More Best Picture Oscar Embarassments, submitted by reader Gabriel Neeb: (a) Mel Gibson’s Braveheart (let’s call this one a post-Passion of the Christ reassessment); (b) How Green Was My Valley (it beat out the political hot-potato Citizen Kane and the legendary The Maltese Falcon, which was seen in ’41 as a hardboiled genre piece and therefore not toney enough for a gold statuette); (c) 1940’s Rebecca (a strong piece, but this is the Hitchcock film the Academy went for because…hmmm, let me guess…because producer David O. Selznick was out there twisting arms and calling in the muscle and invoking favors?); (d) 1958’s Gigi (has anyone in the presently-configured world ever seen this curiously antiquted museum piece on DVD? There isn’t a single cultural echo in all of it); (e) 1932 and ’33’s Cavalcade (the year King Kong should have been at least nominated); (f) 1936’s The Great Ziegfeld and ’37’s The Life of Emile Zola .