Oscar Guesses 2025 Results

 

Oscar Guesses 2025

I'm not sure why I still care. I guess because I love film, even though the Academy Awards have been so terribly flawed for their entire history. 

Ranking the Best Pictures 2023

 

As part of my quest for quantum immortality, I'm watching every movie ever made, which naturally includes every Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) AMPAS Oscar nominee. As has become tradition for me, I managed to screen all ten Best Picture nominees just before the award ceremony. While I correctly predicted Oppenheimer would win, it wasn't my favourite of the ten nominees. Here's how I feel about them, ranked in ascending order of preference: 

10) Killers of the Flower Moon. No one denies that Martin Scorsese is brilliant. Furthermore, Killers of the Flower Moon tells an important story about the ongoing struggle between Indigenous peoples and European colonists. The cinematography is stunning, and while the film is lengthy, it's well paced. However, I was underwhelmed by the lead performances, and Scorsese's direction and the screenplay feel uninspired given the importance of the real-life savagery they chose to adapt for the screen. 

9) Maestro. Bradley Cooper lacks not for ambition, and I admire his skills as both actor and storyteller, which do a credible job here of bringing composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein to life. (Kudos also to the makeup artists, who in this production have created the best aging makeup I've ever seen.) Carey Mulligan, though, is the highlight here; her performance as Felicia Montealegre makes her character more compelling than Cooper as Bernstein. And as a whole, Maestro feels like yet another in a series of well-made Hollywood biographies constructed deliberately to appeal to the somewhat insular tastes of AMPAS voters.

8) Anatomy of a Fall. I didn't perceive anything particularly innovative or challenging about this picture, but it does succeed as a hybrid courtroom drama and murder mystery wrapped up in the disintegration of a small family; there's additional interest in its setting and the film's refusal to provide a definitive answer to the central question of the film. 

7) Oppenheimer. Christopher Nolan once again uses his out-of-sequence narrative technique to good effect here, and the scope and scale of his films rarely fails to impress. Still, despite excellent performances and a well-crafted screenplay, the film's failure to address the politics and the controversy of the atomic bomb to greater depth robs the narrative of its potential; there's nothing particularly bold here. 

From this point forward, my enjoyment of 2023's Oscar nominees is unqualified, and ranking them is merely a matter of how I feel at this particular moment in time. Had any of the top six in my list won Best Picture, I would have been content.

6) The Holdovers. Paul Giamatti is utterly phenomenal as a teacher at a private high school grappling with loneliness and the frustration of realizing his ambitions for his life will be forever frustrated. He's matched by Da'Vine Joy Randolph as the school's chef and chief mother figure; she's grieving the recent death of her son, lost in Viet Nam just before the picture opens. In a sense it's a triple coming-of-age film: Giamatti and Randolph shepherd their characters through times of painful transition just as harrowing as those of their student, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa). Director Alexander Payne balances pathos and comedy expertly here, creating a Christmas story like no other--one in which Christmas itself is sidelined by the events surrounding it. 

5) Past Lives. Director Celine Song's star-crossed romance wrapped me up in a blanket of cozy melancholy. I was completely invested in the story of Nora and Hae Sung, two children who may have been lovers had one not moved away to New York (via Toronto!). It's a warm, gentle, beautiful, but ultimately heartbreaking glimpse of two people trying to reconnect across oceans of space and time--and, in the end, enjoying that reconnection only briefly. It's a film of powerful empathy and sincerity. 

4) Barbie. Years ago, I wrote skeptically about the notion of adapting toys and games, including Barbie, to film. I'm happy to have been wrong in my pessimism, because Barbie's satire and worldbuilding are pointed, compelling, and funny. Greta Gerwig's filmography continues to impress, and I hope she continues to share her vision across genres. 

3) American Fiction. I'm obviously not qualified to opine on questions of Black identity or experience, but for what it's worth, I believed in the story told here by writer-director Cord Jeffersion, and an amazing ensemble led by the always remarkable Jeffrey Wright, never better than he is here. American Fiction balances two story arcs with great invention and dexterity, and there's nary a false note to be had. 

