The 81 Biggest Oscar Travesties: Part Four
By Darren Williams
19th February 2010
20. Catherine Zeta-Jones wins best Supporting Actress for Chicago.
She spreads her legs behinds her ears and wins an Oscar. The same trick also got her Michael Douglas, so there is such a thing as karma.
19. Ben Hur sweeps
One of the most dismal facts about the Oscars is that this bloated, badly acted, badly written, badly directed film swept the Oscars. Seemingly because people like the chariot race. This happened in 1959, the year of North by Northwest, Some Like It Hot, Anatomy of a Murder, The 400 Blows, and the year that Wild Strawberries became eligible for nomination.
18. Dustin Hoffman wins best Actor for Rain Man
What is it about the Academy and disabled roles? They're far more concerned with external difficulties than with an actor capturing the soul of a character. Hoffman used to be able to embody his roles, here he seems lost, relying on speech patterns and physical tics to carry him through. Never mind the performances that weren't nominated in 88 (Although both Forest Whitaker in Bird and Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers were far more deserving of the award) how did Hoffman beat Edward James Olmos or Max von Sydow to the Oscar? Even Tom Hanks would have been better.
17. Crash wins best Original Screenplay
Racism is bad mmm'kay? It's bad to be racist if you're white. It's bad to be racist if you're black. It's bad to be racist if you're Spanish. It's just bad. Mmm'kay?
16. Driving Miss Daisy wins best Picture
1989 was the year of Spike Lee's ferocious statement on racism, Do the Right Thing. The Academy didn't nominate it for best picture or director. They did nominate this tale of an old white southern woman and her black driver. This won best picture. The words 'head buried in sand' leap to mind.
15. The Crash/Brokeback split
Neither film should even have been nominated for best picture. Crash is an anti-racism film as written by a five year old. It won because, much like Around the World in 80 Days, all of Hollywood had a part in the film. Brokeback was a cold, heartless film that raped a beautiful short story. There was no passion, no heart, no intelligence in the writing or directing. It was a cause film, nothing more. There were better gay themed dramas available for nomination that year (Mysterious Skin and My Summer of Love spring to mind) but Brokeback got the publicity because it was the chosen one. The actual level of online debate surrounding these two films was ugly. There were racist taunts by Brokeback fans, homophobic ones by Crash fans. Both PSH and Clooney were libelled online numerous times because Brokeback fans were upset they beat Jake and Heath to Oscars. I've been following the Oscars for several years, but I've never seen anything as mean-spirited and pathetic as the displays by the fans of both films on several Oscar sites. Good Night, & Good Luck was better than both.
14. Jennifer Hudson wins best Supporting Actress for Dreamgirls
2006 saw the Oscars become a reality show. Hudson won for singing one song. Her performance was shrill and unbelievable, but she shrieked out a stalker's anthem, the song of choice for the delusional and she somehow won this award. Utterly pathetic and the perfect example of the flavour of the month mentality that infects the awards community.
13. Braveheart wins best Picture
Being blinded by epics seems to be a constant Academy flaw, because that's the only explanation for this wrong-headed, hateful little film winning best picture. Gibson got to be yet another actor turned director to win the Oscar, while the charming and wonderful Babe got screwed out of its deserving win.
12. How Green Was My Valley wins best Picture
I know this film has its fans, and maybe it's being Welsh that makes me hate it so much, but I think it's a deeply patronising film, even if Ford made it with love. He was always at his worst when directing films set outside America (think The Quiet Man). But even if it wasn't quite so irritating on a personal level, it still beat out Citizen Kane, Suspicion and The Maltese Falcon for the win, which will not do.
11. Hilary Swank wins best Actress for Million Dollar Baby
I can live with the first Oscar win, even if I think Bening deserved it that year. But this win for Million Dollar Baby is a disgrace. Apart from how badly written the character is, Swank plays it lifelessly, never bringing any sense of passion or belief to the role. She was up against Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine, the greatest female performance of the last decade, and she won. Academy, hang your heads in shame.
Hillary Swank in "Million Dollar Baby".
