comment #1

jeffmcm says ...

This year the highest-grossing Best Picture nominee is The Departed.

comment #2

caslab says ...

Someone writes one of these stupid articles every February. Who gives a shit? That's why we have the People's Choice awards.

comment #3

Brigadier Pudding says ...

How ridiculous.

comment #4

Eddie says ...

Is Driving Miss Daisy considered an embarrassment? I thought people still liked that one. Has it aged poorly?

comment #5

cobhome says ...

I stil like Driving Miss Daisy - just goes to show that when a film is perceived as "undeserving" of the oscar - its genuine merits are forgotten -

comment #6

Matthew Lucas says ...

I couldn't agree more Jeffrey.

All this talk about Oscar being too elitist and not honoring films the average person likes is pure and utter bullshit. What do you want them to do, nominate Pirates of the Caribbean for Best Picture?

Audiences don't want to be challenged. They want to turn their brain off and watch something familiar. Should that be honored as the best of the year, just because it makes a lot of money?

No. Oftentimes the best films don't make that much money because they are simply too different or unusual or cerebral for the average moviegoer who is just looking for a piece of escapist popcorn entertainment.

Audiences vote with their wallets. Let the Oscars honor the movies that might otherwise get overlooked...even if they themselves tend to go more for mainstream fare.

comment #7

MovieBob says ...

of course the Oscars are elitist, but there's many different kinds of elitism. In the Academy's case, it's not that they ignore what earns, it's that they write-off whole CHUNKS of the films released because they don't fit into their confines of what a "good" movie is: i.e. a straight-up real-world narrative drama, not too much blood, preferably with a message.

Scifi, fantasy, horror etc. are completely written-off unless they get too big to ignore, i.e. LOTR... and even THAT had to step up to the plate THREE FREAKING TIMES.

comment #8

dobbsy says ...

Wow, I've stumbled into a string where everyone's on the side of the angels. Couldn't agree more; can't think of anything less elitist than noms for a gangster movie and a National Lampoon comedy, both hugely popular with popcorn munchers.

Throw in the fact that audiences have embraced foreign language films like PAN, VOLVER and APOCALYPTO to the tune of over a hundred million bucks between them and Oscar noms for Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson and Will Smith, who all seem to have huge public appeal and what are we talking about it?

This is the year genre films really showed up and at the same time foreign filmmakers infused American cinema with vibrant new viewpoints and Oscar reflects that mix beautifully.

Next time I complain about blogosphere dumbness, play this one back to me and I'll shut up quick.

Oh, add me to the list of people who still find DAISY incredibly moving, brilliantly acted and a profound look into two human hearts. Like REMAINS OF THE DAY and MILLION DOLLAR BABY, it manages to create a great love story where distance and loss are trumped by the spirits of communion and compassion.

comment #9

Hallick says ...

"Who gives a shit? That's why we have the People's Choice awards."

And as Taster's Choice is to real coffee...

comment #10

Doug says ...

Jeff, why are you bashing Oscar winners? If you have so little regard for the Academy's choices, why spend so much of your life writing about them?
I don't always agree with the Academy's ultimate choices, but it's rare that I have no respect at all for a nominee.
You may not appreciate "Driving Miss Daisy" and "Chicago," but don't believe for a second that those who love them and voted for them will never feel embarrassed for having done so.

comment #11

Doug says ...

Oh, no. Bad typo. Make that "will EVER feel embarrassed for having done so."
I'm embarrassed for the typo.

comment #12

malibugigolo says ...

the malibu gigolo must remind everyone that the focus of Oscar and all its glory should always remain on those who are nominated and the lucky few that win. And respect them for a job well done. Not what "we" get out of it. We are not getting an award; nor are the focus of a wonderful celebration for people who have taken the road less traveled.

comment #13

Josh Massey says ...

Driving Miss Daisy is victim to the same backward criticism as Dances With Wolves and Shakespeare in Love: namely, they beat another film which many people feel should have won. Do the Right Thing, Goodfellas and Saving Private Ryan, respectively.

People forget how good the winners were, and start hating them because of their victory.

(Actually, Field of Dreams would have gotten my vote in 1989, which shows how much of a sentimental schmuck bastard I can be.)

comment #14

le corbeau says ...

The problem with this discussion is that it assumes there are only two ends of the spectrum-- mindless popcorn and highminded quality. In other words, we better keep nominating The Queen, because otherwise it will be Pirates of the Caribbean 2 everywhere.

