As the hours count down to this year's big show (and if you're not already planning on watching it with us live at the renovated Yankee Doodles tomorrow - http://lbcinema.org/redcarpet/ - you totally, totally should!), I'm reminded of some of the most enraging, blow-your-television-away-with-a-shotgun moments of "WHAT!?" Oscar decisions that seemed to make sense to no one but the voters, and only served to remind audiences that - alas - the Academy is a tad out of touch, and a tad more political than they'd like to let on.

For those of you who of the "Oscars...that's the movies one, right?" variety, let me use a sports analogy - it's the equivalent of that patently inaccurate call the umpire makes that sends the entire arena into an uproar, where even the opposition, glad as they are that the call was in their favor, sit slackjawed and wondering, "What the hell is wrong with this umpire?"  And almost immediately, the rumors begin - the umpire was paid off.  The umpire was on home turf. The umpire had an agenda.  Either way, most people are pissed, and the ones that aren't are nevertheless under the assumption that something funny's going on, either in the umpire's intentions or in his mental faculties.  And whereas Replay has been used to challenge an umpire's call, not so with the Oscars - no chance of going back to the table for another look to see if Crash really was a better picture than Munich, Good Night and Good Luck, Brokeback Mountain, and Capote (and where the near-unanimous outcry was in Brokeback Mountain's favor, let's face it - all four of these were better motion pictures than the cloying, pandering Crash).

So here we go.  And I'm limiting these to the last twenty years, and the wins I remember freaking out over (so no love for Citizen Kane or circa-1969 Dustin Hoffman here...).

#5

Best Picture - 2003

What Won: Chicago

What Should Have Won: The Pianist, or Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

And here's the deal - I love Chicago!  It's a lot of fun, has incredible music and choreography, and a fantastic story that is weaved with some incredible editing and lots of flash and color.  The same, however, can be said for Grease.  And, for that matter, even Grease 2. 

Which is not a knock on the Musical as a genre.  Sound of Music and Oliver! earned their Best Picture awards for transcending their genres and offering audiences epic and grand stories where the music was almost incidental to the journeys of characters navigating their way through dark histories, dealing with themes of loss and growth. Which is also not to say that a film needs to be dark to win Best Picture - simply, when weighed against films like The Pianist and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, both expertly executed films that are as interested with the complexities of the interior as they are the vastness of their exteriors (which can also be said of fellow nominee The Hours), Chicago didn't seem to stand a chance.  When Roman Polanski was given the Best Director award, after star Adrien Brody had accepted Best Actor, The Pianist's win seemed certain; Chicago wasn't the worst film to win Best Picture (hello again, Crash), but it certainly was a surprise.

#4

Best Supporting Actor - 1996

Who Won: Kevin Spacey, The Usual Suspects

Who Should Have Won: Don Cheadle, Devil in a Blue Dress

This one wouldn't have been as big of a deal for me if Don Cheadle had been nominated.  Actually, I'd have been glad to see Spacey win - he was incredible in The Usual Suspects - if only Cheadle had been nominated.  There was actually much buzz about the omission of Don Cheadle as a nominee for Best Supporting Actor, as he had already won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and National Society of Film Critics awards, as well as a nomination from the Screen Actors Guild awards, for his role as Mouse Alexander.  Unknown at the time, Cheadle's ferocious turn as an unhinged thug outshined costar Denzel Washington's performance by a mile, and launched a career that would ultimately lead to an Oscar nomination for Hotel Rwanda in 2005.  If you haven't seen Devil in a Blue Dress, check it out if only for Cheadle's fantastic, discomfort-inducing performance.

#3

Best Supporting Actor - 1993

Who Won: Tommy Lee Jones, The Fugitive

Who Should Have Won: Ralph Fiennes, Schindler's List

Really?  Really???  I don't think I'll ever fully understand this one.  I remember a lot of sentiment to the tune of "Well Fiennes won't win because the Academy will never give it to a Nazi" leading up to the show, but my thought was always - they realize Ralph Fiennes isn't a Nazi, right?  That's he's playing a Nazi?  That he's not even German? Whether it was that or something else, the Academy saw fit to give the statue to Jones' turn as clownishly determined Samuel Gerard, whose "I don't care!" clip was played ad nauseum, and who really lends nothing spectacular to the film except a character who's a lot of fun to watch.  When you weigh in that Jones also won over Leonardo diCaprio in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? - and regardless of how you feel about DiCaprio, he was almost eerily amazing in that film - Jones' win is an eternal head-scratcher.

