The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture – 2010

Great old-fashioned movie making: The King’s Speech (2010).

The 83rd annual Academy Awards for the film year 2010.  The nominations were announced on 25 January 2011 and the awards were held on 27 February 2011.

Best Picture:  The King’s Speech

• The Social Network
• Inception
• True Grit
• Winter’s Bone
• Black Swan
• Toy Story 3
• The Kids Are All Right
• The Fighter
• 127 Hours

Most Surprising Omission:  The Town

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  The Ghost Writer

Rank (out of 84) among Best Picture Years:  #7  (by far the best among years with more than 5 nominated films)

 

The Year in Film: 2010

A couple of star-making performances in the best film of the year.

My Top 20:

1. The Social Network
2. The King’s Speech
3. Inception
4. True Grit
5. The Ghost Writer
6. Winter’s Bone
7. Black Swan
8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I
9. Another Year
10. Toy Story 3
11. The Town
12. Biutiful
13. The Kids are All Right
14. Tangled
15. Shutter Island
16. Never Let Me Go
17. Rabbit Hole
18. The Fighter
19. Green Zone
20. Blue Valentine

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture – 2008

The perfect ending.

The 81st annual Academy Awards, for the film year 2008.  The nominations were announced on 22 January 2009 and the awards were held on 22 February 2009.

Best Picture:  Slumdog Millionaire

• Milk
• The Reader
• Frost/Nixon
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Most Surprising Omission:  The Dark Knight

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  The Dark Knight

Rank (out of 84) Among Best Picture Years:  #45

 

The Year in Film: 2008

A brilliant and perfect ending to the best film of the year.

My Top 20:

1. Slumdog Millionaire
2. Milk
3. The Dark Knight
4. Wall-E
5. Revolutionary Road
6. Rachel Getting Married
7. The Visitor
8. I’ve Loved You So Long
9. Happy-Go-Lucky
10. Let the Right One In
11. In Bruges
12. Iron Man
13. Burn After Reading
14. A Christmas Tale
15. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
16. Australia
17. The Wrestler
18. Gran Torino
19. Changeling
20. The Reader

note:  Nothing like the year before.  The **** films end with #8.  Zodiac – the #25 of 2007, would be the #9 film here.

 

The Year in Film: 2006

Marty directs Leo on how to beat the hell out of Matt. Oh, and he finally wins an Oscar.

My Top 20:

1. The Departed
2. Children of Men
3. Pan’s Labyrinth
4. The Fountain
5. The Queen
6. United 93
7. The Prestige
8. Army of Shadows
9. Casino Royale
10. Tristram Shandy
11. Volver
12. The Lives of Others
13. Stranger Than Fiction
14. The Painted Veil
15. Blood Diamond
16. Sophie Scholl – The Final Days
17. Joyeux Noel
18. Perfume
19. Brick
20. Thank You for Smoking

 

The Year in Film: 2001

I’m a Lord of the Rings fanatic with a thing for Cate Blanchett. What were you expecting to see here?

My Top 20:

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
2. Moulin Rouge
3. The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain
4. Mulholland Dr.
5. Memento
6. Gosford Park
   
7. In the Bedroom
8. The Royal Tenenbaums
9. The Others
10. The Man Who Wasn’t There
11. Ghost World
12. Amores perros
13. Monster’s Ball
14. The Princess and the Warrior
15. A.I.  Artificial Intelligence
16. Vanilla Sky
17. Black Hawk Down
18. The Devil’s Backbone
19. Monsters Inc.
20. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone

 

The 100 Greatest Directors of All-Time 2.0: The Complete List

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg present a special Oscar to their hero: Akira Kurosawa

So, does this supersede my original list?  Well, lists are always organic – they grow and evolve over time.  I’ve fiddled with some of the categories and new films have come out and I’ve seen more films from some directors.  So, my original list was what it was in October of 2009.  This is where I am now, two years later, and one year overdue.  The list will continue to evolve over time.  The list never quite stops.  But here’s where I put it up.

