10 Times the Oscars Got It Wrong | Video Essays | The Ringer

hi there I'm Adam Naaman with another ringer film video essay it's an annual tradition to argue with our friends about the Oscars secure in the knowledge that they don't really matter and they don't really matter but there is something to be said for maintaining a mainstream Cannon and on those grounds it's still worth pointing out when the academy gets things wrong I'm sorry no there's a mistake like really wrong sometimes it's clear right away that an incorrect nominee is one in a crucial category sometimes would be hindsight to help us see the mistake with 2020 Vision or maybe to take off our rose-colored glasses about a particular move your performance it hasn't aged well for this list of 10 Academy words we think that the Oscars might want back we decided to obey a certain set of rules or else we'd be here all day for one thing we didn't want to go back before 1950 we wanted to make sure that the movies we're talking about were mostly available for viewers to find and watch and compare and the second thing is that we limited our alternate choices to other actual nominees or else we'd be talking talking about Jack Nicholson getting robbed for The Shining or Ken Marino getting robbed for Wet Hot American Summer or you know countless other examples beyond that the opinions expressed here are of course deeply subjective and will hopefully lead to plenty of arguments in the comment section that's literally the only thing that a comment section is good for so with that in mind let's get started 1955 Grace Kelly over Judy Garland so the award for the best performance by an actress Grace Kelly for the country this is the biggest robbery since Brinks route Rocha marks in a letter to Judy Garland after the latter lost the 1955 Oscar for best actress to Grace Kelly and the country girl for Groucho still 20 years away from his honorary Oscar the joke was in line with his famously non-conformist attitudes about institutions like the academy the idea often quoted that he didn't want to belong to any club that would have someone like him for a member but Garland very much wanted that Oscar and by any measure deserved it her performance in A Star is Born is a genuine turret force perched on an emotional tightrope between exuberance and despair Garland had been struggling with drug addiction and other issues in the early 1950s and the film was promoted as her comeback the story of an up-and-coming singer standing by her Showbiz wreck of a husband gained a certain poignancy from the fact that Garland had herself gone from ingenue to cautionary Tale But despite all that rich gossipy subtext and the remarkable musical comic talent in her acting Garland lost to Kelly similarly shaped suffering wife role in the country girl an award that seemed to be based mostly on Kelly's willingness to de-glamorize herself at the peak of her celebrity Kelly's actually quite good in the country girl but to paraphrase the lyrics of Garland's greatest number in A Star is Born the 1955 Oscar will always be remembered as the one [Music] 1965 Rex Harrison and my fair lady in one corner a handsome charming note perfect if very long adaptation of a beloved Broadway musical in the other a hip subversive comedy but nuclear proliferation and mutually assured destruction directed by one of the most subversive figures in Hollywood history that the state and tradition-minded members of The Academy opted for the crowd-pleasing romance of my fair lady over the annihilating satire of Doctor Strange Love is hardly a surprise but the sweep that saw Rex Harrison's stiff speed talking Henry Higgins best Peter Sellers Triple Threat comic genius was bogus all the way sellers chameleonic physical and vocal talents would be impressive even if he was acting in a vacuum I'm coming through fine too eh good then well then as you say we're both coming through fine good well it's good that you're fine then and I'm fine I agree with you it's great to be fine but his Quick Change act as variably a British officer a German scientist and the president of the United States cinches the disparagingly universal subtext of Stanley Kubrick's classic the idea that liberals conservatives and fascists are all basically the same scared moronic mammals Under the Skin sellers is particularly brilliant as the ineffectual American commander-in-chief American mostly a doppelganger for Adlai Stevenson who's so Meek he can't even speak up to the Russian Premiere over the White House hotline and so Lily liver he lets Dr Strangelove an ex-nazi with delusions of grandeur talk him into launching a first strike against Russia and these scenes sellers pulls off the remarkable existential feat of convincingly arguing with himself well I would hate to have to decide who stays up and who goes down it would not be necessary Mr President could easily be accomplished with a computer Harrison would shortly go on to be the face of lame duck mid-60s Hollywood as Dr Doolittle sellers acting made him Immortal in a way that no mushroom cloud will ever erase this is one of the more frustrating choices in Oscar's history 1977 Faye Dunaway over [ __ ] Spacek [Applause] Dave itzkopf's book on the making of network there's an anecdote about how Faye Dunaway thought that her character Cutthroat TV executive Diana Christensen lacked a certain Humanity in response the film's director Sydney lumet warned her to not try and humanize the character since he just cut it out anyway goddamn agent Lou I'm count dunaway's anti-heroin network is a fascinating and memorable character but she's also a study in how an actress can be undermined by her material Dunaway Styles herself in the film as cold calculating sexually manipulated monstrous because that's what the movie needs but compared to her tragic characterization a couple of years earlier in Chinatown she's playing a cartoon by contrast is a SpaceX performance in Brian's carry is miraculously unaffected as she inhabits a very different kind of monster ultimately a kind of proto-revenge of the Nerds Fable in which an outcast lays waste to the high school homecoming dance Carrie is a showcase for De Palma's playful formal control but all the tracking shot and split screen sequences would be for nod without SpaceX Eerie wounded Humanity she's so painfully sympathetic as the shut-in bible-schooled Carrie White that her eventual transformation into a blood-soaked avenging Angel feels uncanny and terrifying and sad the film's famous final shot suggests that Kerry refuses to let go of her Rage or her loneliness even from Beyond the Grave that's the grip of SpaceX acting long before the academy missed out on giving Lupita Nyong'o an Oscar or at least a nomination for her horror role in us they could have broken the mold wide open my honoring space I can carry the 55th annual Academy Awards 1983. Ben Kingsley and Gandhi over Paul Newman in the verdict look it's not like the Oscars weren't going to go with the guy who played Gandhi and there's technically nothing wrong with Ben kingsley's performance although there'd probably be more scrutiny today over the question of whether the british-born actor whose father was of Indian descent utilized a form of brown face to Aid his portrayal of the famed political ethicist it may seem tough to begrudge kingsley's Triumph in a tough category that even leaving aside the near Flawless comic work of Dustin Hoffman and Tootsie Kingsley should have been playing for second place against Paul Newman's superlative turn as a run-out ambulance chasing lawyer in the verdict a role that took him out of his leading man comfort zone and into darker and more weathered territory courses the court doesn't exist to give him Justice Court exists to give him a are they gonna get it hey Mike they might Sydney lumet's film is as much a moral tale as it is a courtroom Thriller and watching Newman's Frank Galvin slowly and painfully rise to his own potential is in its way thrilling he inhabits the script's cliches so fully that they feel closer to something like classic melodrama and his final summation sequence is a master class his reaction shot upon learning the outcome of the case meanwhile is one of the great and most ecstatic studies you'll ever see in accurately understatement it's Newman's restraint in this moment that fills our hearts where another actor might have tried to show us more if Newman had won in the verdict for his career best work he wouldn't have needed the Oscar he was given a few years later for going on autopilot in The Color of Money which in turn would have let Bob Hoskins win a very deserved award for Mona Lisa 1990 Dances with Wolves Jim Wilson and Kevin Costner Kevin Costner over Martin Scorsese timeout time out in case anyone's wondering why we didn't go with 1989 here and the Absurd selection of Driving Miss Daisy overdo the right thing that's because drum roll please the latter was not actually even nominated for best picture so instead we'll enshrine the Peerless vacuity of the Oscars at the dawn of the 90s by reminding you that a year after the Oscars didn't even nominate do the right thing for Best Picture Kevin Costner's epic vanity project Dances with Wolves a prototypical white savior narrative featuring endless admiring close-ups of its director star and Magic hour was somehow judged to be a better movie than Martin scorsese's Goodfellas a stupid one only the most accomplished american crime film of the decade and a movie that somebody somewhere right now is quoting lines from maybe it's me I'm a little [ __ ] up maybe but I'm funny how I mean funny like I'm a Clowney I make you laugh I'm here to [ __ ] amuse you nobody is quoted the script of Dances with Wolves meanwhile since the cameras were rolling on set the first one as I call in seems a very tough fellow I hope I never have to fight him from the little line now he seems to be honest and very direct the two films are actually quite fascinating as a study and contrasts Dances with Wolves of solemn Goodfellas was exuberant Dances with Wolves is ponderous Goodfellas is electric Dances with Wolves is pretentious whereas Goodfellas in its lean mean vicious way is quite profound about Prime and Punishment in the American dream I can't do better than Paulie and Kale's famous remark that Costner made Dances with Wolves with feathers in his hair and feathers in his head but even if wolves had to win best picture for being such a banal edifying politically correct revision of America's origin myth Goodfellas is so Superior as filmmaking so Superior in terms of technique and construction that scorsese's loss in the best director category when he was arguably at the peak of his powers remains an unforgivable slight that we're going to overturn right now 1993 Al Pacino in The Scent of a Woman Denzel Washington and Malcolm X there's a version of this game where of this video where we talk about Al Pacino being robbed time and time again in the 1970s he had the bad fortune in 1973 to be nominated for The Godfather against Joel Gray's Powerhouse song and dance stuff in Cabaret 1976 for Dog Day Afternoon he goes up against Jack Nicholson and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as part of a massive sweep for that film the 80s Pacino's mostly dormant so the idea is that by the 90s he's a Perpetual bridesmaid I will say that in 1993 Pacino absolutely deserved an Oscar for a role in which he was nominated and that would be best supporting actor for glendary Glenn Ross apologies to Gene Hackman an Unforgiven it's a very close category they didn't win that award he won best actor for Scent of a Woman a ridiculously over-the-top performance performance is actually kind of painful to watch now and which set the tone for better and for worse for puccino's later career hijinks congratulations tits hoorah meanwhile Pacino's Chief competitor Denzel Washington carried Spike Lee's Malcolm X for three hours and across the Finish Line flashing leading man Charisma in addition to amazing technical skill I think this is a prime example of the devil's chickens coming back home to roost that the chickens that he sent out the violence that he perpetrated in other countries here and abroad be it four children in Birmingham violence has come back to claim one of their own Denzel would eventually get his own best actor Oscar for trading day which I would say is his Scent of a Woman a Victory lap around a veteran's screen persona but let's say Denzel should have won from Malcolm X and we can say that Pacino deserves two other Oscars for pretty much whichever of his movies you like how about we retrospectively wore them for Serpico for which he lost best actor to his glendary Glen Ross co-star Jack Lemmon in a movie I guarantee you've never heard of called save the Tiger 1995. Martin Landau Woods oh well allow me to retort in a regular essay a couple years ago I argued that the contest between Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction for best picture at the 1995 Oscars was a deeply symbolic one and that even though Forrest Gump triumphed at the end of the night Quentin Tarantino absolutely won the war obviously Pulp Fiction casts a longer and cooler Shadow than Robert zemeckis's weirdly reactionary 20th century picaresque but it's more fun for us to single at one member of Tarantino's cast as the spiritually conflicted bad [ __ ] Jules winnefeld Samuel L Jackson was Pulp Fiction's voice and also its soul and that he was relegated to the supporting actor category behind John Travolta says more about Cinema's racial politics than who's really the quote unquote lead in a total Ensemble piece it's Jules who gets the party started in Pulp Fiction with the Ezekiel 25-25 speech and who ends things by choosing the path of the shepherd Jackson's line readings whether it be funny serious or somewhere in between are Hall of Fame stuff all the way hmm this is a tasty burger now look Martin Landau is great as the Lugosi and Edward he's tender he's funny he's memorable he does Justice to screen Legend [Music] and in any other year he'd be a slam dunk and he won but it shouldn't matter Jackson was robbed for a turn that helped to Define American movie acting in the 90s and Beyond so we're giving him his due 2002 Ron Howard over David Lynch A Beautiful Mind Brian Grazer Ron Howard producer on the recent site in San Paulo the best films of all time a Holland Drive placed A Beautiful Mind probably wouldn't Place eighth on a present-day list to the best movies of 2001 and it's one of the weakest Best Picture winners of all time in my opinion a factually bogus psychologically spacious biopic that's pretty much engineered to win Awards by middle Brown Master Ron Howard who got his own Best Director statue in the process a Lynch's denomination for best director from Mulholland Drive was his third and he had zero chance of winning not when the film was shut out in all the other categories including somehow best actress where Naomi Watts would have wiped the mat with the field and should have the nod for best director was a grudging acknowledgment that creatively nobody else could have done what Lynch did with Mulholland Drive salvaged a broken Network TV pilot and turned it into a surrealistic Art House hit there are scenes from a Holland Drive that have influenced movies and other forms of visual art from around the world over the last 20 years I would say nobody remembers a single image from A Beautiful Mind the shot on that Year's telecast of Lynch and fellow loser and you know Master filmmaker Robert Allman sharing a laugh seemingly at the awards expense endures some directors may just be too good for the Academy Awards 2011 The King's Speech over the social network if you were to uh engineer a mid-90s Best Picture Winner in a lab it might look like The King's Speech historical backdrop classically trained British actors crowd-pleasing banalities all carefully packaged for an upper middle brow audience I take that as a compliment you can't argue with the formula historically but the fact is that by 2011 it was well past its expiry date especially compared to David Fincher's right on time Millennial docudrama which wedded Cutting Edge technique to a very contemporary fable about ivy league disruptors laying the groundwork for the internet Erica Albright's a [ __ ] do you think that's because her family changed their name from Albrecht or do you think it's because I'll be you girls are [ __ ] in a way the two films make for fascinating comparison both take on mass communication as their subject where The King's Speech builds to a triumphant piece of oratory Fincher understands intuitively and also anxiously that the medium is the message the social network is a perfect integration of form and content and one of the only American movies of its era or maybe ever to genuinely evoke comparisons to Citizen Kane not that Orson Welles won best picture for that one either last Emma Stone Emma Stone 2017 over Isabel Huber there was a decent chance of an upset in the best actress category in 2017 with Al's Isabel here serving as one of the most compelling dark horses in recent Oscar's memory as a middle-aged woman piecing her life together in the aftermath of sexual assault the French actress was a force of nature by turned stoic impulsive and dangerously unhinged she was like an engine propelling Paul verhoven's film past psychological Thriller territory into the realm of pitch black satire but in the end the front runner won that would be Emma Stone for making eyes at Ryan Gosling and singing and dancing just well enough to make you wonder if her La La Land character could make it singing and dancing [Music] and that's why they need us down to natural and she's probably the best part of La La Land but who pair is a legend and L was the Academy's chance to acknowledge her Decades of excellence in Hollywood in France the movie She Made around the world it happens to big name male actors all the time that they're recognized later for deserving career long work the pairs nomination for a foreign language film though was sort of seen cynically and disappointingly as its own reward obviously there's other Oscars snubs and slights that we didn't cover in this video we'd love to hear your opinions not just on our choices but on your own in the comments come out of Naaman for the ringer thanks for watching and see you next time [Music]

Channel: Ringer NBA

Views: 116,232

Keywords: oscars, academy awards, 2023 oscars, a star is born, judy garland, grace kelly, rex harrison, peter sellers, my fair lady, dr strangelove, network, carrie, faye dunaway, sissy spacek, stephen king, ghandi, ben kingsley, paul newman, the verdict, dances with wolves, kevin costner, do the right thing, spike lee, samuel l jackson, goodfellas, martin scorsese, al pacino, denzel washington, malcolm x, la la land, pulp fiction, social network, emma stone, deniro, oscar, joe, pesci

Id: lsgqEcSU_NQ

Length: 19min 28sec (1168 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 13 2023