vote for the best Oscar-winning Best Pictures of all time

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huh I thought I was the only one who thought SOTL was stupid and pointless! I guess me and gabbneb DO have something in common.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:01 (eighteen years ago) link

the serial killer genre is not good. genre is not good.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:02 (eighteen years ago) link

"aw c'mon, is there a better example of the serial killer genre than SOTL?"

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer um slays SOTL.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:02 (eighteen years ago) link

I guess I just always rankle at these silly supervillain-esque treatments of serial killers. they always seem belabored and obvious and impossible - as opposed to genuinely evil and scary.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:03 (eighteen years ago) link

"genre is not good."

ah, and we part ways again...

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:03 (eighteen years ago) link

Also American Psycho >>>>>>>>>>>>>> SOTL

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:04 (eighteen years ago) link

(I'm sure there's more, gimme a minute here)

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:04 (eighteen years ago) link

this is one of the few Hackman perfs that I genuinely appreciate

Explain.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:07 (eighteen years ago) link

how green was my valley

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:09 (eighteen years ago) link

I don't know if those films can match the suspense/mystery aspects of SOTL.

x-post

― erklie (erklie), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:09 (eighteen years ago) link

i think it seems worse than it actually is because everything about it has been since copied ad nauseum

― erklie (erklie), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:10 (eighteen years ago) link

I don't like him. I've gone into it on some other thread but he always seems to be doing the same thing - a kind of hard-boiled, no-nonsense, occasionally shouty but alternately smirk-y guy - and it bores me. He's never had a lead role that really blew me away, but he's also ubiquitous, seems like he's been in more crap than Michael Caine even...

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:11 (eighteen years ago) link

Hoosiers, dude. no, really.

― erklie (erklie), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:15 (eighteen years ago) link

Hackman's like Jeff Bridges: he disappears into characters so effortlessly that, at his worst, he's uninteresting. I'm glad he's working less these days. There was a period in the late '80s when he starred in, like, 56 movies in two years (alimony, he says).

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:28 (eighteen years ago) link

amateurist totally stole one of my answers

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Friday, 5 May 2006 21:43 (eighteen years ago) link

"he disappears into characters so effortlessly "

I don't see this at all. To me he's more like post-70s Nicholson - a caricature that's the same every time.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 5 May 2006 22:03 (eighteen years ago) link

How can you caricature blandness-as-subterfuge?

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Friday, 5 May 2006 22:15 (eighteen years ago) link

I guess I just always rankle at these silly supervillain-esque treatments of serial killers.

Hmmm. There's an argument to be made that, whichever of the killers in SOTL you're talking about, you're misreading them, but I suppose it's neither here nor there if you simply don't like the movie. In any case it was certainly Demme's last good one.

Gene Hackman is one of my all-time favorite actors.

― phil d. (Phil D.), Friday, 5 May 2006 23:11 (eighteen years ago) link

1. 1929/30 - All Quiet on the Western Front
2. 1977 - Annie Hall
3. 1962 - Lawrence of Arabia
4. 1978 - The Deer Hunter
5. 2004 - Million Dollar Baby
6. 1970 - Patton
7. 1943 - Casablanca
8. 1972 - The Godfather
9. 1957 - The Bridge on the River Kwai
10. 1997 - Titanic

don't read too much into this, i made it in 3 minutes

― a.b. (alanbanana), Friday, 5 May 2006 23:16 (eighteen years ago) link

The dialgoue in All Quiet on the Western Front is creaky; had the film been silent it would be a classic (that way we could ignore Lew Ayres' wet solemnity).

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Friday, 5 May 2006 23:27 (eighteen years ago) link

there's a silent version of "all quiet" but i haven't seen it

― a.b. (alanbanana), Friday, 5 May 2006 23:31 (eighteen years ago) link

alfred OTM on All quiet

― erklie (erklie), Saturday, 6 May 2006 00:05 (eighteen years ago) link

mark sinkers essay on SOTL is where i come from here--and what moves me about it, is that it is trash, hard, unleavened trash, not redeemed at all by middle class pretensions of art. i have no idea why it won the academy award, but it was one of the best movies of the last 15 years, because of the charisma and intellegience of hopkins, because of how those qualities, and his charisma seduced foster (one of the things i think we miss about serial killers is to get that many people unders ones belt one has to be a bit charsamtic, because its the first time ive ever believed her as naive, because of the strangeness and the genuine fright i got from jamie gumb, and because of many of the virtousou(sp) elements of film making...

the apartment i like because of its britlleness, and how much it hates.

― anthony easton (anthony), Saturday, 6 May 2006 00:35 (eighteen years ago) link

you're otm (except for Foster - wrong on all counts), and that's exactly why i don't like it. the serial killer seeks celebrity, and the movie delivered a generic form of that celebrity indelibly into pop culture. it won the academy award because, for all its fetishistic blue-collar milieu, it's a big spectacle epitomized by the flayed-dudes-on-cages money shot. as morally indefensible as the terrorist attacks in Independence Day.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Saturday, 6 May 2006 00:53 (eighteen years ago) link

the aliens were freedom fighters

― erklie (erklie), Saturday, 6 May 2006 00:55 (eighteen years ago) link

Around the time she retired Pauline Kael praised The Grifters and dismissed SOTL: "I like my pulp as pulp." I'm not sure what she meant, since SOTL may be slower and attempt ambiguity (the hostility of fellow G-men and local sheriffs directed at Clarice Starling) but it's got the reductive psychology of pure pulp (a helpful explanation by Dr. Lecter: Clarice wants to catch Buffalo Bill because, see, she couldn't save a lamb and she wants to avenge her father's death).

