Oscars: This always happens

I admit I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain but I ahve seen Crash and I thought it was a terrific movie. But, the Academy always shies away from giving the big awards to highly controversial movies. For example in 1989 Driving Miss Daisy beat Do The Right Thing which IMO is 100x the travest that occurred last night. Or a lesser example in 1992 when Al Pacino won for Scent of a Woman when everyone and their momma knew Denzel shouldve won for Malcolm X.

There are five pictures up for Best Picture. As well as five actors, supporting actors, and so on. It's highly possible that the winning picture, actor, director, whatever, won with 20 percent plus one vote, if every nominee were very strong, as was the case this year.

I highly doubt any winner ever gets even close to 50% of the vote, although we never know because the actual results are never released.

Know how true that is. Brokeback was the favorite, and Crash was seen as the spoiler and the other 3 were just their to fill out the ballot. Since this is a political board I guess you could say that Crash and Brokeback were the Republicans and Democrats and Munich, Capote, and Good Night and Good Luck were the Libertarians, Greens and the Constituion party.

Message? Don't think so. The folks involved in making it? Well, Paul Haggis has contributed to Howard Dean and Dennis Kuucinich and I don't think Don Cheadle or Ludacaris are repubs, just to name two of the cast members...

Maybe I'm missing the basis for the analogy....

onenote

To be taken that literally. What I was saying was that the oscars, like an election, will have 2 major candidates and in all likelihood one of those 2 candidates will win.

The Oscars aren't about politics but about the movie itself and how it did!

I like the way the awards were distributed to highlight each film...with the unfortunate exception of "Good Night, and Good Luck", which I had really hoped would win something. But the slate of nominated films/topics shows the diversity of topics that we progressives address on a regular basis.

Not for most controversial movie

where they listed all these classic movies that hadn't even been nominated for Oscars. They would call out a year and the other one would have to guess which picture won Best Movie that year. Then they would say what other classic movie had come out that same year. The ones I can remember are E.T. and Star Wars. Do you know what movies won Oscars the year these were first released? Probably some pretty non memorable films.

...Gandhi for 1982 (E.T.), and Annie Hall for 1977 (Star Wars).

but Annie Hall instead of Star Wars?? WTF?

the majority of the Academy's members are playing it safe.
'Brokeback Mountain' was too "risky" to vote in as Best Picture.
Apparently, even though this was supposedly a "maverick"
year for films, Hollywood is not brave enough to award
Oscars for controversial films. I haven't seen 'Paradise Now',
but I've heard it is excellent. It didn't stand a chance in today's
political climate.However, these films do get nominated.
Ang Lee ( Brokeback Mountain), did get the Oscar for Best Director.
George Clooney did win for Best Supporting Actor in 'Syriana'.

I also saw 'Crash'. It is an outstanding film. Personally, I
felt any one of the actors and actresses in 'Crash' were
worthy of an Oscar. I also saw 'Walk the Line' and did not
feel Reese Witherspoon's performance out shined any of
the actresses in 'Crash'.

I've stopped trying to figure out the mentality of the Academy.
When 'Shakespeare in Love' beats 'Saving Private Ryan' and
'The Color Purple' wins no awards, I give up!! There is more to this
than awarding talent and excellence.

As Jon Stewart so accurately noted,
" For those of you keeping score;
Martin Scorsese-0 ( after umpteen nominations)
Three 6 Mafia-1" ( for Best Song)

I have to think that the nomination is the real acknowledgement, not the award. I think the awards boil down to the movie biz promoting itself more than anything else, although it's not as silly as the Grammy awards, which are essentially the "most commercially viable _____" award in each category, regardless of artistry.

I thought the Scorsese comment was one of the funniest of the night. Of all the awards, it was the one I understood least. I didn't find anything particularly captivating about any of the songs up for an Oscar, but Three 6 Mafia getting it was inexplicable, if artistic merit is to be accounted for at all.

Three 6 Mafia song was great because it was so perfect for that movie

:shrug: