Posted on 02/25/2012 2:59:30 PM PST by OddLane
Jack Haley, Jr. hit upon a brilliant idea. The producer of the 1979 Oscars telecast devised a special medley of hit songs the Academy never nominated. Steve Lawrence and Sammy Davis, Jr. would perform it at the ceremony. The Academy’s Music Branch protested, but when Haley and host Johnny Carson threatened to walk they relented.
A smash hit, the audience applauded “Oscar’s Only Human” throughout and treated the performers to a prolonged ovation.
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Oscar is only human, and he’s made some terrible mistakes over the years. From controversial wins to unfortunate slights to sins of showmanship, the Academy Awards have failed time and time again.
In honor of this Sunday’s broadcast, here are my personal picks for Oscar’s ten most egregious screw-ups:
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
“I don’t think I’ve watched an Oscar show for 20 years. Maybe 30 years. I’m not sure.”
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Same here,I despise the show but love movies.
A friend and I go every week,but the awards are nuts.
Brando and Scott were right.
Ditto on the two chicks...no idea who they are.
"The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance."
The Hurt Locker beat out Precious for Best Pic - and it was a crime!
You should see Saving Private Ryan, if only for the historical aspect. The Longest Day was good - but it DID NOT show the REALITY of what happened on Omaha Beach like SPR did. Vets of Omaha Beach [who lived] say it was EXACTLY like that - Hell On Earth ...
If you ever saw Band Of Brothers - the combat scenes in SPR are EXACTLY like it, only MORE intense ...
BTW: Gwyneth Paltrow from SIL won Best Actress and beat out Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I in the movie Elizabeth - laughable ...
ALSO, Judi Dench [Elizabeth I in SIL] beat out Lynn Redgrave [Gods And Monsters] - even though she had ONLY 7 minutes screen time. What a crock ...
Marisa Tomei - won Best Supporting Actress for My Cousin Vinny. BTW: Jack Palance announced her as the winner, but the rumor is he screwed the pooch and announced the WRONG name. HOWEVER, the accounting firm that tabulates the votes categorically disputes that rumor. Many people think that Vanessa Redgrave shoulda won for Howard's End ...
Mira Sorvino - won Best Supporting Actress for the Woody Allen film, Mighty Aphrodite. Many people think Joan Allen shoulda won for playing Pat Nixon in Nixon ...
Check out my post #44 ...
But you see, I don’t like war movies!
That is awful that Dench beat Redgrave for best supporting (that was the award, right?)
Btw, Lynn Redgrave’s fantastic in “Georgie Girl” a big hit movie that seems to have fallen out of memory. Although the song was a huge hit, maybe it won an award. That is also an excellent pro-life movie.
“Raging Bull lost the Best Picture to Ordinary People.”
That could bump Gump!
I really always thought “Ordinary People” was a TV movie.
That shows how much attention I pay.
Thats not the point - its history ...
I've been in combat, but NOTHING like that - my Uncle has, cuz he was there on Omaha Beach. I never asked him about it - until I saw the movie [SPR] ...
He said that as soon as the ramp of the landing craft came down - his best buddy's head was shot clean off by a burst of machine gun fire. He got his buddy's brains all over him - but he just had to move forward. Move or die ...
My Uncle compared it to Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, when Pickett's Division advanced on the fortified wall [with Union Soldiers behind it] at Cemetery Ridge.
He said that he agreed with Gen. James Longstreet [CSA Civil War General under Robert E. Lee] when he said [after the Civil War] that with the advent of mechanized weapons, assaults on fortified positions are insanity.
He said that Longstreet's views were validated during WWI, but that during WWII, there was no choice. No matter where they landed, the Allies were forced to invade "Fortress Europe" ...
"There are two kinds of people who are staying on this beach: those who are dead and those who are going to die. Now let’s get the hell out of here."
And, thats EXACTLY what they did ...
BTW: Robert Mitchum played Colonel Taylor and delivered the quote in The Longest Day ...
And one of the most brutally honest scenes about actual combat then followed, with the knowing ordering of man, after man, after man, after man, after man to their deaths to push the Bangalore Torpedo apparatus forward until it could be used to blast a hole through the Nazi brestworks to get them off the beach.
Raging Bull probably lost because all of the characters were unlikeable-—there was no one to root for. None of the characters had any good traits. Can you name one character you liked? And boxing is REPULSIVE. Ordinary People, on the other hand, had likeable characters—even though they had flaws. DeNiro or Donald Sutherland? Not even close. Sutherland had the more difficult role and couldn’t rely on make-up and added weight to help his performance like DeNiro. Oscar always rewards the actors that play famous people and change their appearance (hello Charlize Theron) and overlooks the ones that just act with what they got. I will always choose movies about people and relationships over action movies, which BORE me.
That’s funny. When I saw Forrest Gump it was the only movie that I had ever seen that I wished WOULDN’T end. Give it another try.
Offended? Well, isn't that special?
Years ago, Jim made the decision to allow all kinds of "off topic" threads here. I recall it causing some amount of uproar at the time.
They are generally posted in the Chat forum, so if you would set your preferences to not see that forum, you might guard from the pain of being offended.
Boxing films aren't my favorite sports films in general-with the exception of a few of the Rocky movies-but to me it seems like it gets inordinate praise.
If you take away Joe Pesce, it's a really mediocre film. Definitely not in the same league as The Gangs of New York, Taxi Driver, or evenThe Departed, which wasn't even an original idea-aside from the Jack Nicholson/Whitey Bulger plot-line.
"Sideways" won for Best Adapted Screenplay. "Million Dollar Baby" won Best Picture that year.
"Crash" didn't deserve to win. "Shakespeare in Love" certainly shouldn't have won. And how could "Chicago" beat out "The Pianist"? -- Okay, Roman Polanski, but come on, would "Chicago" really have been the best movie of any year?
The guy who wrote this complains that Bruce Beresford wasn't nominated for "Driving Miss Daisy," when the real scandal was that they gave "DMD" Best Picture.
That shows how much attention I pay.
I suspect you paid better attention than the Academy.
“And how could “Chicago” beat out “The Pianist”?
We love Chicago, it’s one of our faves. Hubby took me to see it when it came out (getting hubby to the theartre is a tall order - literraly - because he’s so tall he hates the seats!)
I never saw the pianist, but I think I sort of remember it.
Isn’t it about a man with some severe mental difficulties? I get it confused with “a beautiful mind”.
Thanks for explaining about “Sideways”, although knowing which other movie won I’d just as soon they’d given it to sideways.
Hubby wanted me to watch “million dollar baby” and I refused, I said I already know what that movie is about, it’s going to be a bunch of anti-Catholic propaganda. Finally he saw it and he said “you were right”, and hubby’s not even a cat-o-leek as his grandpa used to say.
The Oscars would be watchable if it was an hour long show. Ditch most of the categories where there is little interest. Have a separate luncheon for them like they do for other technical awards. Announce them quickly and move on. Have a couple of production numbers and do at most a dozen awards (probably less) quickly and efficiently. A 3 to 4 hour marathon where you stay up past midnight in the eastern time zone is no longer on my schedule. I will read about it the next morning.
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