movies

[IMADreamer]

Oscar whiff 1968: I didn't list "Oliver!" because I've never seen it, but it's a musical and its title ends with an exclamation point, and those are bad signs. The Franco Zeffirelli "Romeo and Juliet" that came out that year is the most famous version. "2001" not nominated (and it was the highest grossing film that year). "Bullitt", "Rosemary's Baby", "Night of the Living Dead", "If", "Once Upon a Time in the West", "The Producers".

It might not be a particularly great movie but Bullitt is definitely the best chase scene ever. McQueen did most of his own driving despite the studio's objections. The sound is epic as well. The double c shifting is just amazing

[Vidor]

I watched "Bullitt" not that long ago. Was kind of taken by surprise by Bullitt's utter incompetence in letting the bad guy escape from being trapped on an airplane, but other than that, pretty good flick. And yeah, the chase scene is justly famous.

[33anda3rd]

Now that I think about it, it might be more interesting to list years when Oscar got it right. "Sunrise" for Unique and Artistic Production in 1927, "All Quiet on the Western Front" in 1930, "Casablanca", the first two "Godfather" films, "Schindler's List". I thought "The Departed" was a pretty solid choice--people kept judging it against all the Scorsese classics that didn't win but I thought it was a pretty good pick for that field in that year.

Unforgiven, for sure
Silence of the Lambs, probably, I might be whiffing on one or two from that year
Annie Hall
Cuckoo's Nest

[ghostrunner]

The Piano is a better movie than Schindler's List IMO. No way it was going to win over Schindler's List, but it's better. Schindler has some great scenes and performances, but I think it carries on too long and there's a little too much aggrandizement of Schindler himself. The Piano is one of the better love stories ever made, and it's just works better as a story. Very similar to the ET/Gandhi thing I'd say, though not so egregious.

I would've given it the cinematography award over Schindler too.

[33anda3rd]

The all-Robert-Altman In A Six-Year-Span version of the Oscar Snubs Game
1970: MASH over Patton
1971: McCabe & Mrs Miller over French Connection
1973: The Long Goodbye over The Sting
1975: Nashville over Cuckoo's Nest (strike my Cuckoo's Nest comment above it's great but I forgot about Nashville)

[Vidor]

"Patton" is a pretty good movie. More going on there than one might guess. That iconic opening scene of Patton giving his troops a pep talk in front of a giant American flag is followed up with a cut to dead American soldiers in Kasserine Pass getting looted by locals and pecked at by crows.

[JL21]

The Piano is a better movie than Schindler's List IMO. No way it was going to win over Schindler's List, but it's better. Schindler has some great scenes and performances, but I think it carries on too long and there's a little too much aggrandizement of Schindler himself. The Piano is one of the better love stories ever made, and it's just works better as a story. Very similar to the ET/Gandhi thing I'd say, though not so egregious.

I would've given it the cinematography award over Schindler too.

You just liked seeing Harvey Keitel's dong.

The all-Robert-Altman In A Six-Year-Span version of the Oscar Snubs Game
1970: MASH over Patton
1971: McCabe & Mrs Miller over French Connection
1973: The Long Goodbye over The Sting
1975: Nashville over Cuckoo's Nest (strike my Cuckoo's Nest comment above it's great but I forgot about Nashville)

I appreciate the Altman love (totally agree about MASH, even if I did like Patton), but I wouldn't put Nashville anywhere near as good as Cuckoo's Nest. I'd also take French Connection over McCabe, which is ironic because I liked McCabe more. But French Connection was a genre-maker. I guess I could see it as a coin flip between those two. Definitely agree on The Long Goodbye over the Sting.

MASH is one of the best American comedies ever made on so many levels. It's the most brilliant, perfect subversion of American movie tropes up to that time, in lock-step with the Vietnam era.

[33anda3rd]

Nashville is one of my all-time favorites. I think it's better than Cuckoo's for a lot of reasons. Cuckoo's is a really well-made, well-acted, well-written film that's very scary and very freaky in a us-v-the-institution way. It's an awesome movie. A few posts ago I said hey, this was a deserving winner. I love it. It's great. But I forgot about Nashville.

Technically, there's very little else like Nashville. Especially outside Altman and the early PTA stuff and probably the new PTA. All that ambient sound laced in with the overlapping dialog is technical brilliance like we'd never seen before in film. Mashing the storylines of such a big cast together and letting it all just spill out onto the screen in such overlapping, seemingly random ways, if you were, say, 20 years old in 1975 and went into a theater to see Nashville you'd probably be a half hour in and going "holy balls I've never seen anything like this before." It's a singular work by a singular director that had widespread influence. It's a masterpiece. Cuckoo's you could pull Forman and someone else could make it. Others have made similar movies. If you took a room full of 100 hardcore film nerds and said "write down 30 films everyone should see" you'd get a lot more Nashville responses than Cuckoo's. In the most recent Sight and Sound Poll, Nashville came in 73rd with critics. Cuckoo's was 377th.

McCabe IMO is pretty revolutionary too. It's a Western that doesn't have a gunshot until like an hour into the film.

Basically, in six years what Altman did was:
-Make one of the great subversive comedies of all-time
-Make one of the great, I-will-not-paint-by-the-rules westerns of all time (in a class w/ only Dead Man and Unforgiven IMO. Maybe Johnny Guitar too.)
-Make one of the great, I-will-not-paint-by-the-rules American noirs of all time
-Make a film that revolutionized what was possible with sound in cinema
Altman was the man. We could do the same thing with Hal Ashby too.

[lukethedrifter]

Why have I never heard of Out of Sight?

[jim]

We watched the Skeleton Twins last night and it was pretty good.