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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shadowdancer" data-source="post: 120130" data-attributes="member: 515">As a long-time Oscar watcher and someone who pays attention to the movie industry as part of my job, I have to disagree with some of the comments on this thread.First, FOTR was a very good movie, one deserving of all the nominations it received. And it should have won best picture. Of the five nominated films, A Beautiful Mind was the least-deserving winner.Of all the movies released last year, there were only two which received more positive reviews from more critics than FOTR and those were Shrek and In the Bedroom. FOTR was a critical success and a box office success.Moulin Rouge was a great movie, too. Of the nominated films, I thought is was second behind FOTR.The reason Beautiful Mind won was partly because of politics and partly because the academy voters consider it a safer, less controversional, less radical choice. It deals with a more "serious" subject than FOTR (in their opinion).The film didn't win because of Ron Howard, and Howard didn't win because of being a member of the Hollywood family. Up until now, Howard has been disliked by Hollywood. Why? Because his movies are too successful. Steven Spielberg used to suffer from the same problem back in the 1970s and '80s. He was nominated for best director several times, and his movies were nominated for best picture, but never won. Not until he made Schindler's List, and the academy voters felt he had finally made a serious movie worthy of an award. Same thing with Howard. This year was his first nomination for best director. He should have won for Apollo 13, which -- much like FOTR -- was a great piece of filmmaking. But the academy thought it wasn't serious enough and relied too much on special effects. They had the same problems with FOTR.As far as the girl who had the system to predict all the winners: I've heard of that system, and others like it, over the years. It doesn't always work. Hell, it didn't work this year. Best soundtrack winner was not from the most popular animated movie this year -- the winner was FOTR. The best songs wasn't from the most popular animated movie. The best song was from "Monster's, Inc.," the most popular animated movie was "Shrek." Last year, the best song wasn't from an animated movie at all. As far as the best picture winner either being historical, war or about a middle-aged man's midlife crisis, that doesn't explain wins for The Silence of the Lambs, Terms of Endearment or Ordinary People, just to name three off the top of my head. Or the Godfather, Parts I or II. Unless you're calling the Godfather historical or a mid-life crisis, which would really be stretching it. And best actor and actress don't always go to who is most popular. Hilary Swank wasn't that popular when she won best actress -- she was a virtual unknown. Same for Marlee Matlin, and others when they've won. Russell Crowe wasn't that popular last year when he won. That's one reason he didn't win this year -- too many people in Hollywood don't like him. Popularity does come into play, but it's not the only factor in the voting.In the nine categories in which I predicted the winners in stories I wrote for the newspaper where I work, I was correct in seven categories. It doesn't take a system, just some common sense about the academy and how they vote.There are several tried-and-true Oscar prediction systems that indicated FOTR was going to win this year.</blockquote>

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