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Lord Of The Rings - Oscars, We Loves Them
Suhas writes "The New Zealand Herald and many others such as Yahoo/AP are reporting that Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King has swept the Oscars by winning in all the 11 categories it was nominated in. Good to see Peter Jackson finally got the Best Director award! The official Oscar site has a full list of the winners."
Peter Jackson has the encouragement and the studio backing to do the Hobbit. What he does not have is the legal right to film an adaptation of the book. Those strings, I believe are still held by the Tolkein Estate. And judging from the fact that Christopher Tolkien disowned his own son for supporting Peter Jackson's efforts w/ LOTR, I don't see him giving a green light to do the Hobbit any time soon.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Which is why Jackson won best adapted screenplay. Also Ian McKellen gave a big shout out to Tolkien when introing a LOTR clip at the beginning of the award show.
Take it to the next step:
Rank Title Total Box Office
1 Titanic (1997) $600,743,440
2 Star Wars (1977) $460,935,655 10
3 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) $434,949,459 242
4 Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) $431,065,444 -
5 Spider-Man (2002) $403,706,375 -
6 Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The (2003) $361,118,934 4
7 Jurassic Park (1993) $356,763,175 -
8 Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002) $340,478,898 5
9 Finding Nemo (2003) $339,714,367 88
10 Forrest Gump (1994) $329,452,287 120
11 Lion King, The (1994) $328,423,001 -
12 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) $317,557,891 -
13 Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001) $313,837,577 7
14 Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) $310,675,583 -
15 Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) $309,064,373 130
16 Independence Day (1996) $306,200,000 -
17 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) $305,411,224 224
18 Sixth Sense, The (1999) $293,501,675 87
19 Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) $290,158,751 15
20 Home Alone (1990) $285,761,243 -
21 Matrix Reloaded, The (2003) $281,492,479 -
22 Shrek (2001) $267,652,016 128
23 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) $261,970,615 -
24 How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) $260,031,035 -
25 Jaws (1975) $260,000,000 79
Using my own judgement, the geeks have 15 of the Top 25. This is just US box office. International box office is more slanted towards sci fi / fantasy, with 18 of the top 25 spots...
US Box Office
World Wide Box Office
What's amazing is that no other film has won 11 oscars ever.
Untrue. Both "Titanic" and "Ben-Hur" achieved this. Neither of them managed to win in all the categories they were nominated in, though. (Which actually suggests they may have been "better" since they were nominated in 12 or more categories)
Anyway, nice try, but you lose.
Random and weird software I've written.
lets make it more interesting
...
Top 50, adjusted for inflation
LOTR is doing real well there, infact nothing in the top 10, from the last decade except titanic.
#1 is still Gone With the Wind, which grossed 198 million in 1939 dollars.
1 Gone With the Wind MGM $1,218,328,752 $198,655,278 1939
49 The Return of the King NL $361,940,947 $361,940,947 2003
"...the majority of the physics of the spinning cylinder we're correct..."
The word "we're" is an abbreviation of "we are." The word "were" is the past tense form of "be."
I wouldn't have mentioned it, but you made the mistake not once, not twice, but THREE times. This denotes an actual misunderstanding, as opposed to a simple lapse of grammatical analitiy (if I may be allowed to coin a word).
Grammar: it's your friend.
Rot-13 my address to e-mail me.
"So I hurry back to little earth / For another life another birth"
Harvard is offering a course this semester under Anthropology called "Humans, Aliens, and Future Home Worlds: An Anthropologist Looks at Science Fiction."
Of course, I jumped on it, and so far it has been very interesting. We read Wells' War of the Worlds; Butler's Wild Seed; Clarke's Childhood's End; LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness; and Haldeman's The Forever War. There's also a bunch of books about scifi in general, for example why Star Trek is such a success.
A lot of people were incredulous that this class was being offered, but I think it points to a growing respect for the sci-fi genre.
In a related note, courses on mythology, including stuff about goblins, trolls, dragons, etc, have been offered for some time. But the focus is mythology, and not really modern fantasy.
Earliest science fiction I know of is Lucian's Vera Historia, which includes a moon travel tale, from AD 160 (there's no missing zero there, folks, that's 2nd century). For fantasy, there's the Odyssey (which is fantasy at least as much as it is mythology), 700 BC (yes, BC). Oh, and it's spelled Aristophanes. And Greek tragedy at least was taken very seriously in Athens: there were competitions for best lead actor (protagonist) and second actor (deuteragonist) and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd best trilogy (and only three trilogies were presented: sometimes they were real trilogies, especially early on in Aeschylus' day, but usually they were only thematically related, if that), and there were reserved seats for the VIPs, including the priest of Dionysos, the god to whom the productions were dedicated. And by the way, a lot of stuff has survived from classical times that isn't "just respected because of its age" - ever hear of Lycophron? No? You know why? Because he sucks. Has survived at least 1900 years, probably 2100.