Oscar Snubs: They Wuz Robbed!

[DollEyes]

   Re the late, great Robin Williams, one of the biggest Oscar snubs of all time IMO was for his brilliant performance in 1990's Awakenings, as a doctor who treated catatonic patients with a miracle drug that restored them back to "normal." While Robert DeNiro, who played one of the patients, was deservedly nominated for Best Actor, I thought that Williams' beautiful, restrained performance was just as worthy of a nomination.

[spaceytraci1208]

Re the late, great Robin Williams, one of the biggest Oscar snubs of all time IMO was for his brilliant performance in 1990's Awakenings, as a doctor who treated catatonic patients with a miracle drug that restored them back to "normal." While Robert DeNiro, who played one of the patients, was deservedly nominated for Best Actor, I thought that Williams' beautiful, restrained performance was just as worthy of a nomination.

OMG, that movie is a heartbreaker! Wonderful performances

[DollEyes]

  Bumping it up with some of the biggest Oscar snubs of the year: namely, Ralph Fiennes for The Grand Budapest Hotel, David Oyelowo for Selma and Ava DuVernay, for Best Director for Selma. Had she been nominated, she would have been the first woman of color ever to get a Best Director Oscar nomination.

 

 

The Lego Movie was completely snubbed.

 

It got a Best Song nomination for "Everything Is Awesome."

Edited January 15, 2015 by DollEyes

[Janet Snakehole]

The Lego Movie was completely snubbed.

[absnow54]

The Lego Movie was completely snubbed.

Not completely. "Everything Is Awesome" pulled a nomination for Best Original Song.

[Shannon L.]

I'm so disappointed with the lack of nominations for Selma.  Seeing it nominated for Best Picture, with the snubs in the other categories, almost makes it feel like they thought had to give it something so they didn't get shouts of racism and sexism.

 

Also, I didn't realize just how impressed I was with Nightcrawler until I didn't see it nominated for anything other than Best Original Screenplay.

 

I don't think Foxcatcher was good enough to win, but how can it get nominated for Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay, but not get a Best Picture nod?  They were allowed up to 10 nominees. 

Edited January 15, 2015 by Shannon L.

[caracas1914]

Chazwick Bozeman as James Brown.   Get it up.   Just an amazing performance, I mean to channel James Brown.  Comparable to Cottillard with Edith Piaf IMO.

[absnow54]

I don't think Foxcatcher was good enough to win, but how can it get nominated for Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay, but not get a Best Picture nod?  They were allowed up to 10 nominees.

I wouldn't call it a Best Picture snub, I'd call it an undeserved directing nod. The performances were great, but the pacing was terrible. 

[hendersonrocks]

The snubs for Selma this morning are making me angry--ANGRY, I tell you!--all over again about Fruitvale Station being ignored last year. That movie was spectacular and haunting and relevant, and yet the Academy left it out to dry. SMH.

[caracas1914]

I wouldn't call it a Best Picture snub, I'd call it an undeserved directing nod.

 

This.

 

What is particularly annoying is that all the raves of SELMA (when has a film gotten a 99 % Rotten  tomatoes score , 143/145), many of the critics specified her direction as one of it's major strengths.  She had a vision for the movie and it worked.  Whereas the knocks on Foxcatcher pointed out the meandering direction in that case.

Edited January 15, 2015 by caracas1914

[DollEyes]

 

Chazwick Bozeman as James Brown. Get it up.

 

  That's Get On Up.

 

absnow54: I said that "Everything Is Awesome" got a Best Song nomination in my previous post.

[Spartan Girl]

I'm also mad The Lego Movie got snubbed for Best Animated Feature.  And while I'm glad Gone Girl got a Best Actress nod, I'm shocked and upset that it didn't get more nominations.  It at least should have gotten Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay!  What gives?!

[caracas1914]

Knew it was a long shot, but I was hoping for Amy Adams in Big Eyes.  Probably wasn't flashy enough for the Academy but it wasn't an easy role to navigate.

