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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."
This is the first time a Fantasy movie wins the Best Picture award ... yeha!!!!!
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Of course, we may see now a lot of crappy fantasy movies just riding the wave
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
No doubt many of these awards are symbolic awards for the efforts in creating the entire trilogy, not just RotK. I have my doubts if the third LotR movie was that good, especially given some of the films it was up against, but the trilogy as a whole merits siginificant recognition and I think that was given tonight.
Ian McKellen deserved an Oscar for his performance, not only because he was consistently great in all three movies, but his acting didn't overshadow and it easily could have. It's a pity he was nominated this year.
I for one cannot wait to hear that Peter Jackson has untangled the legal web surrounding the rights to The Hobbit. As a child I enjoyed it much more than the trilogy. It's the perfect 3 hour film. Massive battle at the end. The dwarves! The eagles! Smaug! Mirkwood, the elves en masse - PJ, please get King Kong out of the way and give us The Hobbit in 2007 or 2008!
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I thought the whole idea of including Andy Serkis in the live-action flashback scene to Smeagol vs. Deagol was to make him eligible for the Best Supporting Actor oscar. I thought he would have at least deserved consideration for his work in LotR: The Two Towers, but apparently actors cannot receive that oscar if their character is computer animated.
Shoot, he was the best actor in the lot of them, with the possible exception of Ian McKellan.
Uhh, this was the third year in a row that a LoTR movie won for best visual effects!!
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Let's be honest here, the voters didn't award 11 Oscars for Return Of The King, they awarded 11 Oscars for the trilogy.
All the good karma generated by the first two movies helped ROTK enormously. If it had been a stand-alone film then it's highly doubtful that it would have been so successful at gaining the votes of the Academy's members.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I will bite. Life is defined by your experiences on this planet, and getting involved in triumphs of people whose work you like is part of it. There are many things which are great and are an end in themselves, but tell me, how many such monumental achievements will people remember 100 years from now? Awards like this make sure that future generations will watch them again and again because they were recongnised the academy, If you don't agree with me, then Ask Peter jackson himself is it makes a difference to him or not. Having a holier than thou attitude does not help, but understanding how this world works does.
In terms of cinematography, the footage of the fires calling Rohan to Gondor's aid was fantastic, but overall the cinematography wasn't that impressive. You've got to remember that a great many scenes used mainly CGI backdrops, and I'm not sure this category was designed to cover footage of non-live scenery and action.
The winner of that category, Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World was absolutely in a different class to the rest of the field, ROTK included. I don't think Peter Jackson would argue that he was slighted in that department, especially after his 11 out of 11 haul.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Too much CGI - especially in the backdrops. This does not go down too well with the powers that be in this categroy - the cinematographers.
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Are you so sure that Hollywood sees fantasy as anything but? Sure - Jackson was able to fight the good fight and create this epic (in both film and production). But it's important to note that he had to fight to keep his vision intact. Jackson did a good job (critics aside). But will anybody else do as well?
Or will the previous poster's prediction hold true and we'll be inundated by more crappy fantasy?
The important thing here isn't that the LotR trilogy was fantasy. It's that it was an epic work, a good story, and a good series of films. That just happened to be a fantasy.
Interesting, and I'm somewhat sympathetic, but -- in regards to the last sentence -- keep in mind that he wrote this before effects and costuming could do what they can today. The orcs in these movies didn't come across as men dressed up as animals, or as buffoons or mimics.
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They should not have won eleven awards.
No one will see this seeing as I'm not registered, but RotK should not have even been nominated for editing. While I'm sure the extended edition of the film will flow better, there were some very bad glitches in the editing.
Take, for example, the moment in front of the Gates of Mordor. The group rides out, then back. The speech is missing, as is the Mouth of Sauron. These will be included (or so I have heard) in the extended edition, but it came off foolishly in the film itself.
During the battle at Minas Tirith, there were a few moments that were somewhat skittish with Eowyn and Eomer, and comments about Corsairs that made no sense to those who hadn't read the books simply because of omissions from the film.
