And then the sun itself will turn us all to sand

[sovay]

Spurred by a gloomy desire to know what the hell movie Spike Lee's era-defining Do the Right Thing (1989) lost Best Original Screenplay to at the 62nd Academy Awards, spatch and I just spent the last hour reading Oscar nominations and results from 1990 onward, an activity punctuated by frequent cries of "[X] was robbed!" "[Y] should have been nominated!" and "That was poop!" I had forgotten how many years I had opinions about. I've seen even more of those movies now. I have more opinions.

The answer to our original question, by the way, was Dead Poets Society. My opinion about that is: "That was poop!"

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

... that does sound like rather a guaranteed exercise in frustration!

[shewhomust]

Dead Poets Society may have been poop, but it was eminently Oscar-worthy poop, don't you think? These are industry awards, and they do reflect industry attitudes.

As you know, of course. Sorry.

[nineweaving]

Poop is Oscar bait.

Nine

[asakiyume]

I want to know if your poop expletive was prompted by rachelmanija's recent entry, or whether it would have been the expletive of choice anyway.

[drwex]

Why is Dead Poets Society "poop"?

I agree that DtRT is a better movie, and that to some degree Williams's death has caused post-mortem elevation of his movies but at the time DPS was well-regarded. I thought it was particularly resonant, appearing at the end of the Reagan era (nightmare) as an allegory about what the last decade had been like in America. Do you think it just didn't age well?

[larryhammer]

I was disappointed that year, too.

[moon_custafer]

I once saw The Emperor’s Club (2002) as an in-flight movie for which I hadn’t bothered to get headphones – from what I could still follow of the story, it struck me as better than Dead Poets’ Society, but also in some ways dependent upon it -- Williams again plays a pre-school teacher, but the ultimate lesson is that while his teaching still had a positive effect on most of his students, he probably could have done even more for them if he hadn’t focused on giving extra chances to the “misunderstood” senator’s son who was really an entitled douchebro.

[alexxkay]

It occurs to me that The Shape of Water probably did so well with the Academy due to it being a love letter to classic Hollywood, in among its more notable (to me) virtues.

[handful_ofdust]

"That was poop!" pretty much sums up my own feelings on the subject.;)

Yeah, the Oscars are, in the main, political--not political so much in terms of current presidency or whatever, but political in terms of who votes and why. That's why you so often get at least one instance of the You're Old And You're Gonna Die award (the Don Ameche in Cocoon special) per session, occasionally known as the Okay We Get It, You're Good, Shut Up Already award. I think that Gary Oldman won under the latter proviso. That's also why we got that fairly amazing article where a bunch of older Academy members admitted to just not having watched Get Out, because they decided it simply wasn't "an Oscar film."

[gwynnega]

Also, the only actor nominated for an Oscar for Do the Right Thing was Danny Aiello! I'm still very annoyed about that, all these years later. (Though my ultimate Oscar gripe will probably always be Crash winning Best Picture.)

[ETA: Now it occurs to me that my ultimate Oscar gripe has been revised to Crash winning Best Picture while Get Out did not.]

[kore]

Ahaha, I went down that rabbit hole a bit, but had to stop because it was too enraging/depressing. (Remember Maurice getting ONE nomination?)