Oscar Rant, part 1 of 2.

Well, it's that time of year again. The Academy Awards air this Sunday night, and I can't make any
 predictions this time around, since the only Best Picture nominee I've seen was Midnight In Paris. Yes, that's right, because of school work and the process of aging, I don't care about the Academy Awards anymore. It used to be a bigger deal for me in years past. Ever since I was little, I’ve always had this life-long fantasy of getting up on stage and hosting the show. The Academy Awards seemed to be the one event every year that represented a meeting of the cultural gods, as least according to me. It was always fun seeing who would win, and debating who should won instead.(Also, I used to recite the entire list of Best Picture winners from memory when I was younger.) Every now and then, I still imagine myself walking down the red carpet, into the Kodak Theatre. However, as I got older and more mature in my worldview and starting watching more movies from decades past, I realized that the show was becoming more and more irrelevant, in many ways. The more movies I watched, the more I appreciated how the Academy Awards has, in more ways than I thought, been wrong in their decisions regarding the nominations of certain movies and people. Why does anyone trust the Academy's judgment when they've made the following decisions over the years:
-Giving the Best Picture Oscar to How Green Was My Valley instead of Citizen Kane. This isn't to say that Valley was a terrible film by any means, but did it truly deserve to beat out one of the greatest movies of the last century?
-Best Picture category for 1952: High Noon, Ivanhoe, Moulin Rouge, The Quiet Man. And what was that year's winner? Cecil B Demille's Greatest Show On Earth.
-1968: A (merely good) Broadway musical version of Oliver Twist wins, while one of the greatest movies of all time by one of the greatest directors, Stanley Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey, is not even nominated. Unforgivable.
-Remember,the guy from a 1950's sitcom was awarded Best Actor instead of Al Pacino at the 47th Oscar ceremony. Sadly, when Pacino did win, it was over Denzel Washington's incomparable performance in Malcolm X.
-Rocky is an excellent movie, but did it truly deserve to beat Network, one of those rare movies that becomes more and more relevant with every passing year?
-Surely Annie Hall and Star Wars could have shared the Best Picture Oscar at the 50th ceremony. Just once, I would love for the Best Picture presenter to open the envelope and announce, "We have a tie!". More often than not, I feel this should have happened throughout the history of the show.
-Many great scenes from Apocalypse Now have become embedded in our cultural lexicon ("I love the smell of napalm in the morning", etc.). Does anyone remember Kramer Vs. Kramer as vividly? Again, I'm not saying it's a bad movie, but I saw it once and can't remember a thing from it. Maybe I wasn't in the right state of mind.
-I've never seen Ordinary People, so I can't comment on it, but what excuse can be made for turning down one of the best sports movies ever made, Raging Bull?
-One of the best movies ever made, Fargo, loses to one of the worst movies ever made about World War Two, The English Patient? Once again, simply unforgivable. (Also, as excellent as No Country For Old Men was, how many people suspect it only won because the Academy realized the mistake it made at the 50th ceremony and finally tried to catch up to the Coen Brothers?)
-The only thing worst than Saving Private Ryan losing to Shakespeare In Love was the truly tasteless D-Day dance number at the 71th ceremony.
-I know I'm going to catch some hostile reactions for this one, but is is fair that American Beauty won, but Being John Malkovich wasn't even nominated? I think not.
-Gladiator is not a bad movie at all, but watch it alongside Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. No comparison can be made.
-If you're going to honor Martin Scorsese decades too late, it would have been wise to give him the award for Gangs Of New York. (Also, as great as The Departed was, it should have tied with Babel in 2006).
-A four-way tie should have occurred at the 78th Oscars. Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night And Good Luck, and the criminally underrated Munich, all great movies, all defeating the godawful Crash. Leave all the negative comments you want, you know I'm right on this one.
-And, yes, sorry, but as excellent as The King's Speech was, you can't convince me it deserved to beat The Social Network.
Do you agree or disagree with my selections of the Academy Hall Of Infamy? Are there any other wins or losses I left out? Let me know in the comments section.
Part 2 to come.