And the Oscar doesn’t go to…
An incurably snarky acquaintance of mine has recently introduced me to the word “suckage.” Apparently this magic word can qualify as a noun, verb, adjective, and with a little creative thought, a personal pronoun as well. While I am not sure I agree with the idea that this is the Swiss army knife of words, I think that this is the perfect word to express how I feel about whatever process is used to figure out who gets honored with an Oscar statue.
While there is always a healthy debate over who won the industry’s most aesthetically unpleasing award, there is not often a lot of discussion about the folks who were completely snubbed by an academy dedicated to the principals and values of “suckage.”
Here are 10 people, films, or entities that should be displaying Oscar on their mantles but aren’t.
Ray Harryhausen
Anybody watching Ray Harryhausen work would think he was just a middle aged man playing with dolls. While this is probably not uncommon in Hollywood, especially in any residence owned by somebody from the Sheen family, what was really going on was a master craftsman at work. Ray may not have invented the stop motion technique, but he certainly perfected it. During his prime he was a one man “Industrial Light and Magic” who inserted world class special effects into mediocre (at best) films. His long shadow fell over, and influenced an entire generation of special effects enthusiasts and without his groundbreaking work the world would probably not have films like Jurassic Park and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is a crime against nature that, other than a special technical Oscar, this man was never honored for his magical work in a specific film.
Wes Craven
During a horror era marked by machete wielding maniacs in masks, Wes Craven took the genre out of the physical and into another dimension; literally. He created a horror masterpiece with The Nightmare on Elm Street and probably, single handedly, provided the makers of Ambien with an extremely tired, and afraid to sleep, client base. While this film was ground breaking and breathed new life into a tired and predictable horror genre, the Academy decided that Flashdance and Wargames were more worthy of nominations than Mr. Kruger and Mr. Kraven in 1984.
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“The Passion of the Christ”
It’s hell being Mel. At least it was back in 2004 when we all still thought he was charming and didn’t know he was actually a restraining order looking for someplace to happen. Back then he was the director who brought the film The Passion of the Christ to life. This powerful and moving film depicted what many believe was the most important moment in the history of the world. Had the Roman historian, Tacitus, seen the film, he probably would have said, “Yup, that’s exactly what we did to him.” Seeing as Hollywood rejects Christianity in much the same way that the human body would reject a heart transplant from a water buffalo, the Academy chose to pretend this film, the near billion dollars in revenue it generated, and the millions of people who loved it, simply didn’t exist.
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“300”
In real life, were it not for Leonidas and his Spartans giving their lives in a crucial delaying action, it is very possible that all of Greece would have fallen to the Persian Empire. The map of the western world would be a very different place if that had happened. This is an inconvenient, politically incorrect fact for the people in Hollywood who now refer to terrorism as “man made disasters”. Most of the categories that 300 should have been nominated for instead featured a musical about a murderous English barber (Sweeny Todd) and his cannibalistic girlfriend. This was a disservice to the visually stunning and well acted 300.
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Christina Hendricks
People may ask why Christina Hendricks is on this list. She doesn’t have a film out this year, and currently stars on a cable television program. Here is the answer; because she is Christina f’n Hendricks. They should have a special Oscar just for the category of women who most resemble Jessica Rabbit.
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Kevin Smith
We are never going to hear the words “And the Oscar for best supporting actor goes to Silent Bob”; nor should we ever. Even so, Kevin Smith defined a generation with his films and deserves some recognition. Both Clerks and Dogma should have been at least nominated by the Academy for the Best Writing Oscar.
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“American History X”
Any world where the film Shakespeare in Love beats American History X in anything is not a world I want to live in. Shakespeare in love is just another thinly veiled screen adaption of Romeo and Juliet. They may as well have just rolled one of those disclaimers that states “The names have been changed to protect the innocent” during the opening credits. American History X was a substantive narrative on racial tensions and how they can poison the minds of the youth, regardless of color. While it didn’t win an Oscar, I think American History X won in the court of public opinion.
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Haley Joel Osment
In the film The Sixth Sense, Haley Joel Osment made us believe he saw dead people. He was such a good actor at that age he could have said that he saw Bigfoot getting a coffee at Burger Chef and most of us would have believed him. Despite a performance that should have made him a shoe in for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, he lost to Michael Caine. Who cares what movie Mr. Caine won his Oscar for, he once starred in Jaws 4 (Jaws: The Revenge “This Time its Personal”). That fact alone should put him in an Oscar “time out” that bars him from getting nominated for anything until the middle of this century. The Fact that Haley walked away as part of the “it’s an honor to be nominated” crowd, is living proof that there is a Tom Cruise sized statue somewhere on the Academy red carpet with a sign that states “You must be this tall to win an Oscar.”
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Pixar
Pixar has produced a number of extremely high quality films. For their efforts they have collected enough Oscars to fill a stadium with. Of course they always get their awards in the “animated” category. It is time to realize that these animated films are often the best movie of the year…period. This year Toy Story 3 is up for the Best Picture Oscar. It was an almost perfect film and certainly the best thing to hit the screen in 2010. Its time Pixar got recognized for the quality of their work instead of just stuck in the same pigeon hole that Daffy Duck and Mickey Mouse call home.
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Tim Curry
I was recently re-watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show when I had an epiphany. The last epiphany I had involved spreading peanut butter between two fudge pop-tarts. That was a religious experience. The one I had while watching Rocky Horror was a cinematic realization. It’s simply this. When you step outside the silly context of the movie and objectively look at the job that Tim Curry did as the lead, the only conclusion one can come to is that this was a world class piece of acting. He is a fairly normal man from a middle class background who credibly played a bizarre, borderline sinister, mildly psychopathic, bi-sexual/trans-sexual character. If the Oscars are about the best performances, and not politics, industry lobbying, cleavage, and coffee house claptrap, than Mr. Curry should have gotten some serious consideration for the Best Actor award. Mr. Curry so immersed himself in the part that his own sense of self-consciousness (and quite possibly his sense of self as a whole) became non-existent. In short, he became (for all intents and purposes) the character of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. This gave the viewer the rare gift of an effortless suspension of disbelief. Let’s watch Liam Neeson play Oscar Schindler while wearing nothing but a teddy and see if he can still pull that trick off.
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