Reality check time

[pat]

Let's recap, shall we?

2003: Best Picture: Chicago, Best Director, Roman Polanski for The Pianist
2001: BP: Gladiator; BD: Steven Soderbergh, Traffic
1999: BP: Shakespeare in Love; BD: Speilberg, Saving Private Ryan
1990: BP: Driving Miss Daisy; BD: Oliver Stone, Born on the Fourth of July. Note: Bruce Beresford, who directed Driving Miss Daisy, wasn't even nominated for Best Director, the only time that's happened (BP's director not even nominated)

Okay, so over the past twenty years, there were BP/BD splits one fifth of the time. In the past ten, it's been 3/10; in the previous five it's been 2/5.

It's not a big deal, people.

And as far as Larry McMurty's comment that the win for Crash indicates that "Americans don't want cowboys to be gay" -- since when has the Academy been representative of the American public at large?

Comments

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

About... 1/4 of the people I know who saw Brokeback Mountain declared it dull/mediocre/not-all-that, and many of these people were themselves gay. I haven't seen it (the trailers put me to sleep, so I couldn't imagine sitting through a whole movie of it), so I can't comment, but it does not at all seem like a cut-and-dried, "Brokeback was robbed!" situation. There were lots of good movies up this year.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Personally, I don't think you can scream that a picture was robbed unless you saw the picture that won, and have an actual basis for comparison. Some of the people that I have heard complaining have not. As I said elsewhere, this award is supposed to be for best picture, not most socially relevant picture.