[Janet Snakehole]

I think they were quoting me Doll Eyes :) I missed the song nom, my bad.

I am glad Everything is Awesome was nommed, but I still say the movie was snubbed. Should have been nominated for Best Animated Feature.

[AshleyN]

Whereas the knocks on Foxcatcher pointed out the meandering direction in that case.

IIRC, Miller won the directing prize at Cannes for Foxcatcher*, so some people liked it at least. I think the movie in general is just one of those polarizing ones that had just enough passionate supporters to do well under a ranked ballot system - which is why the fact that it couldn't squeeze into the Best Picture category is kind of surprising.

 

*Which, if we're being honest, is more prestigious than an Oscar nomination.

 

As for other snubs, I mentioned it in the other thread but Jake Gyllenhaal takes this year's "nominated for everything leading up to the Oscars, only to miss the big one" prize, joining the likes of Tilda Swinton, Tom Hanks, and Emma Thompson. Not bad company to be in, really.

Edited January 15, 2015 by AshleyN

[Amethyst]

Amy Adams' snub is weird since she won the Golden Globe.

 

Really disappointed about Selma.  

[JBC344]

I wouldn't call it a Best Picture snub, I'd call it an undeserved directing nod. The performances were great, but the pacing was terrible. 

I agree. I love Bennett Miller, but the best thing about Foxcatcher was the performances.

[Wiendish Fitch]

Where the heck is David Oyelowo's Best Actor nomination? I'm going to be fuming about this all day...

[CherryMalotte]

I have so much hatey hate hate for the Documentary Branch of the Academy right now.  They constantly overlook Werner Herzog, except for Encounters At The End Of The World, and now they blanked on Life Itself.  What a bunch of fucking idiots.

[proserpina65]

For me, the only real disappointments were no Best Actor nomination for Timothy Spall and no Best Foreign Film nomination for Force Majeure.  The rest were not entirely unexpected.

 

I think it bears remembering that all eligible members of the Academy get to submit ballots for Best Picture, but all the other ballots require that voters be members of that particular branch (only directors get to submit ballots for Best Director, only writers get to submit for the screenplay categories), and some of the categories have even more stringent requirements (the documentary categories for example).  So while overall, more Academy members might think a film worthy of a Best Picture nomination, only the directors are picking those nominees, hence some directors getting nominated when their films don't; this is why the various Guild awards are often more indicative of who will be nominated than something like the Golden Globes.

 

Now, I won't deny that the overall age/gender/racial makeup of Academy membership probably does have an influence on the process, but it can get pretty complicated, and there are other factors involved.

Edited January 16, 2015 by proserpina65

[Schweedie]

I'm genuinely sad that Pride didn't get in at all - I thought with the Golden Globe nomination it could happen, and I think with better marketing it might've. The Full Monty and Billy Elliot managed it.

 

Selma doesn't open here for another few months, so I can't speak for it myself, but no director/lead actor nom seems like one hell of a snub.

 

Did Get on Up completely sneak under the radar when it came out? I've been excited to see how that was going to do and didn't even realise it'd already premiered in the US.

[briochetwist]

I thought Ralph Fiennes was robbed, he was amazing in the Grand Budapest Hotel.  It wouldn't have been the same without him.

[Shannon L.]

 

I wouldn't call it a Best Picture snub, I'd call it an undeserved directing nod.

Oh, I don't disagree. While I didn't dislike the film (how could I with those performances?), I did find it really slow.  I'm just always surprised when a movie gets a nomination for a bunch of stuff, but not best picture. 

 

I haven't seen Grand Budapest Hotel yet, but I plan on it.  Still can't believe Selma and Gone Girl didn't get more.

[AshleyN]

I'm not that surprised at the lack of Gone Girl love. I liked it a lot, but even with Fincher's pedigree it's still a pulpy thriller, which isn't a genre that tends to do well at the Oscars. I did think it would get a Screenplay nod, but Director and Picture would be harder.