I will remind people again that if you don’t see a director and you’re wondering why, please check the Introduction first.  It became clear on the original list that people didn’t read that instruction.  Please don’t repeat that.  And don’t ask about Godard.  See the Intro.

Also, we’ll again find out who reads this part, the film in parenthesis is not necessarily their best film (hell, with Mankiewicz, it’s his worst).  But it is the film I chose to write about, for whatever reason.

 

Adding Insult to Injury: The 10 Best Directors Who Weren’t Nominated with their Film at the Academy

That Oscar Cameron Crowe is holding? It wasn't for Best Director.

I have put off what was supposed to be an annual update of the Top 100 Directors of All-Time because I got sidetracked working on a ranking of all 210 directors who have been nominated for an Oscar over the years.  I had hoped to add Christopher Nolan to that list.  After all, on my initial list he was the highest ranked director without an Oscar nomination and Inception was easily going to be a Best Picture nominee.  Except, somehow, the Academy left him off their nomination list – the third time he has earned a DGA nomination but not an Oscar nomination, tying Rob Reiner for first place on that dubious distinction list.

So, since I’m a long way from finishing my ranking of the Oscar nominated directors, I thought I would throw up two lists.  The next one will be the best English language directors who have never been nominated for an Oscar or had one of their films nominated for Best Picture.  But this one is the Top 10 Directors of All-Time Who Have Never Been Nominated for An Oscar Even Though Their Film Was.

Because I am only including directors who have never been nominated, some of the more egregious director omissions in Academy history aren’t part of this list (like say Steven Spielberg for Jaws or John Huston for The Maltese Falcon or Ang Lee for Sense and Sensibility).  Those directors have all been nominated for Best Director by the Academy at some point and are among the 210 who will be ranked later.

There are 72 directors on this list – many of them from the early years when there were far more films nominated than directors (today the films outnumber the directors 10 to 5 but there were years where they outnumbered them 12 to 3).  In the last two years as many directors have been added to this list (8) as had been added from 1994 to 2008.

By the way, the antithesis to this list is Fellini.  He is the only person in Academy history to be nominated for Best Director more than once while never having a film nominated for Best Picture.  He is tied with Woody Allen for most Director nominations without Picture noms (4), ahead of Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock (3 each).  Oddly enough, Otto Preminger was nominated twice when his film wasn’t and the only film he ever directed that was nominated didn’t earn him a nomination.

I have cut people off for the same reason that I have done on my all-time list – if they have directed fewer than 4 films, so no Joe Wright or Neill Blomkamp.  But here is my Top 10:

 

Does the Directors Branch of the Academy hate Christopher Nolan? (and other Oscar notes for 2010) (updated)

Christopher Nolan on the set of The Dark Knight

In my upcoming ranking of all the directors ever nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards, I was going to be glad to move Christopher Nolan onto the list this year.  First of all, he had already made my top 25 of all-time (coming in at #22) and that was before Inception.  While nominated by the Directors Guild for Memento, he had failed to repeat that at the Oscars.  Then, in 2008, he, along with his brilliant The Dark Knight, got snubbed again at the Academy.  Today, he seemed like a very sure bet.  This time, he didn’t just have the DGA (like in 2001), or the DGA and the BFCA (like in 2008) – he had been nominated for the DGA, the BFCA, the Golden Globe and the BAFTA.  How significant is that?  He just became the third director ever to get all four of those nominations and fail to earn an Oscar nomination – joining Baz Luhrmann for Moulin Rogue and Marc Forster for Finding Neverland.  Even the list of DGA / BAFTA / Globe nominees with a snub is a list of notable Oscar failures – Steven Spielberg for Jaws, Ang Lee for Sense and Sensibility and Peter Jackson for Two Towers.

It’s true that once again he was nominated for his screenplay (like for Memento) and this time his film made the final list.  But again, it is the directors who seem to not be able to acknowledge his talent.  He joins Rob Reiner as the only three time nominee for the DGA to not have an Oscar nomination.