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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 great to see a fantasy film get the recognition it deserves...a masterful film, even if I actually didn't care for it :)
This is the first time a Fantasy movie wins the Best Picture award ... yeha!!!!!
...
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.
Bohoo ...... Why wasnt it nominated for best cinematography ??? I havnt seen better cinematography before.
We loves our precious
It is interesting to see a movie that contains a leat one digital artifact in every shot or sequence simply overwhelm the awards. When will we see the effects groups have a category?
Oh yes, Bill Murray should have one for best actor. No doubt.
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 feel a great disturbance in the force...as if thousands of fantasy geeks suddenly cried out...
Great job, PJ & Crew!
Ryan
Sam: What we need is a little bit of recognition.
Gollum: What's recognishin, precious? What's recognishin, eh?
Sam: Rec-og-ni-tion. Honors, awards, critics in a stew. Lovely big golden awards with a nice nameplate on the bottom.
Sam: Even you couldn't say no to that.
Gollum: Oh yes, we could. Spoilin' nice shinies. Give it to us raw and unfinished. You keep nasty awards.
Sam: You're hopeless.
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!
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
They should have been nominated for best foreign film. I mean, there were at least 3 different languages besides English that they spoke in it! I'm sure there is a country out their who's population speaks Elvish or whatever it is people from Mordor speak!
Yes! I know he was mad at the Academy for overlooking Meet the Feebles and Dead Alive!
Someone had to say it.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
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.
Don't bother.
Thanks,
The Mgmt.
Maybe Peter Jackson will have some encouragement (not to mention financial backing) to do the Hobbit now. Given what they pulled off with Gollum, I'd like to see what Smaug would look like...that would be awesome.
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
Reading the series has forever been on my "to do" list but I never have. I enthusiastically sat through the first two movies, but half way through the third I thought to myself "something just isn't clicking here." Upon rewatching the first two movies, I have to say, now that the "oh wow" factor of big monsters fighting on beautiful scenery has worn off, I really didn't like these films.
And I think the reason is this: the characters do not interact with each other, and are for the most part not interesting. There's a tedious romance encountered entirely via flashback and voiceover. There's an INCREADIBLY obvious and overstated (again and again and again) little rivalry with Sam and Gollum for Frodo's attention. Aside from that the characters really have no relation to one another, they just wander together, and by the end we learn (but never really see) that they've all become the best of pals. Even more eggregious, the bad guys have no direct connection to the good guys. No character has a personal stake in what he's working toward. They're just bad, and the fellowship is working against them because they're the heroes. No further explanation is really provided.
Upon watching the third movie I realized that maybe Aragorn was reclaiming some sort of birthright or something, but why this is a really big deal (aside from the movie's vauge assertion that kings are better than other forms of leadership) is beyond me. The rest of the characters either literally wandered onto the screen with no real explanation (in the case of 3 out of 4 hobbits) and stuck with the quest just because they were nice guys, or showed up already billed as heroes around a table. I never knew who Legolas was and I never really cared.
Boromeir was pretty interesting, and the rivalry/respect he had going with Frodo and Aragorn was the only conflict between individuals that was the least bit interesting in the whole trilogy. Every other time individuals clashed with each other it was the result of an evil mage or something, and there was no ambiguity whatsoever to what was going to happen.
I voiced all of this to a friend of mine and he said that if I read the books, people's motivations would be a little more fleshed out. Sorry, but that just doesn't cut it. I'm watching these movies as movies, and they're too long and don't really make much sense.
They're certainly better than most sci fi blockbusters, I just don't think ROTK was Oscar worthy. They beat the entire Alien series hands- down. They're more consistently entertaining than the old Star Wars and way better than the new one. The first Matrix was a better movie, but the sequels were a mess of "cool" with no logic. Perhaps the fantasy / sci-fi action genre isn't for me, but the movies seem universally poorly written. I don't see why it's so hard to have interesting, believable people interacting with each other inside a fantastic environment.
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This post is from August 25th of 1998, more than five years ago. It's the first mention of the movies being made that I could find on Slashdot. No comments, but it's interesting to realize that tonight's awards ceremony has been the the culmination of a story we've all been following here for more than half a decade.
