Saturday, February 09, 2008

Least-Deserved Oscars

Somehow, Sean Nelson crawled inside my brain. I agree with him on everything. Everything.

Read his rundown of ten worst Oscars here.

5 comments:

The McGuffin said...

Ha...I read that a few days ago and I'm thinking..."Eric would love this." But he slammed "Crash" so I didn't send it. Last thing I need is to send you more firepower denouncing "Crash." MSN has some pretty sweet writers doing some interesting work.

Mr. Independent said...

C'mon, man! Dustin Hoffman as Rain Man didn't deserve an Oscar? I completely forgot it was Dustin Hoffman!

Maybe the rest are credible, but I can't agree with that one.

Eric said...

If I were an Academy voter, I would make a personal vow never to vote for a person portraying a sick/disabled person, because I believe there is no more blatant ploy for an Oscar than that. Look at some winners from the last 20 years. 50% of them portrayed a sick/handicapped person.

Dustin Hoffman (1988) autism
Daniel Day-Lewis (1989) CP
Anthony Hopkins (1991) psychotic cannibalism
Al Pacino (1992) blindness
Tom Hanks (1993) AIDS
Tom Hanks(1994) retardation
Geoffrey Rush(1996) insanity
Jack Nicholson (1997) OCD
Jamie Foxx (2004) blindness
Forrest Whittaker (2006) insanity

It's weird that, before 1988, you have to go back ten years to 1978 (Jon Voigt in "Coming Home") to find a winner who fits the sick/handicapped trait. Thus, it seems like a modern trend...a trend that bothers me.

So, while I don't dispute Dustin Hoffman's genius, his role in Rain Man was total Oscar bait--maybe not one of the ten biggest mistakes (I can't believe the author didn't include the fact that "Citizen Kane" was trumped for best picture by "How Green Was My Valley"), but I agree with the author in spirit.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget about Charlize Theron being rewarded for convincingly playing "ugly". Bee. Ess.

Anonymous said...

Prepare to hear me use the modifier "abominable-to-innocuous" with regularity in the near future.