2) Poor Things. I'm a huge fan of director Yorgos Lanthimos and actor Emma Stone, and they're a winning combination in this macabre feminist parable. Willem Dafoe is equal parts hilarious and creepy as a sort of Doctor Frankenstein; Stone deserved her Best Actress win for bringing her Daughter of Frankenstein-esque character to life, who starts off as something of a pathetic, broken doll, but overcomes her environment and her enemies to build a life worth living. 

1) The Zone of Interest. It's just another ordinary day in the life of a Nazi prison camp commandant, going about his terrible business. But we never see the atrocities of the Holocaust clearly in this picture; instead, our vision is limited to the carefully-maintained home and ground of the commandant and his family, the camp walls looming high in the background. From time to time there are shill screams and inverted colour sequences to remind us of the horrors going on behind those walls. But I think what I appreciated most about this film was the ambiguity of its hallucinatory ending, one that can be read in very different ways; to my mind, there is an optimistic and a pessimistic view of humanity on display here, and perhaps they can both somehow exist side-by-side, like a wave function before it's collapsed. 

All in all, I thought AMPAS did a pretty good job of picking their best films of the year. It's not often I feel this way about the Academy's choices, and while I'm sure they could have picked better films to reward, they could also have picked far worse--but they didn't. 

Earl's 2023 Oscar Score

Oof, less than half right! Fail. 
 

2023 Oscar Guesses

 

I know this is late; the Oscar broadcast has already started. But I haven't watched it and I don't know who's already won. 

This marks the first year in a while I haven't seen all of the Best Picture nominees before the broadcast. I had intended to watch three out of the four I haven't seen today, but I awoke very unwell and wound up staying in bed until 5 pm or so. 

My guesses this year are particularly uneducated and based more on sentiment than who I think will actually win. Well, that's not true; some of my guesses in the technical categories are based on who I think will win based on past choices of the Academy. 

Anyway, sound and fury, signifying nothing. 

My 2020 Oscar Ballot Results

20 out of 24! That might be my best showing ever. And for the first time in years, I really have very few quibbles about the Academy's choices. (I saw all the Best Picture nominees, nine out of ten of the screenplay nominees, all of the sound and VFX nominees, all of the production design nominees, all of the score nominees, all of the editing nominees, all of the costume design and cinematography nominees, two out of five of the documentary features, and about 75 percent of the acting nominees. I didn't see any of the feature films or the shorts, only one of the international features, and only two of the makeup and hairstyling nominees.)

Earl's 2020 Oscar Ballot

Here are my best (read: wild) guesses as to which artists go home with Oscars tonight. I'll update after the show is over, which I may or may not watch live. The writing bug has hit today and if my creative juices keep flowing, I don't want to stop them prematurely. 

Once Upon a Time...on The Earliad

SPOILER ALERT...!

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019) is Tarantino at his gentlest and most reflective, tapping the incredible power of nostalgia and transforming it into some of his most sumptuous imagery. HIs vision of 1960s Hollywood is almost painfully vibrant, colours jumping from the screen as if to scream "This is how beautiful the world can be!"

As Sharon Tate, Margot Robbie is magical, an avatar of the world's beauty, and also of shameless, innocent delight, a woman who loves life, loves people, and loves the world around her with breathtaking sincerity. Tarantino's decision to alter history and therefore preserve Tate seems a determined effort to push psychopathic evil back into Pandora's box, to create a less violent world, paradoxically, by brutally violent means in the hands of the film's two leads, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as actor Rick Dalton and stuntman Cliff Booth, two men chasing the Hollywood dream before they're too old and worn out to truly seize it. In the better world Tarantino envisions, it seems as though they'll capture those dreams after all, at the 11th hour, just before all hope is lost...just like in the movies.

Lilies of the Field

Last night I screened Lilies of the Field, a 1963 Best Picture nominee, featuring the performance that earned Sidney Poitier the Best Actor Oscar for that year. While I enjoyed Poitier's performance, Jerry Goldsmith's music, the lean direction, handsome black and white cinematography, and the simple but affecting story, the film nonetheless left me unsettled and questioning.