#2

Best Actress - 2001

Who Won:  Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich

Who Should Have Won: Ellen Burstyn, Requiem for a Dream

Yeah, this one's quite the popular one to lash out against.  And may I say, and with due credit to the writer and director, it takes a lot to carry a 130-minute film about a lawsuit, and turn it into something exciting and entertaining, and Roberts does it swimmingly.  But c'mon...

The first nail in Burstyn's coffin was the studio's decision to push her for Best Actress - although she probably carries about just as much screen time as co-star Jared Leto, the film's structure focuses on Leto's character and his misadventures with his friend and girlfriend, while cutting back here and there to Burstyn.  A smarter move would have been to nominate her for Best Supporting Actress.  Who won Best Supporting Actress that year?  Marcia Gay Harden in Pollock, a win that no one saw coming.  Would that have been Burstyn's to take home if she'd been in that category?  Beyond a doubt.

Witness this year's True Grit - much ado has been made about the fact that Hailee Steinfeld's Mattie Ross is the protagonist of the film, virtually in every scene and certainly holding more screen time than Jeff Bridges' Rooster Cogburn, but the studio opted to push her for Best Supporting Actress because it actually gives her a shot at winning.  And it was a good move - with one day to go before the awards, there is already buzz that Steinfeld may take the award from favorite Melissa Leo.  Would the same have been true if she were up against Natalie Portman? Not a chance.

#1

Best Picture - 1986

What Won: Out of Africa

What Should Have Won: The Color Purple

Okay, this was 25 years ago, but this injustice will forever piss me off.  

The trouble started when the nominations were first announced, and despite a whopping eleven nominations, director Steven Spielberg failed to be nominated.  What??  This was especially shocking because Spielberg had just picked up the Best Director award from the Director's Guild Awards for the film.   In the last twenty years, 18 of the DGA award winners went on to win the Academy Award.  In fact, since The Color Purple, no winner of the Directors Guild Award has failed to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director.

So what happened?   As you can imagine, due to the film's subject matter, the situation got really ugly, really fast. Producer Quincy Jones famously defended his choice for Spielberg, a Jew, to direct the film by stating that Spielberg "didn't have to be a space alien to direct E.T."  Fans of the novel blasted the film for handling moments of spousal abuse lightly, and for shying away from the film's lesbian themes (which, if you ask me, are definitely present - look to the film adaptation of Fried Green Tomatoes for a better example of such censorship).   All the same, the film was generally celebrated, winning Best Film and Best Actress from the National Board of Review.  Moreover, the film was actually a box office hit, the fourth-highest grossing film of the year behind Back to the Future, Rambo: First Blood Part II, and Rocky IV (yep - those films were hits!).

Come Oscar night, of its 11 nominations, The Color Purple won...zero.  Zilch.  Boosted by its famous sweeping John Barry score that to this day would bring tears to the dryest eye, otherwise useless Out of Africa took home the big prize, with Geraldine Page (who?) winning Best Actress over Whoopi Goldberg, and Anjelica Huston winning over both Oprah Winfrey and Margaret Avery. 

What did it all come down to?  Maybe it was payback to director Sidney Pollock for all the Oscars Tootsie lost to Gandhi.  Maybe it was apprehension to embrace Spielberg so soon after the scandal surrounding Twilight Zone: The Movie, a Spielberg production that resulted in the deaths of Vic Morrow and two unauthorized child actors.  Maybe it was something darker than that, and the film's themes of racism, abuse, lesbianism, and incest were just too much for Academy voters, who found the adventures of a miscast Robert Redford traipsing through the jungle more to their pallets.  Either way, Out of Africa is now all but forgotten, while The Color Purple continues to be an celebrated classic, a film that launched two of the most titan careers among African American women (if not the most titan career), as well as an award-winning Broadway musical.

...so we'll see if this year's awards will add another to the list.  Lots of strong nominees this year though - all deserving.   Perhaps if Toy Story 3 loses its Best Animated Feature Film award, you'll hear from me.  Not likely though.

See you at the show!  http://lbcinema.org/redcarpet/