 

The thing I thought would help it the most would be the lack of major box office hits in the race this year: as of right now The Grand Budapest Hotel is the highest grossing Best Picture nominee at under $60 million domestic (although American Sniper and The Imitation Game will likely pass it at some point) and the field as a whole is easily the lowest grossing since the lineup was expanded. Actually, I bet the show's producers would have liked to see it in contention, since unless American Sniper really explodes, it would have been the highest grossing nominee by a fairly comfortable margin.

Edited January 15, 2015 by AshleyN

[ruby24]

Yeah, see, I thought that would help it too. It is true that genre movies don't do well in general at the Oscars, but there can be exceptions for box office hits. Fatal Attraction for example, got 6 nominations back in 1987, including Picture and Director, and that was a similar kind of movie. They normally like to reward box office success if it's from a well-respected director, with good reviews, etc. And this one had all that, so I am surprised it didn't get in.

 

It actually makes me think that if the Gone Girl ending had been closer to the Fatal Attraction one, they would have embraced the movie more. The Academy is very much a boys club, and I think that ending rattles a lot of men (and women, I'm sure, but men especially). Plus, it was supposed to be a lock for Adapted Screenplay, so the fact that it didn't even get in there tells you they really hated it.

[Rick Kitchen]

There should be an Oscar for Best Casting.

[slowpoked]

It actually makes me think that if the Gone Girl ending had been closer to the Fatal Attraction one, they would have embraced the movie more. The Academy is very much a boys club, and I think that ending rattles a lot of men (and women, I'm sure, but men especially). Plus, it was supposed to be a lock for Adapted Screenplay, so the fact that it didn't even get in there tells you they really hated it.

That really, really, really sucks if that's the case. Nick wanted to stay with Amy, so why should there be any comeuppance for what she did. Now I hope Pike campaigns like crazy and pull off an upset win just so it can be rubbed on these misogynists that yeah, bitches do win sometimes. Oh well, I guess the producers can console themselves with all the money the movie made even though it's not a superhero or a franchise movie. And that Reese also got a Best Actress nom.

[Zuleikha]

The Academy is very much a boys club,

 

93% white, 76% male, average age over 60. I think that says a lot about what got overlooked this year.

[xaxat]

The snubs for Selma this morning are making me angry--ANGRY, I tell you!--all over again about Fruitvale Station being ignored last year. That movie was spectacular and haunting and relevant, and yet the Academy left it out to dry. SMH.

 

Even Cher got an Oscar! Cherrrr! </Conspiracy Brother>

Edited January 16, 2015 by xaxat

[caracas1914]

Rafe Feinnes carried Grand  Budapest Hotel on his comedic shoulders.  I could watch his performance over and over.

 

The  delirious glimmer of insanity in the character Tilda Swinton protrayed in Snowpiercer will make that a memorable role for a long time to come.

 

David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, how frigging difficult it must have been to have  portrayed that character as both larger than life and yet humanly flawed.

 

It's always ironic when performances not nominated are the ones you remember long after the Ceremony is over.

Edited January 16, 2015 by caracas1914

[dusang]

Now, I won't deny that the overall age/gender/racial makeup of Academy membership doesn't have an influence on the process, but it can get pretty complicated, and there are other factors involved.

 

That's a bit of a double-negative there.  

 

I haven't seen any of the movies nominated (which obviously makes my opinion next to worthless in the strictest sense) but I have to say that -- based on Rotten Tomatoes alone, let alone the social, historical, cultural, relevance of the film itself -- the absence of nominations for Selma enrages me.

Edited January 16, 2015 by dusang

[caracas1914]

Maybe the thought "12 Years a Slave" last year was enough 'compensation'.  Who knows what goes through their minds.

Edited January 16, 2015 by caracas1914

[proserpina65]

proserpina65, on 15 Jan 2015 - 2:22 PM, said:

 

Now, I won't deny that the overall age/gender/racial makeup of Academy membership doesn't have an influence on the process, but it can get pretty complicated, and there are other factors involved.