Further, I don't know whether the Palantir of Denethor will be included in the final film, but I was very surprised to not see it given how many comments along the lines of "I have seen" and the sort were made. Denethor has no REASON to go mad the way the films were edited with no Palantir, and to those who didn't know he had it, that was very poor editing.
For my own thoughts, I would have given Director to Clint Eastwood simply because Mystic River was a very solid package in and of itself, but if they wanted RotK to sweep and give it the other 10, so be it. But the video editing was, while admirable considering the scope of what all they had to cut, not glossy enough to recieve an Oscar.
If it had been a stand-alone film then it's highly doubtful that it would have been so successful at gaining the votes of the Academy's members.
That's a meaningless statement. It wasn't a standalone film. If it was it would have been made entirely differently. Return of the King in its current form simply would never exist without FOTR & TTT, so what's the point in creating such hypotheticals? Its not meant to be a standalone film, why would you treat it line one?
I guess Sam and Frodo holding each other at the "end of all things" wasn't enough interaction. Nor was Gandalf's soothing speech about the afterlife (literally...after all the suspense, suddenly he calms things with a few lines, go Ian) to Pip. Nor Merry and Pippin's interactions with Treebeard and the Ents, leading them to battle. Nor the dynamics between Eowyn and Aragorn, or Denethor's horrible disdain for Faramir...ah, who am I kidding? You'll never like the films. Aragorn's quest for kingship was about shedding self-doubt and accepting fate. I don't get people who don't like these movies. So many universal themes touched on.
Actually, geek movies have certainly ruled the box office for quite a while (Check the top grossing films here).
Top 10 grossing films:
1. Titanic (okay... not so geeky... well, maybe a little geekish)
2.Star Wars, Episode 4 (geek enough?)
3. E.T. ('nuff said)
4.Star Wars, Episode 1 (see #2)
5. Spider-Man (See #3)
6. LOTR, RoTK (Classic geekdom)
7.Jurassic Park (geek-o-saurs)
8.LOTR, TT (Classic geekdom, redux)
9.Finding Nemo (Geek fish?)
10. Forrest Gump (Geek is as geek does)
The top 10 certainly is dominated by the science fiction/fantasy/comic book genres which are, natch, close to any geek's heart (including this one's).
Because they're falling all over themselves to rent "The Greatest Show on Earth" (1952) and "Going My Way" (1944).
And "How Green Was My Valley" (1941) is much more famous than that year's "Citizen Kane".
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I mean.. Jeez! I understand that people like things that are bad. Like candy bars, for instance. You may also like the music for LOTR, but it was still bad. Boring themes, tired arrangements, incredibly monotonous, embarrassing use of wood flute. Film scoring 101, basically. The Triplets of Belleville, among others, had much much better scores.
Doesn't anybody realize this? I found this particular award insulting to all musicians who actually have an original voice.
To be fair, it's a hard job to score three 3.5 hour movies. Still, that doesn't make the music better. Just adequate at best.
Oh, well. You can't win them all.
- Lebofsky
I'm no fanboy of the series, but I did see one of the documentaries that said that Jackson had something like 9 different film crews shooting scenes at the same time, around 15000 extras, and 3 separate movies being filmed concurrently... If doing that for over 3 years straight and coming up with the eye candy and enthralling films that make the LOTR doesn't earn the right to "Best Director", then I guess I'm not clear on what does...
I don't see where Lucas even enters in that line of thinking.
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It's actually not that surprising that this took so long, really.
well... let me clarify that--it is unfortunate that it took so long to have fantasy considered serious, but it shouldn't be surprising once you consider the evolution of other quasi-similar genre's.
The first basic pulp fiction magazine (the Argosy) appeared in the late 1800's. (1896 actually)... Some of the first SF pieces people tend to offer up are Atlantis (1628), Utopia (1516) and even Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1817) though the latter has since fallen moreso into the horror genre.
Jules verne took over the room in the 1850's and started pumping out all kinds of things. Later (1894), H. G. Wells was considered the man. And even though almost all of these titles faired well with the public--none of them were considered "serious" literature for decades --some for hundreds of years.
