow, you know, the reaction to Crash's win was a lot like the reaction to Orson Welle's radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. Panic, riots, mass suicide, etc. How terrible.

I'm amoung the (apparent) minority of people here who actually liked Crash. I mean, quite honestly, I thought it was the lesser of the 5 films, but I loved each of them. To me, it's like being in a room with 5 of the most gorgeous women you could think of and being told you can have a night of passionate, no-strings-attatched, guilt-free sex with only one of them. You'll sure as hell have a preference, but eeeehhhh.

So yes, that's my take on the Oscars. It's hard out here for a pimp....

[pete]

did you take that roomful of gorgeous women metaphor from the best sound design speech last night?

[MacGuffin]

Was There a 'Brokeback' Backlash?

We chatted about it, joked about it, argued about it, spoofed it. "Brokeback Mountain" was everywhere in our popular culture yet it lost the big Oscar it was supposed to win.

Was there a "Brokeback Backlash," or was "Crash" just the worthy contender that came on strong in the final Best Picture stretch? There were as many theories being offered up Monday as there are "Brokeback" parodies on the Internet.

One theory was that, despite the hoopla, the endless late-night monologues and the clever imitations, people (Academy voters, that is) didn't really love the soulful saga of two gay cowboys and perhaps even felt uncomfortable with its themes.

"Sometimes people pretend to like movies more than they actually do," said Richard Walter, who heads the screenwriting program at UCLA's film school. "But this film wasn't really THAT good. What it tried to do was great, sensational. But what it actually accomplished wasn't so great. You can't really buy the love story."

Film critic Kenneth Turan, writing in the Los Angeles Times, said the problem wasn't with the film's quality. Rather, he said, "you could not take the pulse of the industry without realizing that this film made people distinctly uncomfortable."

"In the privacy of the voting booth ... people are free to act out the unspoken fears and unconscious prejudices that they would never breathe to another soul, or likely, acknowledge to themselves. And at least this year, that acting out doomed `Brokeback Mountain.'"

Gay activists did not necessarily agree.

"I don't think it has anything to do with the subject matter," said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest national gay rights group. He noted that "Brokeback" and "Crash" both dealt with "tough issues like indifference and intolerance."

"I was certainly disappointed," Solmonese said. "But I would trade that Oscar for all the positive conversations that this movie spurred between parents and their gay children, or between employees and their gay co-workers. That impact transcends any accolades."

Some people focused on the demographics of the typical Academy voter: older, and city-dwelling. Author and "Brokeback" co-screenwriter Larry McMurtry thought that was key to his film's loss.

"Members of the Academy are mostly urban people," McMurtry, who won the adapted screenplay prize with Diana Ossana, said backstage at Sunday night's ceremony. "We are an urban nation. We are not a rural nation. It's not easy even to get a rural story made."

McMurtry could have added that not only are Academy voters urban, they also are from Los Angeles the city that is the heart of "Crash," a racial drama depicting the intertwining experiences of an array of characters over 36 hours. The film, featuring a huge and accomplished cast ("Raise your hand if you're NOT in `Crash,'" host Jon Stewart quipped to the crowd), also won for original screenplay and film editing.

"Brokeback" director Ang Lee, who won the directing prize, said he hadn't a clue why the film didn't take the best-picture award. "They didn't vote for it," he said. "I don't know. You asked me one question, and I don't know the answer."

But his brother had an opinion. Lee Kang, speaking in Tapei, Taiwan, suggested American bias was involved. "When the locals are voting, they will have this, whether you call it nationalism or something else," he said.

"Crash" writer/director Paul Haggis, for his part, said he hadn't "for a second" believed the whispers, which grew louder as Oscar night approached, that "Crash" had the momentum to overtake "Brokeback."

"I didn't believe any of that nonsense," he said. "In fact, we were so shocked. I mean, we're still trying to figure out if we got this."

"Crash" came out to mixed reviews in May, considered much too early for a film to stay in voters' minds. But Lionsgate Films reminded voters and critics of the movie's potency by flooding them with copies of the DVD late in 2005.

In winning over the heavily favored "Brokeback," the film evoked major upsets of the past, most recently the 1999 triumph of "Shakespeare in Love" over "Saving Private Ryan." Another famous underdog champ was "Chariots of Fire," which in 1982 beat both Warren Beatty's historical epic, "Reds," and the family story "On Golden Pond."

One disturbing difference for the Academy: a lot more viewers tuned in to see those upsets. An estimated 38.8 million people watched Sunday's telecast on ABC down 8 percent from last year and the second-worst showing in nearly two decades, according to Nielsen Media Research. Except for the 2003 count of 33 million viewers when "Chicago" took the best-picture award viewership hadn't dipped below 40 million since 1987.

So what is to be learned from Sunday night's upset result? Not much, says Walter, the film professor. You just really never know what Academy voters are going to do.

"It's just a crapshoot," Walter said. "You go to Vegas and you put your money on number 17.

"There is NO lesson to be learned from all this. It doesn't mean a thing."

[squints]

Tsotsi was also a wuss-out for the Academy. 

you can almost always bank on the Foreign Language and Documentary awards going to the most WWII/Holocaust related nominee.  They shot my theory to hell on that one this year.  Yeah, they're just playing it safe left and right this year.

Downfall lost last year.

[polkablues]

"Sometimes people pretend to like movies more than they actually do," said Richard Walter, who heads the screenwriting program at UCLA's film school. "But this film wasn't really THAT good. What it tried to do was great, sensational. But what it actually accomplished wasn't so great. You can't really buy the love story."

That's right, folks... you heard it here first.  Richard Walter, esteemed writer of nothing that has ever been produced, says, "Brokeback Mountain's not THAT good."

Moral of the story: don't study screenwriting at UCLA.

[The Red Vine]

I have a screenwriter friend (who's movie is gonna be made by Lions Gate) and he's says the same thing about BBM. he said the whole movie boiled down to a bunch of pretty shots of the wilderness. I'm wondering if they even watched the movie.

[jigzaw]

I think they should seriously have a shakedown of the producers of the Oscar broadcast.  They just don't get it.  They can't understand why the viewership drops as they go and make awful judgements about what people want to see.  Last year it was handing Oscars to the, uh, "less important" winners in their seats.  Thankfully they dropped that, but look what they've added:  sappy "emotional" music during the acceptance speeches!  rudely enforcing this cockamamie only-one-winner-in-the-group-gets-to-speak rule, shit, they cut off the second producer of the Best Picture winner!!  There were only two up there, and Haggis didn't take all night or anything, but as soon as his partner opens her lips, boom, done, strike the band and cut to commercials.  Fucking pathetic.

Oh, yeah, I'm also pissed that Crash won.  That film actually made me angry at how truly awful the writing is.