That's a bit of a double-negative there.

 

Oops!  Thanks, I'll fix it.

I haven't seen any of the movies nominated

 

Which is why I rarely get all that worked up about Oscar 'snubs' - if I haven't seen a film, I can't really say that X deserved a nomination and Y didn't.  I save my outrage (and even that's vasting overstating it) for things like Titanic winning Best Picture instead of L.A. Confidential, because I've seen both of them and can judge the relative quality of each.

Edited January 16, 2015 by proserpina65

[slowpoked]

Maybe the thought "12 Years a Slave" last year was enough 'compensation'.  Who knows what goes through their minds.

Ellen: "Possibility #1, 12 Years A Slave wins Best Picture. Possibility #2, you're all racists."

[caracas1914]

I find both Bigelow and Afflecks ommissions for Best Director nods a couple of years ago probably the biggest WTF  in years. The two pictures probably tagged for the faves had both directors overlooked, seriously?

[Shannon L.]

 

I save my outrage (and even that's vasting overstating it) for things like Titanic winning Best Picture instead of L.A. Confidential, because I've seen both of them and can judge the relative quality of each.

I don't think I've ever wanted one nominee to win over another so badly in my life than that particular year and category. 

 

 

I find both Bigelow and Afflecks ommissions for Best Director nods a couple of years ago probably the biggest WTF  in years. The two pictures probably tagged for the faves had both directors overlooked, seriously?

Every time a director is overlooked for a film that's getting other nominations and critical acclaim, I think of what Billy Crystal said from the Oscar stage the year that Prince of Tides was nominated for a few things, including Best Picture, but not for Best Director:  "Did this movie direct itself?"

[Princess Sparkle]

The Affleck nomination was really mind boggling, even though I kind of figured he would miss on it - not because he's not a talented director, but I think he had an uphill battle making people see him as a director instead of an actor who'd made some terrible movies over the years.

 

Not that one should influence the other, but I'm sure in some academy member's minds it did.  Which is awful, and I have to say, if I hadn't be rooting HARD for David Fincher to take home the Oscar for Best Director in 2010 (I'm still mad that went to Tom Hooper), I would've been perfectly happy with Ben Affleck getting a nomination for Best Director for The Town.  For all of his shortcomings as an actor (and he has some), he's a really great director.

[Rick Kitchen]

 

I don't think I've ever wanted one nominee to win over another so badly in my life than that particular year and category.

 

Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan.

 

The English Patient and Unforgiven shouldn't even have been nominated, let alone win.

[absnow54]

I find both Bigelow and Afflecks ommissions for Best Director nods a couple of years ago probably the biggest WTF  in years.

This is why The Critic's Choice Awards is my favorite award show of the season because it takes place the day of the Oscar nominations and you have people who are either really excited because they were nominated that morning, or people who are kind of salty because they've just been snubbed. Affleck won best director that night and the first thing he said was "I'd like to thank the Academy." and it was so on point and hilarious. 

[Schweedie]

I don't think I've ever wanted one nominee to win over another so badly in my life than that particular year and category. 

 

It's a good shout, but...

 

I have to say, if I hadn't be rooting HARD for David Fincher to take home the Oscar for Best Director in 2010 (I'm still mad that went to Tom Hooper), I would've been perfectly happy with Ben Affleck getting a nomination for Best Director for The Town.

 

Yeah, Hooper's win is the one that annoys me the most. Anyone but him in that category that year - although I was also pulling for Fincher - which was a pretty damn good year for film on the whole, I thought. (Wasn't it in 2011, though?) That was also the year when Christopher Nolan was snubbed of even a nomination for Director for Inception, which still eats at me sometimes.

[proserpina65]

Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan.

 

The English Patient and Unforgiven shouldn't even have been nominated, let alone win.

