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 Best of the Nighthawk Awards: The 2000′s

Still the best animated film of this or any other decade.

2000  -  2009

Total Films I’ve Seen:  1296

Films That Make the Top 5 in Any Category:  48

Best Film Not to Make the Top 5 in Any Category:  No Country for Old Men

Film of the Decade:  The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Worst Film of the Decade:  Captivity

Worst Best Picture Nominee of the Decade:  The Blind Side

Worst Film of the Decade Made by a Top 100 Director:  What Planet Are You From

 

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: 2007

Come on. You didn’t really think I would put a picture of Javier Bardem with that haircut here, did you?

My Top 20:

1. No Country for Old Men
2. Atonement
3. Across the Universe
4. There Will Be Blood
5. Ratatouille
6. Eastern Promises
7. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
8. Michael Clayton
9. Juno
10. Away from Her
11. Sweeney Todd
12. 3:10 to Yuma
13. Persepolis
14. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
15. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
16. Lust, Caution
17. I’m Not There
18. Gone Baby Gone
19. The Darjeeling Limited
20. A Mighty Heart

note:  This list stops short.  **** films that are just off the list: Charlie Wilson’s War, Once, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.  ***.5 films that follow: Zodiac, In the Valley of Elah, Black Book and Hot Fuzz.

 

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 History of the Academy Awards: A Guess at Best Picture 6-10

Almost Famous (2000)

With the recent change in the Academy Awards, upping the number of Best Picture nominees from 5 to 10, it calls for a look at Academy history. The first thing to remember is that the number of nominees fluctuated in the early years. It started with 3 (plus 3 for Best Production), then went up to 5 the next year, changed to 8 in 1931-32, went up to 10 the next year, up to 12 the year after that, stayed 12 in 1935, then went back down to 10 where it stayed until 1943. In 1944, it went back down to 5 and has stayed like that ever since.

Of course, the number of Best Director nominees will be staying at 5, so there will be guesses as to what “the real 5 are,” but for now, we are back to 10.

So what about the years between? If it had been 10 this whole time, what would the other nominees have been? I have taken my best stab at this for all the years in between and I tried to keep it as objective as possible. So, I set a few rules.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Animated Film

Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit - the best animated film of 2005 (according to me and the Academy)

It took until 2001 before the Academy finally could be bothered to give a separate award for Best Animated Film. The Annies had started back in 1992. Various critics groups had been giving the award out for years. The switch also finally pushed the Golden Globes to give it its own category and stop throwing them in the Comedy / Musical category.

 

The 10 Best Animated Films or Stupid AFI!

The problem with AFI’s lists isn’t the final lists. It’s with the ballots they send out. Their recent top 10 genre lists had ballots of 50 films each from which to select their top 10. And for some reason, those ballots included mediocre recent Disney films like Pocahontas and Mulan rather than Lilo and Stitch, the best Disney film since Aladdin. They also, for some reason, even though it was eligible, didn’t include Ratatouille. Or Watership Down, a film I have always loved.