In the film, Homer Smith (Poitier), stops at a ramshackle nunnery to borrow some water for his car. Mother Maria (Lilia Sakala, nominated for Best Supporting Actress) believes God has sent Homer to help the sisters build a chapel. Homer demurs, as he's happier to live as a man of the road, taking odd handyman jobs to support his easygoing, itinerant lifestyle. But the nun's ineptitude compels Homer to stay and help, and over the course of the film he reveals himself as not only an able handyman, but a leader, marshalling the volunteers who show up to help into a formidable workforce.

The chief source of drama in the film is Homer's easygoing attitude and desire to leave set against Mother Maria's devotion to a relatively ascetic lifestyle and her unspoken fondness for Homer. She even comes up with a number of excuses and odd jobs in an attempt to extend Homer's stay, but in the end, his task complete, Homer leaves the chapel and the nuns behind, proud of a job well done but true to his own needs.

Lilies of the Field is a simple film, but it's funny and warm and important because it features a well-rounded black character in a time when such characters were even rarer in mainstream film than they are today.

What hit me hardest, however, was the way that Poitier's performance clearly showed the deep but understated pride Smith takes in his work and his finished creation. And a fine chapel it is, once the work is complete. While I recognize that screening films always leaves the viewer vulnerable to emotional manipulation, I couldn't help but question the value of my own work when presented with a vision of something concrete (almost literally) and lasting. The fruits of Homer's labour are obvious and long-lasting. Even though I personally am not religious, I can see the value in a place of meditation and meeting for the community, and I envy Smith and others like him who build things that exist in the real world, with tangible benefits.

My labour, on the other hand, hasn't been physical since my early 20s. Of course I agree that communicating is important, and that the right message can have wide-ranging benefits, but I'm still not sure that anything I've written has had anything more than a brief, infinitesimal impact on the wider world. Aside from a few ghostwritten gardening books, I don't have anything I can hold up and say, "This is what I contributed to the world."

Again, I don't wish to downplay my own contributions to the world, most of which, I hope, are unrelated to whatever jobs I've held over the years. But sometimes I feel like I've missed something important by choosing the career I have. 

The Last Best Pictures

As readers may recall, I've been working my way through screening all 549* AMPAS Best Picture nominees. I just noticed that while I still have 82 nominees and winners yet to watch, I have seen nearly all of the winners, barring only seven:

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Gigi (1958)
My Fair Lady (1964)
The Godfather Part II (1974)
The Last Emperor (1987)
Dances with Wolves (1990)
Braveheart (1995)

I have all of these films on Blu-ray, so checking them off the list is a simple matter of just making the time to sit down and watch. But how shall I tackle them? Chronological order? Reverse chronological? Should I watch the comedies first? Longest to shortest?

Maybe I'll start with those I actually expect to enjoy: All Quiet, Gigi, My Fair Lady, Godfather II.

*I include the three films nominated for Best Unique and Artistic Picture, a category recognized solely at the first Academy Awards ceremony (1927-28) and presented alongside Outstanding Picture (won by Wings), which eventually became the Best Picture category. The three films are Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (winner), Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness, and The Crowd. Of these three, I've seen Sunrise and The Crowd; both are brilliant. Chang has been very difficult to track down. 

The Best Pictures Update

I have about 100 more films to go before accomplishing my goal of seeing every movie nominated for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) Best Picture Oscar. I discovered recently that two films on the list, East Lynne and The White Parade, can only be seen in one place: at the University of California at Los Angeles. In order to see these films, I'll have to travel to UCLA and make an appointment with the Powell Library Instructional Media Lab. Sounds like a good excuse for a long weekend trip to California...

The Best Pictures 2016 Update

It's been a while since I last wrote about my quest to see every single film nominated for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) Best Picture award, and I've made a lot of progress since that last update.

1920s/1930s
66 of 103 nominees: 64%

Missing
Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness
The Crowd
Alibi
The Hollywood Revue of 1929
The Patriot (lost film, so I'll never really finish this list)
All Quiet on the Western Front
Disraeli
East Lynne
The Front Page
Trader Horn
One Hour with You
A Farewell to Arms
Smilin' Through
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
Flirtation Walk
Imitation of Love
One Night of Love
The White Parade
Alice Adams
Broadway Melody of 1936
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
Les Miserables (1935)
Naughty Marietta
The Great Ziegfield
Romeo and Juliet (1936)
The Story of Louis Pasteur
A Tale of Two Cities
Three Smart Girls
Dead End
One Hundred Men and a Girl
A Star is Born
Alexander's Ragtime Band
The Citadel
Four Daughters
Jezebel
Test Pilot
Love Affair