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Saturday, 6 May 2006 01:03 (eighteen years ago) link

thats where kael is wrong--i also like my pulp as pulp, and fucking hell it was pulp, in the most meatspace sense of the word (cf news footage of Dahmer or Gacy,etc--which concentrated on issues of flesh and the body)

― anthony easton (anthony), Saturday, 6 May 2006 01:46 (eighteen years ago) link

Every scene with Buffalo Bill is classic. Everything else, not so much... excepting "I can smell yr cunt."

My ten (first half for real, second half a little devil's advocate):

01. Sunrise
02. All About Eve
03. How Green Was My Valley
04. Annie Hall
05. The Best Years of Our Lives
06. Titanic
07. The French Connection
08. Ordinary People
09. Million Dollar Baby
10. Driving Miss Daisy

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Saturday, 6 May 2006 02:53 (eighteen years ago) link

defend DMD

― anthony easton (anthony), Saturday, 6 May 2006 03:03 (eighteen years ago) link

well uh pauline kael liked it! *ducks*

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 6 May 2006 03:04 (eighteen years ago) link

It's hilarious! Esther Rolle "I wouldn't be in your shoes if the good Lord came down here and ask me hisself." Dan Ackroyd just getting really fat. "Bee-uh... and an Are-uh!" I should start a JFK thread on it.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Saturday, 6 May 2006 04:00 (eighteen years ago) link

yes, DMD is good if conventional; it doesn't stink just cuz Spike Lee (who certainly was robbed) wanted Hoke to burn the mansion down.

Foster is what give SOTL its reason for being; Hopkins isn't scary or believable, he's just a pro at not blinking.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 6 May 2006 17:21 (eighteen years ago) link

Oh, if only Hopkins had played Capote in Capote and Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Saturday, 6 May 2006 17:34 (eighteen years ago) link

results are up
fuckers got rotk in there

― a.b. (alanbanana), Sunday, 7 May 2006 04:12 (eighteen years ago) link

ROTK at #20 is a pretty weak showing for an ubergeek touchstone in a Net poll.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 8 May 2006 12:35 (eighteen years ago) link

one year passes...

's here.

but was there a newer one?

― pisces, Thursday, 28 February 2008 01:52 (sixteen years ago) link

six years pass...

http://www.ofcs.org/the-best-of-the-best-picture-oscar-winners-part-6/

22. Gone With the Wind (1939)
23. 12 Years a Slave (2013)

Ouch.

― Eric H., Tuesday, 4 March 2014 22:36 (ten years ago) link

http://www.ofcs.org/the-best-of-the-best-picture-oscar-winners-part-6/

Eric pointed out this marvelous juxtaposition:

22. Gone With the Wind (1939)
23. 12 Years a Slave (2013)

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 4 March 2014 22:41 (ten years ago) link

Oops. Goddamn cell phones.

DMD at #80 is ridic though

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 4 March 2014 22:41 (ten years ago) link

Yeah, of all the vilified '80s winners, that ones by far the best movie, even if it got awarded during the very wrong year.

― Eric H., Tuesday, 4 March 2014 22:46 (ten years ago) link

there are a lot of "good" best-picture winners i have little-to-no personal affection for, but here are some i really like:

how green was my valley
the best years of our lives
it happened one night
casablanca
the godfather
going my way
no country for old men
gigi
the silence of the lambs
rocky

(I admit that I don't love "rebecca")

― espring (amateurist), Tuesday, 4 March 2014 22:50 (ten years ago) link

we should do a thread where we all pick the best american movies of all the years since 1927/28. i.e. "what should have won the oscar?"

― espring (amateurist), Tuesday, 4 March 2014 22:51 (ten years ago) link

or maybe we can even pick the FIVE NOMINEES and one winner, none of which have to actually have been nominated/won.

― espring (amateurist), Tuesday, 4 March 2014 22:52 (ten years ago) link

sure as shit Holiday should've been at least nominated in '38.

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 4 March 2014 22:53 (ten years ago) link

we should do a thread where we all pick the best american movies of all the years since 1927/28. i.e. "what should have won the oscar?"

There's an Oscar for best American movie?

― Alba, Tuesday, 4 March 2014 23:00 (ten years ago) link

I got '95 on lockdown.

― Eric H., Tuesday, 4 March 2014 23:00 (ten years ago) link

most mediocre of my lifetime

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 4 March 2014 23:01 (ten years ago) link

Not too hard to improve the nominations tho.

― Eric H., Tuesday, 4 March 2014 23:04 (ten years ago) link

rebecca easily my fav hitch these days

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 4 March 2014 23:11 (ten years ago) link

Probably time to revise my list from upthread. Now it'd be more like ...

01. Sunrise
02. All About Eve
03. Annie Hall
04. The Best Years of Our Lives
05. No Country for Old Men
06. How Green Was My Valley
07. The Godfather (I give)
08. maybe West Side Story
09. I dunno, maybe The Hurt Locker?
10. Ordinary People

― Eric H., Tuesday, 4 March 2014 23:12 (ten years ago) link

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