10. Cary Grant's Oscar nominations.
Or lack of them to be more specific. At a conservative estimate he should have been nominated for at least 13 films between the late 30s and 1960. He was actually nominated for 2. And he won neither. The Academy's incredible snobbery against comedy films is what hurt Cary, just like it's hurt other actors before and since. Way to treat one of cinema's Gods.
9. On the Waterfront wins best Screenplay
Except it's not a script really, it's an excuse for Kazan and Schulberg testifying to the McCarthy hearings. It's disgusting, sickening, propaganda and bravo to all those who refused to clap a few years ago.
8. Tom Hanks wins best Actor for Forrest Gump
I like Hanks, despite the fact he's appeared more than once in the list, but this is a bad performance. Plain and simple. He won on a combination of the film's bizarre mass appeal and his own personal charisma, but it's quite probably the single most undeserved acting win in Academy history, especially as he'd won a year earlier. And Nigel Hawthorne's complex and charismatic turn in The Madness of King George went unrewarded.
7. The Foreign Language committee.
I understand that there has to be some form of ruling when it comes to the foreign film Oscar. If it was opened up to any film released in any country in the year then it would be chaos. But the approach the Academy take now is just wrong. The system is broken and it has been for a long time. Maybe instead of attention grabbing nonsense like 10 best picture nominees, they should focus on reforming the foreign language award.
6. Martin Scorsese's nominations and lack of wins
The greatest director of his generation is one of the ones most ill-treated by the Academy. He should have had at least three best director wins by 1990. Instead he lost to silly freak winners time and time again. They've finally put right one of the biggest stains on their reputation, but now you have claims that he won as a sentimental award. Truth is, in a year where Little Miss Sunshine/Letters from Iwo Jima/Babel and The Queen were the other nominees, The Departed was the deserving winner, despite its flaws.
5. Titanic wins best Picture/Director
A throwback to the days when the Academy was all about soulless event pictures like Around the World in 80 Days, but there were none quite as soulless as Cameron's effort. Winslet is a stand-out, but the rest of the film, from the stomach-churning romance, to the diabetes inducing sugary score and that hateful Celine Dion song is just awful. The film takes an age for that damn boat to hit the ice and then when it does it takes about five years for it to sink. After this and Avatar, Cameron should never be allowed to direct again.
4. Forrest Gump wins best Adapted Screenplay
"Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get." YES YOU FUCKING DO. READ THE LITTLE CARD. Such an idiotic line and it gets held up as an example of profound dialogue. That actually annoys me more than the right-wing propaganda that flows through the film.
3. Forrest Gump wins Best Picture/Director
I don't believe in banning films because they offend you. But I do believe in banning them when they're too bad to be allowed to exist. Forrest Gump is one such film. From the hateful ideology to the bad script and acting and the way it molests history to make silly jokes, it's just a crude and ugly piece of cinema.
2. Meryl Streep's five million nominations
I dislike Streep as an actress, I think that's obvious to anyone who ever reads anything I've said about her. She's a robot, she can do everything technical, but she never brings any heart or believability to her roles. It's acting as a Miss World pageant and Streep is the most popular girl in the show. But even if I liked her as an actress I wouldn't be able to understand how she can get nominations for films like Doubt, The Devil in Miss Prada, Music of the Heart and so on. The Academy's obsession with her steals nominations from great actresses who need the nomination more. Did she really need a Doubt nomination last year? Or could it have gone to Kristin Scott-Thomas? Maggie Gyllenhaal could have taken her slot the year she was nominated for Prada. It's ridiculous that this woman keeps showing up year after year. And this year she's looking likely to take a slot from Tilda Swinton or Charlotte Gainsbourg.
1. Alfred Hitchcock never winning an Oscar
Not even a honorary one. He won the Irving G. Thalberg memorial award, but that's not an Oscar. It doesn't even look like one, check it out on Google images. So the man who was quite possibly the greatest director who ever lived, was never given any kind of Oscar by an awards committee that has seen fit to give Oscars to Kevin Costner, Robert Redford, Mel Gibson, Ron Howard and James Cameron.