1940s
41 of 70 nominees: 59%

Missing
The Letter
Blossoms in the Dust
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
Hold Back the Dawn
One Foot in Heaven
Kings Row
The Pied Piper
Random Harvest
The Talk of the Town
Wake Island
The Human Comedy
Madame Curie
The More the Merrier
The Song of Bernadette
Watch on the Rhine
Since You Went Away
Wilson
Anchors Aweigh
Mildred Pierce
The Best Years of Our Lives
Henry V
The Razor's Edge
The Yearling
The Bishop's Wife
Johnny Belinda
The Red Shoes
The Snake Pit
The Heiress
Twelve O'Clock High

1950s
35 of 50 nominees: 70%

Missing
Born Yesterday
Decision before Dawn
Quo Vadis
Ivanhoe
Moulin Rouge (1952)
Julius Caesar
The Country Girl
Love is a Many-Splendored Thing
Friendly Persuasion
The King and I
Peyton Place
Gigi
Auntie Mame
Separate Tables
Anatomy of a Murder

1960s
38 of 50 nominees: 76%

Missing
Sons and Lovers
Fanny
The Hustler
America America
Cleopatra (1963)
Lilies of the Field
My Fair Lady
Becket
Zorba the Greek
Darling
Ship of Fools
A Thousand Clowns
The Sand Pebbles

1970s
45 of 50 nominees: 90%

Missing
Love Story
The Godfather Part II
Nashville
Bound for Glory
The Goodbye Girl

1980s
42 of 50 nominees: 84%

Missing
Reds
The Color Purple
Prizzi's Honor
The Mission
The Last Emperor
Broadcast News
Hope and Glory
Moonstruck

1990s
47 of 50 nominees: 94%

Missing
Dances with Wolves
The Godfather Part III
Braveheart

2000s
50 of 55 nominees: 91%

Missing
Gosford Park
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Finding Neverland
Goodnight, and Good Luck
Munich

2010s (so far)
62 of 62 nominees: 100%

Total
425 of 540 nominees: 78.7%

115 films to go!

So far this year I've watched 35 Best Picture nominees. Of those, my favourite is the deservedly acclaimed French masterpiece La Grande Illusion (Grand Illusion, 1937), a World War I drama by Jean Renoir; the most forgettable may be Here Comes the Navy (Lloyd Bacon, 1934), a pretty standard romantic comedy set, somewhat chillingly knowing its eventual fate, aboard the USS Arizona.

As you can see, most of the gaps I have to fill come in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1980s. Still, I have most of the missing films on Blu-Ray, DVD, or my PVR (thanks, Turner Classic Movies)! I'm betting I can finish this list (excepting, of course, lost nominee The Patriot) by the end of the 20teens.

Oscar Fail

I amuse myself each year by filling in an Oscar ballot to try and guess who might win the Academy Awards. This year the Academy handed out 30 Oscars. Here are my guesses for each category:

Best Picture: La La Land (actual winner: Moonlight, after some confusion)
Best Director: Barry Jenkins, Moonlight (actual winner: Damien Chazelle, La La Land)
Foreign Language Film: The Salesman (CORRECT)
Actress in a Leading Role: Emma Stone, La La Land (CORRECT)
Actor in a Leading Role: Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea (CORRECT)
Actor in a Supporting Role: Mahershala Ali, Moonlight (CORRECT)
Actress in a Supporting Role: Viola Davis, Fences (CORRECT)
Original Screenplay: Manchester by the Sea (CORRECT)
Adapted Screenplay: Hidden Figures (actual winner: Moonlight)
Animated Feature: Kubo and the Two Strings (actual winner: Zootopia)
Film Editing: La La Land (actual winner: Hacksaw Ridge)
Sound Editing: La La Land (actual winner: Arrival)
Sound Mixing: La La Land (actual winner: Hacksaw Ridge)
Visual Effects: The Jungle Book (CORRECT)
Short Film, Animated: Blind Vaysha (actual winner: Piper)
Short Film, Live Action: Timecode (actual winner: Sing)
Documentary Feature: O.J.: Made in America (CORRECT)
Documentary Short Subject: Joe's Violin (actual winner: The White Helmets)
Original Score: La La Land (CORRECT)
Original Song: "City of Stars" (CORRECT)
Production Design: La La Land (CORRECT)
Makeup: Star Trek Beyond (actual winner: Suicide Squad)
Cinematography: La La Land (CORRECT)
Costume Design: La La Land (actual winner: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them)

That's 12 correct guesses out of 30, or a miserable 40 percent, my worst score in quite some time.