The Oscar voters are not the only critics to dispute the validity of fantasy and SF--this has been going on for hundred(s) of years. Back in the day, critics didn't even take tragedy and comedy drama as serious "art"... they used whatever would sell. Macbeth was rewritten numerous times with comical subplots (the witches songs) inserted so the public would keep dishing out their money. The Jew of Malta (generally considered the first comic-book-style evil villain ever written) wasn't at all taken seriously for hundreds of years after ben jonson wrote it.
All genre's take time to be accepted and considered serious. Tragedy and Comedy were written back with Sophocles and Aristophenes... critics respect this "age" and likewise respect them more. Every piece of pottery you look at in art 101 isn't the greatest example in the world--most of them were piles of crap back when they were made--but they're considered fabulous examples now just because of their age (this obviously doesn't apply to every example).
Western literature is another perfect example. Owen Wister's "the virginian" , zane gray's "riders of the purple sage", and jack schaefer's "shane" are all fabulous pieces of art... but only very recently have they even been considered literature at all.
It's not the content that's holding them back... it's the age and the way critics interpret this--and this really shouldn't be all too surprising... even if it is wrong.
My point, which you totally missed, was that if you basically had an identical movie, with pretty much exactly the same story, special effects, etc, that was told as a stand-alone movie, then it wouldn't have been so likely to sweep the board dramatically.
A fair amount of the voters who voted for ROTK weren't just voting for ROTK they were voting for the trilogy as a whole. In essence, it's likely that ROTK won Oscars in several categories that it wouldn't have won solely on it's own merits.
Being the final film in a trilogy (and a trilogy that was played out to audiences over a relatively short period of time), ROTK greatly benefited from earlier parts of the story when it came to the Oscars and other awards.
Similarly, the first two films will, to some extent, have been hurt by the fact that they were the opening and middle acts of a trilogy, and some people who were blown away by The Fellowship Of The Ring or The Two Towers or both won't have voted for them because "it wasn't the right time" to recognise Peter Jackson's achievements, for fear of having the trilogy monopolise the awards for three years running, etc.
Oscar voters don't always recognise the best performances. Often people will win awards "because it was their turn". Martin Landau winning Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Ed Wood over Samuel L. Jackson for his turn in Pulp Fiction is the best example. Michael Caine's recent Oscar for Cider House Rules is another.
Whether you want to admit it or not, it's a simple fact that, sometimes, voters ignore the rules and reward people for their careers rather than for any single effort. In a way, the voters were doing that to some degree when they feted ROTK this year.
If you still think I'm talking rubbish ask yourself this question: why did ROTK win so many Oscars, every single one which it was up for, when both FOTR and TTT came away relatively empty-handed? Was ROTK that much better than it's predecessors? Was it that groundbreaking compared to what had come before?
To answer your question directly, the point isn't to create a hypothetical and ask "What if there hadn't been two other movies?" the point is to recognise that all three movies were being voted for this time around, not just one.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Yeah, so why did you yell again? It wasn't you getting the award...
Because it's human nature to enjoy being validated, even if it's just a validation of your tastes. Just as children enjoy being told that their drawings are good, adults enjoy having some aspect of their personality praised, whether it's their sense of humor or their taste in movies.
Just to be clear, I haven't even seen ROTK (not out on DVD where I live); I'm speaking generally.
(* Spoiler for those that have not read the book or seen ROTK *)
The LOTR trilogy was far too complex to stay true to in the movie. There are somethings that I disagreed with that were change. After watching the cometary of FOTR, I now know why he stressed the Uruk Hai, and that was because an Evil Eye far away is hard to show visually. But I accept most of his changes, even with Frodo fighting with Golum at the end, and falling over the cliff. He paid homage to Golum in his glee, but if he would have just fallen over the edge, then that would have been visually anticlimactic. The fight with Frodo is much more exciting to watch.
I'm not a die hard LOTR fan so I can accept the changes made without being too upset, even if I disagree with him. I don't believe that PJ was trying to be better than Tolkien, he was just trying to make it better visually. It's hard to compete with someones imagination, and I thing PJ did a good job.
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind