The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture (ranked – 2013 version)

Still one of the best openings ever. Oh, and still the best film ever made and by default, the #1 film on the Best Picture list.

Back in 2009, I did a long series of histories of all the Academy Awards categories (you can find a full list here).  The final thing I did was a ranked list of all 468 Best Picture nominees.  When I revised all those posts in 2010 I only added in the 2009 Best Picture nominees to the ranked list rather than redo the list.  There was a reason for that – for a long time, that one post was by far the most popular thing I had ever put up.  There were stretches where it accounted for almost 20% of the hits on the entire site.  But that changed drastically with Google’s changing of how images come up.  But still I didn’t revise it, because by then, I was in the middle of a project that began on 9 March 2010 and only finished on 6 March 2013 – a year by year look at Best Picture in every year.  So I wanted to wait until the project was done.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture – 2005

The 2005 Best Picture nominees

The 78th annual Academy Awards, for the film year 2005.  The nominations were announced on January 31, 2006 and the awards were held on March 5, 2006.

Best Picture:  Crash

• Good Night and Good Luck
• Munich
• Brokeback Mountain
• Capote

Most Surprising Omission:  Walk the Line

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  King Kong

Rank (out of 84) Among Best Picture Years:  #5

 

Great Director #13: Ang Lee

Ang Lee

Heath Ledger in the Fourth of July scene in Brokeback Mountain (2005)

• Born:  1954
• Rank:  13
• Score:  760.80
• Awards:  Oscar / 2 DGA / 2 BAFTA / 2 Golden Globes / BFCA / 2 NYFC / LAFC / 2 BSFC / 2 NBR
• Nominations:  2 Oscars / 3 DGA / 3 Golden Globes / BFCA
• Feature Films:  11
• Best:  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Worst:  Ride with the Devil

Top 5 Feature Films:

1. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – 2000
2. Brokeback Mountain – 2005
3. Sense and Sensibility – 1995
4. The Ice Storm – 1997
5. Lust, Caution – 2007

Top 10 Best Director Finishes  (Nighthawk Awards):

• 1995 – 1st – Sense and Sensibility
• 1997 – 3rd – The Ice Storm
• 2000 – 1st – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• 2005 – 2nd – Brokeback Mountain
• 2007 – 10th – Lust, Caution

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture (Ranked) (2010 update)

Sunset Boulevard (1950) - the greatest film ever made

Here we have it. Oscar day is upon us. And for those of you who have been reading these posts for the last month, thanks, and I hope, if you like film, you’ll keep reading. For the next year, I’ll be doing a countdown of the 100 Greatest Directors of All-time, doing one every few days or so. I’ll also continue to do regular film posts and the Family News page will come back to the front, if you’re here to read about Thomas, Veronica and me.

Okay, so that was last year.  The Top 100 Directors are now all completed as can be seen here. This next year involves further work on my Year in Film series, my Top 100 Novels and, starting this week, an in-depth look at all the Best Picture nominees.

Anyway, for the last post, since I have seen 461 475 of the 468 478 films that have been nominated for Best Picture, I am giving a comparative ranking of all the films nominated for Best Picture.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture (Part IV)

1990 saw the re-introduction of an interesting phenomenon – the split between the critics and the major awards groups. It had happened before. In 1975 and 76, Nashville and All the President’s Men had both won Best Picture from three different critics groups, only to lose the Golden Globe, Directors Guild and the Oscar for Best Picture (to One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Rocky). Until 1990, the only other film to manage three Best Picture wins from the major critics groups was Terms of Endearment, which won the Oscar. Then the trend came in with a vengeance.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Director (Part IV)

Four Friends and an Oscar

But What I Really Want to Do is Direct

Actors have been getting nominated for Best Director since the beginning of time. Or at least the beginning of the Academy Awards. No exaggeration. Charlie Chaplin was nominated for Best Comedy Direction in the initial awards in 1928.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Actor (Part II)

1970 is an easy place to make a break because it’s about half way through, but it’s also appropriate because here is where we have the first Best Actor nomination for the man who would come to dominate this list: Jack Nicholson.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress Part II

Until 1988, only three times did an actress get nominated in both categories in one year: Fay Bainter in 1938, Teresa Wright in 1942 and Jessica Lange in 1982, and they all won Supporting and lost Actress. Sigourney Weaver in 1988, however, lost in both categories, as did Emma Thompson in 1993, Julianne Moore in 2002 and Cate Blanchett in 2007. But in 1993, Thompson faced off against Holly Hunter in both categories and Hunter won Best Actress and lost Supporting.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay

Adapted Screenplay is a tricky thing because for some twenty years it was simply called Best Screenplay, and often films were nominated for this as some form of Original Screenplay (either Story or Story and Screenplay). It isn’t until 1956 when it finally settles down into its current form.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: An Introduction (with trivia) – Revised for 2010

From Here to Eternity (1953) - on my point scale, the most successful film in Oscar history

The first thing I want to point out is that I am no way affiliated with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “Oscar” and “Academy Awards” are registered trademarks of the Academy.   ALL THE NEW THINGS ARE IN GREEN – with things that have changed, I have tried to cross out so the old info is still visible – new stuff will simply be in green

I am, however, obsessed with them. Part of it is being interested in film for a very long time. I have seen well over 5000 films, including over 78% 93% of all the nominated films, accounting for 90% 96% of all the nominees. That combined with list-making and OCD makes me the perfect person to write about all things Oscar.