But getting too intellectual has HARDLY been Oscar's problem. The real dichotomy is between quality popcorn and mindless highmindedness-- Oscar's problem is that it goes for sort of New Yorkerish middlebrow stuff that's really no better than soap operas much of the time, but has a highbrow sheen and is aimed at that older audience. Nominees and winners like The Turning Point, Out of Africa, The English Patient, The Hours-- these are the ones that look like crap a few years on, when people look at them and go, who ever thought that had a thought in its head? Sure, some of these-- yes, Driving Miss Daisy, for instance-- are well made and worthy, but does anyone really think now that Out of Africa is a better movie than The Terminator, or that The Cider House Rules and The Green Mile deserved a nomination over The Matrix?

All in all, I don't think it's a good thing that Oscar is turning into the Independent Spirit awards-- if it can't stay in touch with the best of what's being made for the blockbuster crowd, then it can't stay in touch with its audience at all. It may seem weird to suggest that, say, X-Men or Meet the Parents was worthy of a Best Picture nomination in 2000, but when the movie they'd be displacing is Chocolat, would that be lowering standards, or raising them? I'd have gladly kicked almost any of last year's nominees out for a nomination for Walk the Line, which is a better written biopic than Capote, a better acted movie than Crash, and a lot more fun than Good Night and Good Luck. That's the kind of good popular movie the Academy ought to be encouraging, rather than rewarding a stillborn, self-important drama simply because it's about the most important subject of all time, the McCarthy era.

comment #15

VedaPierce says ...

When it comes to acting, editing, capturing the feel of time and place, and storytelling, "Driving Miss Daisy" is a far superior film to "Brokeback Mountain".

comment #16

NYCBusybody says ...

Good point, mgmax. I think my ultimate example, for me anyway, of the "New York middlebrow" film that several years later everyone is like, what the hell were we thinking?...is American Beauty.

comment #17

K. Bowen says ...

I was going to write a long post, but Josh Massey said it better than I could. In that context, the real battle along those lines this year is Babel versus The Departed (and possibly Little Miss Sunshine, but I don't want to shake that thornbush for this discussion).
Does Oscar choose the film that says little but feels important (Babel) or the alleged popcorn film (the Departed) that's actually a magnificently, subtly developed story about rival forms of power? Oscar history would favor Babel. But history will favor The Departed.

comment #18

K. Bowen says ...

Sorry MGMax is the post to which I was referring. A nail-meet-head post.

comment #19

Michael says ...

NYC, I totally agree. The fawning over American Beauty was embarassing...and that year was an even greater travesty because Spacey won Best Actor over what is easily Russell Crowe's (and honestly, maybe anyone's in the past decade) finest performance (The Insider).

What a joke.

comment #20

Alan Cerny says ...

What mgmax said is spot on. Which means...

Yes, ROTK fully, truly deserved that win. It resonates and will continue to resonate. And this year's THE DEPARTED feels like the only movie that meets that criteria.

I tend to look at the Oscars like this... ten years from now, what movies do you think will still be worth a damn? Separated from their hype and the politics of the Oscar race, which ones feel like genuine classics, that you'd be more than happy to revisit? And the only films this year that feel like that are CHILDREN OF MEN, THE DEPARTED, PAN'S LABYRINTH, and UNITED 93.

comment #21

L.B. says ...

Gotta agree with the AMERICAN BEAUTY regret. What an empty exercise that is. Boy, were we sold a bill of goods.

I agree with Alan, too. THE DEPARTED is the one nom that sits well with me this year as a winner that won't lose luster. THE QUEEN and IWO JIMA are very well done, but feel too on-the-nose as BP winners. LMS should be remembered as a decent comedy and not the over-talked sensation it's become. BABEL, I swear, will be another AMERICAN BEAUTY if it wins. Regret just waiting to happen.

comment #22

le corbeau says ...

The other thing about American Beauty is... it has the same cake-and-eat-it-too ending as a bunch of other Dreamworks movies made around the same time. Think about it: guy dies, but has a transcendant vision, usually involving being reunited with loved ones or at least a sense of community, at the instant of death that makes it all seem okay.

That's the ending of American Beauty. It's also the ending of Gladiator. And it's the ending of A.I. And it's the ending of In Dreams, the Neil Jordan serial killer thing with Annette Bening.

I haven't checked The Legend of Bagger Vance or The Road to El Dorado to see if they end that way too. But what does it say about the intellectual integrity of a Best Picture winner that its climax, the summation of its message, seems to be the same message as every other movie's from the same studio?

comment #23

L.B. says ...

As I recall THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE ended with me wanting to smash the TV in so I could stab my eyes out with the glass shards.

Good point about the similarities. Very interesting. And GLADIATOR and AI are two movies whose endings I've spent an embarrassing amount of time rewriting in my head over the years.

AMERICAN BEAUTY I just try to forget I saw.