As for the show itself, Jimmy Kimmel did a great job, and I hope he returns. I was happy to see the continuation of his long-running rivalry with Matt Damon, and I'm a little surprised that he didn't blame the Best Picture mixup on Matt. That would have been something to see...

The Best Pictures, 2017

Leaving aside the question of who will win the Best Picture Oscar at tonight's Academy Awards (everyone says it's going to be La La Land), here are my thoughts on this year's nine nominees, ranked in order from those I liked least to best. I don't think this was a particularly strong crop of nominees, for the record, with only a couple of true standouts.

9. Hacksaw Ridge. There's nothing particularly wrong with this film, but at its core this is just another war movie with nothing novel to distinguish it. Of course the true story behind the film is an amazing bit of history and a remarkable testament to the power of courage and personal conviction, but its translation to film brings nothing new to the table.

8. Fences. An adaptation of the acclaimed play, I would imagine that Fences works better on stage than it does on film. Denzel Washington and Viola Davis are great, but I can't help but think this intensely personal drama really needs the immediacy and intimacy of the stage.

7. La La Land. I love musicals, but this left me cold. It's just another iteration of well-worn Hollywood tropes that were overused by the mid-1970s.

6. Hidden Figures. I enjoyed this, to be sure; I'm a huge space buff, and I value any story that reveals more about the early days of the U.S. space program, particularly how the organization dealt with (and was suffused by) the open racism of the day. And the three leads are genuinely terrific. It's a solid story, well told, but it plays out a bit like a television movie-of-the-week...but one from before the amazing television renaissance we've been experiencing for the last decade or so.

5. Lion. I found the first half of Lion both riveting and heartbreaking; it's hard not to sympathize with a helpless little boy lost thousands of kilometres from home through no fault of his own. But once that little boy is adopted by a kindly Australian couple, the drama loses a bit of its momentum. The genuinely moving ending saves it, though.

4. Moonlight. As a privileged white male, it's very difficult for me to truly understand the struggles of the characters depicted in this film - gay black men living in the ghetto, coming to terms with their identities. I appreciate Moonlight's bravery in depicting the raw reality of these struggles, but the presentation is somewhat oblique, leaving me to feel as if this film will resonate much more strongly with people who have had more direct experience living in (or at least near) that world.

3. Arrival. I love Ted Chiang's short stories, and Arrival is based on one of the best of them, so my appreciation of the film should be tempered by that bias. But I think Dennis Villeneuve did a great job of adapting a structurally complex story, while at the same time showing just how frustrating and dangerous a first contact situation could be. And Amy Adams is great, as always.

2. Hell or High Water. This may seem like just another old-fashioned crime caper, but I think it really captures the desperation being endured by the growing numbers of people being left behind by the world's rapidly changing economy. Left without hope for the future by increasingly faceless institutions utterly lacking in empathy, some are driven to desperate measures. The consequences are predictably tragic on both sides of the protagonist/antagonist divide. And the film's final moments are truly haunting.

1. Manchester by the Sea. Casey Affleck carries the weight of this story on his shoulders, and his efforts are truly stunning. The tale unwinds in bits and pieces, so that at first we don't understand why Affleck's Boston handyman is such a bitter jerk. We learn he has all the reason in the world for acting that way; he's a truly broken man, shattered by the guilt of his culpability for a horrific night that took away everything he loved. In flashback, we see the happy life he once led, the good (if imperfect) man he once was, which makes his loss all the more devastating. And the film actually has the courage to show that sometimes, that which is broken can never be mended. Life goes on, whether we want it to or not. It's a profoundly unsettling movie, and I think that's what makes it great. 