See, that one I wouldn't agree with.  I loved Shakespeare in Love, and while I can admire the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, I don't think the rest of it comes even close to Oscar-level quality.  As for the other two, I liked The English Patient and was fine with its win; I haven't seen Unforgiven.

 

That's the beauty of arguing about it, though, because it's all subjective.  Hell, I know people who think Adam Sandler films are the height of comedic quality.

[Shannon L.]

 

Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan.

Both of those were really good, but that year I was pulling for Elizabeth (although, I wouldn't have bet on it--I knew better).  I loved Elizabeth.

 

 

That's the beauty of arguing about it, though, because it's all subjective.  Hell, I know people who think Adam Sandler films are the height of comedic quality.

You mean they're not?  ;) 

 

Yeah, I know someone whose a script writer and after he saw Shakespeare in Love, he gave it a standing ovation and said to his wife "That's this year's winner!  I'm calling it right now."   Definitely subjective.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Shannon L.

[dusang]

I find both Bigelow and Afflecks ommissions for Best Director nods a couple of years ago probably the biggest WTF  in years. The two pictures probably tagged for the faves had both directors overlooked, seriously?

 

Merf -- there are 8-10 Best Picture nominees and 5 Best Director, at least 3 best pictures will not get a director nomination.  I found Ben Affleck's kvetching rather off-putting.

Edited January 16, 2015 by dusang

[GaT]

Not completely. "Everything Is Awesome" pulled a nomination for Best Original Song.

Why does everyone like this song? I don't get it.

[briochetwist]

The English Patient and Unforgiven shouldn't even have been nominated, let alone win.

 

You lost me here.  Michael Ondaatje's novel was a masterpiece and the movie totally did it justice.  One of my all-time favorites.

[JBC344]

Why does everyone like this song? I don't get it.

Personally I like it for the intentional irony of "annoying song from animated kid movie that everyone will eat up" aspect of it.

[Quof]

I think of what Billy Crystal said from the Oscar stage the year that Prince of Tides was nominated for a few things, including Best Picture, but not for Best Director:  "Did this movie direct itself?"

He actually sang "Seven nominations on the shelf, did this film direct itself?"

[Jamoche]

Personally I like it for the intentional irony of "annoying song from animated kid movie that everyone will eat up" aspect of it.

I'm wondering if the songwriters are looking at the nomination and going 'no! It was carefully crafted to be as annoying as all those other songs manage to be by accident! Unless by "best" you mean "succeeds perfectly at what we set out to do", in which case, bring on the little statue!'

[Constantinople]

I've stopped worry about this over the years.
 
Partly because reasonable people can disagree over who/what should be nominated (thought I might argue that certain nominations/wins are inherently unreasonable).
 
Mostly because it seems the purpose of the awards is self-congratulatory advertising, see increasing the list of best picture nominees from 5 to as many as 10.
 
I've soured on Woody Allen for a number of reasons, but I'm still amused by this from Annie Hall

 

Awards!
 
They do nothing but give out awards!  I can't believe it. 
 
Greatest, greatest fascist dictator, Adolf Hitler!

 
A bit ironic then that it won for best picture, director, actress and screenplay.

[DollEyes]

 

Why does everyone like ["Everything Is Awesome"]? I don't get it.

 

  I like it because it's a fun song from a great movie that makes me smile and hasn't been run into the ground, unlike "Let It Go," last year's Oscar-winner for Best Song, which I liked -a billion times and a trillion YouTube videos ago. To quote Miss Piggy on Kathie Lee and Hoda's Best Of 2014 special, "'Let It Go'-I mean, seriously-Let. It. Go."

 

  I just saw Selma yesterday, appropriately enough, and while the two Oscar nominations it got are well-deserved, IMO, stars David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson and director Ava DuVernay were robbed.

 

 Regarding the snub of The LEGO Movie for Best Animated Film,  I'm convinced that most Academy members are from Planet Duplo.

Edited January 20, 2015 by DollEyes