Catch up with the idea behind this series here. These two years offer two of the best slates of Best Picture nominees ever in my opinion. ’75 of course belonging to the second ever winner of the top five awards, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” I’ve got no qualms with that particular film, but [...]

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. “The Sting” swept the 1973 awards and it remains one of the breeziest films to win top honors. The combination of Newman and Redford, working at the top of their game and re-teaming with “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” director George Roy Hill proved irresistible. [...]

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. Kubrick gets robbed again as his visionary, “A Clockwork Orange” loses out to a well-executed genre flick in 1971. The Oscars like nothing more than a slightly better version of the crap that Hollywood continually churns out. It’s almost as if one film doing it really [...]

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. As the 60′s came to a close, Oscar decided to embrace its dirty side and give X-rated

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. The civil rights struggle raged through America in the late 60′s and the issue found its way to Oscar’s front door in 1967 with

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. I’m back guys. Sorry for taking a week off but my older brother got hitched and I had a drunken Best Man speech that needed attending to. I trust you spent the week watching all the wonderful movies being highlighted in this column. We’re halfway through [...]

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. The Beatles weren’t the only British invasion happening around 1963 as “Tom Jones” took the big prize at the Academy Awards and British talent racked up no less than 9 of the 20 acting nominations. It also became one of the few comedies to win, slaying [...]

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. I know it’s a fool’s game to do any kind of post that doesn’t mention “Inception,” but I just did so I guess it’s all good. Back at the Oscars, a big film swept the proceedings for the third year in a row with “West Side [...]

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. The epics kept rolling at the turn of the decade with “Ben-Hur” taking the 1959 Best Picture prize, picking up a record 11 wins in the process, yet to be eclipsed but matched twice by “Titanic” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the [...]

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. The Academy was knee-deep in blacklisting around 1957 and Best Adapted Screenplay was given to novelist Pierre Boulle for

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. 1955. The year my father was born and the year the Oscars threw the biggest curveball in their short history. A tiny, 91 minute romantic comedy that made no money at the box office and was initially just meant to be a TV movie won the [...]

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. Did you guys see that USA-Algeria game today? I mean, talk about a life without Oscar. How can anyone think of movies while the World Cup is going on? Can we start a petition to give Landon Donovan the Jean Hersholt award this year? I suppose [...]

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. So sorry to have neglected this column for two weeks but life got in the way. A life without Oscar, you could even say. 1951 saw some major shakeups in Oscar-land, with producers taking the Best Picture award rather than the studio for the first time [...]

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. “All the King’s Men” won the Best Picture prize in 1949, appropriately closing the book on the decade of socially conscious dramas hogging all of the attention. Somewhere, an eight year old Mike Medavoy sat in a dark theater watching and said, “I’m gonna grow up [...]

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. 1947 kept the preachy, socially conscious train rolling at the Oscars with “Gentleman’s Agreement” taking the top prize. Anything exposing anti-Semitism was going to be hard to beat in the post-World War II period and the fact that it was actually well-made didn’t hurt either. More [...]

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. World War II was winding down and the nation was ready to be happy again. So, naturally the Best Picture award went to “The Lost Weekend.” Perhaps it was a show of unity with war partners France, as it would be the first film to win [...]

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. The Academy and America were in the thick of World War II and patriotism or sentimentality were the order of the day. “Casablanca” and “Going My Way” were the two big winners in the history books and while I can hardly argue with the former, the [...]

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Catch up with the idea behind this series here. 1941 is already famous for an Academy oversight with “Citizen Kane” losing the Best Picture race to “How Green Was My Valley.” At least Welles’s masterpiece got a handful of nominations and a screenplay win, unlike all of the films highlighted in this series. Still, to [...]

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