The Lion in Winter in Winter

On Sunday night I watched The Lion in Winter, the 1968 Best Picture nominee about courtly intrigue in 12th century England. While viewing, I found the affair to be a bit staid, though not without its pleasures, chiefly of performance and the endless string of clever barbs. But the final scene, in which the scheming Henry II (Peter O'Toole) and his estranged wife Duchess Eleanor (Katherine Hepburn) part after a Christmas full of plot and counter-plot, so brilliantly encapsulates the preceding two hours that the film as a whole leaped considerably in my estimation.

"I hope we never die!" says Henry with a smile as Eleanor's barge starts its journey back to her prison.

"So do I!" she replies, laughing.

"Do you think there's any chance of it?" Henry asks, and their laughter echoes through the ages...securing their immortality. 

The Fitzpatrick Oscars

Steve and Audrey hosted another wonderful Oscar party last night, with an extravaganza of pot luck treats and companionable film trivia and speculation. Steve tallies a ballot of Oscar guesses each year for fun and prizes, and for the first time in several years I came out on top with 12 correct guesses - tied with Steve, it should be noted. However, due to a change in rules (correct guesses earn you tickets, which are placed in a tam o' shanter for a random draw) perennial winner James still walked away with the grand prize - and I picked his winning ticket out of the hat! However, I did get to pose with this cool Oscar-like trophy, a great consolation prize. Sylvia did quite well too, finishing second with ten correct guesses.

I thought this year's Oscar ceremony was better than average, compared to the last several shows; there were a few very powerful and heartfelt speeches on important issues ranging from equal pay for women to the erosion of voting rights for minorities to government erosion of privacy and personal freedom. And I thought the opening musical number was a joy, too. My favourite joke of the night came when host Neil Patrick Harris noted that nominees were being given gift bags full of swag worth $160,000 - "good luck when the revolution comes." No kidding.

Best Picture 2014

In a few hours Sylvia and I will head to the Fitzpatricks' for their annual Oscar Party, and once again I expect to come in second or third in the Oscar pool. (Mumble...)

As in previous years, here I offer my rundown of the Best Picture nominees, from worst to first:

8) The Imitation Game: None of this year's nominees are bad films, nor will any of them achieve lasting greatness. The Imitation Game is a perfectly serviceable biopic if you can stomach the historical liberties taken. This is the first of two autobiographical films to focus on the lead character's obstacles rather than his scientific triumphs, to the detriment of the story.
7) Selma: This historical drama plays more like a well-executed TV movie of the week than a Best Picture nominee. On the other hand, that's unkind to television, which in the 21st century is more innovative and daring than mainstream film has been since the 1970s.
6) The Theory of Everything: This is the second biopic to focus on the lead's challenges rather than his contributions to history, again, to the detriment of the film.
5) American Sniper: This turned out to be less offensive than I had feared, but that's faint praise for middling Eastwood.
4) Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance): Its reach may exceed its grasp, but at least Birdman tries to be different with its ambiguous narrative, unreliable narrator and nested layers of meaning.
3) Boyhood: Richard Linklater's ambition deserves praise - he's the first filmmaker daring enough to stretch a production over a decade to let us watch his stable of actors age and change. Unfortunately this very conceit makes it difficult to construct a coherent throughline for the story; it just...ends.
2) The Grand Budapest Hotel: Sometimes I find Wes Anderson's work a little too cute, but here he fires on all cylinders, delivering a whimsical, funny adventure story that is at times poignant, and his production design remains sumptuous.
1) Whiplash: While I may disagree with this film's central philosophy - that greatness always requires self-sacrifice and hardship (not to mention terrible bullying), it's still a captivating story with warm, vivid cinematography and wonderful music.

There you have it. Oddsmakers say Birdman or Boyhood will walk away with the statue.

Shine

Way back in 1996, when I was working at the Western Board of Music, someone - I think it may have been board member Carol Mellors - gave me two tickets to see a sneak preview of Shine, the biographical dramatization of the life of concert pianist David Helfgott. For whatever reason I didn't go.

