Producer Oprah Winfrey’s Selma won two Oscar nominations Thursday morning: Best Picture and Best Song. Because the Civil Rights drama failed to win nominations for its director, star or script, people are claiming it was snubbed (it was — the Best Pic nod is an also-ran) and crying racism.
I thought some context might help.
Before he won an Oscar at age 64, Martin Scorsese directed Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, King Comedy, Color of Money, and The Age of Innocence.
Selma is only director Ana DuVernay’s third feature film. She is just 42 years old.
Before he won an Oscar at age 61 , Paul Newman starred in The Hustler, Hud, Cool Hand Luke, The Long Hot Summer, Verdict, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cat On Hot Tin Roof, Sting, and Slap Shot.
David Oyelwo’s first big starring role is in Selma. He is just 38 years old.
As far as the racism charge, 10% of the acting nominations over the last 5 years have gone to black actors, which is almost perfectly in line with the 12.6% (on average over the last 5 years) population of ratio of blacks in America. Moreover, 7 films focusing on race and racism have been nominated for Best Picture in the last 5 years. Last year “12 Years a Slave” won Best Picture.
Yes, the cry of racism around Selma is, like Selma itself, just another in a long line of race-hoaxes dumped on the American people this year (Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Oprah’s Swiss purse lie).
Selma’s real problem is that it just isn’t a very good movie.
While the left crybabies over Oscar’s snub of Selma, here are 225 bigger Oscar snubs; a list of people who have never won a competitive Oscar, and a list of movies better than Selma that not only failed to win an Oscar, but were never even nominated! (Source.)
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Michael Mann
- Orson Welles
- Christopher Nolan
- Jean Simmons
- Annette Bening
- Glenn Close
- Agnes Morehead
- Judy Davis
- Gena Rowlands
- Mia Farrow
- Greta Garbo
- Marilyn Monroe
- Myrna Loy
- Marlene Dietrich
- Jean Harlowe
- Carol Lombard
- Lauren Bacall
- Irene Dunne
- Maureen O’Hara
- Rosalind Russell
- Martin Sheen
- Steve McQueen
- James Caan
- Harvey Keitel
- James Mason
- Montgomery Clift
- Eli Wallach
- Bruce Dern
- Gary Oldmam
- Judy Garland
- John Malkovich
- Ed Harris
- Donald Sutherland
- Richard Harris
- Peter Sellers
- Cary Grant
- Albert Finney
- Deborah Kerr
- Richard Burton
- Fred Astaire
- Kirk Douglas
- Barbara Stanwyck
- Edward G. Robinson
- Peter O’Toole
- Jean Simmons
- Ridley Scott
- Buster Keaton
- Howard Hawks
- Robert Altman
- Sam Peckinpah
- John Cassavetes
- Sidney Lumet
- Brian DePalma
- David Lynch
- Spike Lee
- Lillian Gish
- Errol Flynn
- Joseph Cotton
- Maurice Chevalier
- Peter Lorre
- Charlie Chaplin (except for a score award)
- Stanley Kubrick (except for a special effects award)
- George Lucas
- Ernst Lubitsch
- King Vidor
- Arthur Penn
- Fritz Lang
- Akira Kurosawa
- D.W. Griffith
- Cecil B. DeMille
- Ava Gardner
- Rita Hayworth
- Boris Karloff
- Robert Mitchum
- Thelma Ritter
- Joan Allen
- Sigourney Weaver
- Dana Andrews
- Lew Ayers
- John Barrymore
- Ralph Bellamy
- Roddy MacDowall
- Charles Boyer
- Lee J. Cobb
- Douglas Fairbanks Sr.
- W. C. Fields
- James Garner
- John Garfield
- Elliott Gould
- Dennis Hopper
- James Earl Jones
- Gene Kelly
- Arthur Kennedy
- Anthony Perkins
- William Powell
- Tyrone Power
- Walter Pidgeon
- Claude Rains
- Basil Rathbone
- Will Rogers
- Mickey Rooney
- Robert Shaw
- Richard Widmark
- Clifton Webb
- Jean Arthur
- Ida Lupino
- Jacqueline Bisset
- Madeline Kahn
- Bette Midler
- Kim Novak
- Michelle Pfeiffer
- Lana Turner
- Gloria Swanson
- Margaretr Sullavan
- Elsa Lanchester
- Julie Harris
- Blake Edwards
- Richard Brooks
- Tim Burton
- William Wellman
- Josef von Strernberg
- Otto Preminger
- W.S. Van Dyke
- F.W. Murnau
- Alan J. Pakula
- Mervyn LeRoy
- Stanley Kramer
- John Frankenheimer
- Stanley Donen
- Advise and Consent (1962)
- Bananas (1971)
- Beat the Devil (1954)
- The Big Clock (1948)
- The Big Heat (1953)
- The Big Sleep (1946)
- Blood Simple (1984)
- Bringing Up Baby (1938)
- Brute Force (1947)
- City Lights (1931)
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
- Destry Rides Again (1939)
- Dinner at Eight (1933)
- Dirty Harry (1971)
- Don’t Look Now (1973)
- Dracula (1931)
- Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
- Duck Soup
- A Face in the Crowd (1957)
- Fail-Safe (1964)
- Farewell My Lovely (1944)
- Fort Apache (1948)
- Frankenstein (1931)
- Freaks (1933)
- The Front Page (1975)
- Gilda (1946)
- Gun Crazy (1949)
- Hard-Boiled (1992)
- Heat (1995)
- High Sierra (1941)
- His Girl Friday (1940)
- In a Lonely Place (1950)
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
- The Invisible Man (1933)
- It’s a Gift (1934)
- The Killing (1956)
- The Parallax View (1974)
- King Kong (1933)
- Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
- The Lady From Shanghai (1948)
- The Lady Vanishes (1938)
- The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
- Lonely are the Brave (1962)
- The Long Goodbye (1973)
- The Long Riders (1980)
- M (1931)
- Mean Streets (1973)
- Medium Cool (1969)
- Metropolis (1927)
- Miller’s Crossing (1990)
- The Misfits (1961)
- Modern Times (1936)
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
- The Mummy (1933)
- Murder, My Sweet (1944)
- My Darling Clementine (1946)
- A Night at the Opera (1934)
- The Night of the Hunter (1955)
- Nightmare Alley (1947)
- Nothing Sacred (1937)
- Oliver Twist (1948)
- Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
- Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
- Out of the Past (1947)
- Paths of Glory (1957)
- Play It Again, Sam (1972)
- Point Blank (1967)
- The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
- Reservoir Dogs (1992)
- Ride the High Country (1962)
- Rio Bravo (1959)
- The Roaring Twenties (1939)
- Scarface (1932)
- Scarlet Street (1945)
- The Searchers (1956)
- The Shining (1980)
- The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
- A Shot in the Dark (1964)
- Sid and Nancy (1986)
- State of the Union (1948)
- Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
- Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
- They Live By Night (1949)
- The Thing (1951)
- Things to Come (1936)
- The 39 Steps (1935)
- This Gun for Hire (1942)
- 3:10 to Yuma (1957)
- To Have and Have Not (1944)
- Touch Of Evil (1958)
- A Walk in the Sun (1946)
- The Wild One (1953)
- Winchester ’73 (1950)
- The Women (1939)
- The Wrong Man (1957)
—
Cry me a river, Selma…
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