Tuesday, February 20, 2007
The Oscars should be more like the Baseball Hall of Fame
The Oscars are in four days. The movies up for awards are all from this past year. I think that’s a mistake. We ought to wait a while before bestowing awards to movies and the people that make them. Let the dust settle so we can reflect on what is truly award worthy. It’s not like any of the movies up for awards this year were actually made in the last 12 months.
In baseball, a player must be retired from Major League Baseball for five (5) years before he is eligible for the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. The Oscars are sort of like the Hall of Fame. They are both very prestigious and considered to be the crowning achievement of one’s carrier. The following movies are up for Best Picture this year:
- Babel
- The Departed
- Letters from Iwo Jima
- Little Miss Sunshine
- The Queen
Are we going to feel the same way about any of these movies in 2012? Granted, when I was a kid I figured that I would be too busy riding around in my flying car to be watching movies. For some reason I now don’t see myself in a flying car in 2012.
Here is a list of the movies nominated five (5) years ago for Best Picture:
- A Beautiful Mind
- Gosford Park
- In the Bedroom
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
- Moulin Rouge
The winner was A Beautiful Mind. It featured Russell Crowe as a mathematical genius who also had schizophrenia. I never saw it. I thought it sounded both boring and depressing. I also never watched Moulin Rouge or Gosford Park.
Did anyone watch Gosford Park?
I did see In the Bedroom and thought it was a great movie. I might even be willing to say that it was the best movie I watched that year if I hadn’t watched The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
It’s a movie I’ve watched over and over and over again. I own it on DVD. Both the theatrical version and the extended boxed set. It’s a fantastic movie. There is no way I believe that Russell Crowe acting like a crazy guy who is good with numbers is better then Gandalf fighting a Balrog in the mines of Moria.
I cannot help but believe that five years later, the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would have realized that.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