Today, over 18 years later, I finally watched the film. Of that year's Best Picture nominees, I would rank it above winner The English Patient, but below all the other nominees (Secrets & Lies, Fargo and Jerry Maguire). It's a perfectly serviceable film, but Helfgott's descent into madness comes rather out of the blue. Yes, there are scenes of domestic violence and certainly Helfgott faced tremendous pressure to perform, but in the context of the movies, Helfgott-as-character suffers torments no worse than legions of other film heroes. This is not to trivialize the character's suffering, based as it is on real life, but the film could have done a better job of showing how Helfgott's illness developed.

Pointless Update

• There is still one episode of Star Trek: Voyager I haven't seen
• I still haven't read The Lord of the Rings
• I still haven't analysed the title credits of Homicide: Life on the Streets
• I still haven't finished, Fringe, Farscape or new Dr. Who
• I still haven't reorganized my office to make better use of the space
• I still haven't fixed the doorknob
• I still haven't figured out what to do with my comic books
• I still haven't made a will
• I still haven't saved enough money to retire
• I still haven't seen over 30 percent of the AMPAS Best Picture nominees
• I still haven't sold my second short story
• I still haven't written a novel
• I still haven't gotten back down to 135 pounds
• I still haven't travelled east of Ottawa or south of Singapore
• But I'm lucky. 

Still Watching the Best Pictures

It's been a couple of years since I last posted my updated list of which Best Picture-nominated films I've seen. Time for an update.

While being nominated for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Picture award is a pretty good indicator that a film has some kind of merit, the award represents only a narrow field of opinion (the tastes of Academy members), and often superior films are overlooked each year at the Oscars. But I find the list useful because it's exposed me to a wide range of styles and genres and led me to other great works. In other words, when I finally watch all of these films, it will really only be the beginning of my exploration of the art form.

Since my last update, I've seen the following additional nominees:

Shanghai Express (1931-32)
The Smiling Lieutenant (1931-32)
The Private Life of Henry VIII (1932-33)
She Done Him Wrong (1932-33)
State Fair (1932-33)
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Dodsworth (1936)
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
Wuthering Heights (1939)
The Long Voyage Home (1940)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Mrs. Minniver (1942)
Three Coins in the Fountain (1954)
Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
A Man for All Seasons (1966)
Oliver! (1968)
Funny Girl (1968)
Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
Hello, Dolly! (1969)
Z (1969)
Cabaret (1972)
The Emigrants (1972)
Sounder (1972)
Cries and Whispers (1973)
A Touch of Class (1973)
Lenny (1974)
The Turning Point (1977)
Coming Home (1978)
Midnight Express (1978)
Breaking Away (1979)
Raging Bull (1980)
Atlantic City (1981)
The Big Chill (1983)
The Dresser (1983)
Places in the Heart (1984)
A Soldier's Story (1984)
A Room with a View (1986)
A Few Good Men (1992)
Sense and Sensibility (1995)
Elizabeth (1998)
Life is Beautiful (1998)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Seabiscuit (2003)
Frost/Nixon (2008)
The Artist (2011)
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011)
The Help (2011)
Midnight in Paris (2011)
Moneyball (2011)
The Tree of Life (2011)
War Horse (2011)
Argo (2012)
Amour (2012)
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
Django Unchained (2012)
Les Misérables (2012)
Life of Pi (2012)
Lincoln (2012)
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
12 Years a Slave (2013)
American Hustle (2013)
Captain Phillips (2013)
Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
Gravity (2013)
Her (2013)
Nebraska (2013)
Philomena (2013)
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Years in which I've seen every nominated film: 1962, 1972, 1973, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1988, 1989, 1994, 2001, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013

Years in which I've seen all but one nominated film: 1939, 1954, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1986, 1991, 1992, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006

Years in which I've seen none of the nominated films: 1958

Earl's favourites among this batch of nominees: Goodbye Mr. Chips, Mrs. Minniver, A Man for All Seasons, Z, Midnight Express, Raging Bull, Django Unchained, Gravity, Her
Earl's least favourites among this batch of nominees: Three Coins in the Fountain, Funny Girl, The Turning Point, Seabiscuit, The Help, War Horse, Amour, Zero Dark Thirty

From now until my next update I'll see if I can finish off a few of those "seen all but one" years and if I can put a dent in 1958. I have Gigi on Blu-Ray, so watching that will be a start. 

If I've counted correctly, I've now seen 319 out of the 512 films nominated for Best Picture, or a little over 62 percent of the nominees.