The Envelope’s Tom O’Neil has run a list of classic films that weren’t honored with a Best Picture nomination. Point made, but the odd thing (for me, anyway) is that O’Neil didn’t include Zodiac and yet he did include A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. If I was the Absolute Mussolini Dictator of Hollywood, I wouldn’t nominate that Steven Spielberg film for Best Picture with a gun at my back.
O’Neil’s shaft list includes Adam’s Rib, Aliens, Arthur (exception!), Being John Malkovich, Being There, The Big Slee, The Birds, Blade Runner, Blood Simple, Blue Velvet, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (exception!), Brief Encounter, Carrie (exception!), Casino, Central Station, The China Syndrome, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cool Hand Luke, Days of Heaven, Days of Wine and Roses, Do the Right Thing, Dreamgirls (exception!), Duck Soup, East of Eden, Election, A Fish Called Wanda, Gilda, Harold and Maude, Hud, In Cold Blood, Leaving Las Vegas, The Lion King, A Little Princess (exception!), The Manchurian Candidate, Manhattan, The Matrix, Mean Streets, Meet Me in St. Louis,, Melvin and Howard, Memento, The Misfits, Modern Times, Murder on the Orient Express, North by Northwest, Notorious, The Opposite of Sex, Out of Sight, Paper Moon, Peggy Sue Got Married, The People vs. Larry Flynt,, Philadelphia, The Player, Pleasantville, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Ran, Rear Window, Rebel Without a Cause, Rosemary’s Baby, Saturday Night Fever, The Searchers, The Seventh Seal,, Singin’ in the Rain, Spartacus, Strangers on a Train, The Stunt Man, Suddenly, Last Summer (exception!), Sullivan’s Travels, Sweeney Todd, Thelma and Louise, The Third Man, To Have and Have No (exception!), A Touch of Evil, Toy Story, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Truman Show (exception…hated it!), The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Victor/Victoria (exception!), Viva Zapata, The Way We Were, When Harry Met Sally, The Wild Bunch, Wild Strawberries, A Woman Under the Influence, The World According to Garp (exception!) and You Can Count on Me.