I want the fire back.
Dunno about that bland Annie Lennox song ... A Mighty Wind's At The End of the Rainbow was a much better song, IMO. However in all other respects the film deserved the awards.
... so LOTR:ROTK is the first (to win 11) to win all the awards it was nominated for.
Note: Ben Hur was nominated for 12, and Titanic was nominated for 14
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.
The "fantasy genre" is only as good as its movies. If fantasy movies haven't won in the past, it's because they weren't actually all that good. What others have there been? Star Wars?
Good to see Peter Jackson finally got the Best Director award!
Why? Did you see the other nominated films? By what metric do you determine the 'best director'? If you feel he has been snubbed in the past, that's too bad. The nomination was for this film. (Yes, the voters have frequently righted past wrongs or close calls). A body of work award is typically rewarded specially, and much later in the career.
It's not as if Jackson is particularly old, either. So what is the reasoning behind the 'finally' comment? I just don't see it. There were plenty of good contenders. Nope, it boils down to plain old nerdish fanboyism.
And while I'm burning karma, perhaps the voters were actually thinking of G. Lucas when voting for Jackson. Sure, Jackson pumped out a couple of great movies, did wonders for product management, but Lucas helped define a genre and a generation, both in the insular world of Hollywood and in US culture in general. Yet he's never been 'blessed' by AMPAS, as space opera was too kiddyish. Here's the chance to correct that mistake.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
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.
LOTR is not just an epic, it is a... book!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
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.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'. --Dan Kaminsky
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).
And so the great Nerd Riots of 2004 were prevented, and Peter Jackson took the Oscar into the West.
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
And yet Tolkien was the one who signed away the movie rights, and even suggested editing changes, such as removing Helm's Deep because it was "unnecessary" to the story. Read his letters sometime.
If Peter Jackson had suggested cutting Helm's Deep, how many of the purists would be saying things like "Tokien would be turning in his grave!" Meanwhile, Tolkien suggested it!
Amusingly, Tolkien was much more liberal about Lord of the Rings than his own fans--he was editing and changing his mythologies up until the very end of his life. He stated several times he would have done things differently had he the chance to write the book over again.
People who quibble because someone said something that someone else said in the books, or the Ents didn't decide to go to war and instead had to be convinced, etc., are UPTIGHT.
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".
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
There's a new Mel Gibson movie everyone's talking about (does mythology count?).
I yelled my butt off when I saw LotR win Best Picture.
I'm so happy I'm not you.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Any chance we can talk Peter Jackson's team into making the Star Wars Episodes VII, VIII, and IX, so that they don't suck?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
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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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.
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.
Well i'd be happy with anything that wasn't The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I managed to drag myself all the way through the first trilogy and definitely wasn't impressed, but i gave up half-way through the first book of the second trilogy when it became aparent that it was going to be as lackluster as the first trilogy. Covenant was too whiney and annoying to be a good hero, and too pathetic to be a good anti-hero. Of course the fact that the first thing he does is rape a girl because he can't restrain his "manly urges" didn't really endear him to me.
Mirror of Her Dreams on the other hand was very good, wouldn't mind seeing a movie of that one, although there are other books i would nominate first.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
is how it wasn't even nominated for the category of Documentary Feature I mean just look at the amazing footage they got of all the major figures and major events in the quest to destroy the ring. And how they convinced a camera crew to go along with Sam and Frodo on the trek to Mount Doom incredible. How they can ignore this stunning documentary of one of the most crutial events in the history of Middle Earth and...
why is everyone looking at me?
I stole this Sig
I've seen all the nominated films.
Mystic River and American Splendor were clearly better adaptations than Return. And the Annie Lennox song was crap, and worse, not relevant to the film. The Mighty Wind song, sung on the show in character, was cute, but the Triplets of Belleville theme was the best.
Master and Commander, Lost in Translation, and Mystic River were all better films than Return. Only Seabiscuit was inferior. Of course the wins for Return were for the whole trilogy. Rings as a whole deserves high praise. Master and Commander is a better action/adventure film than Return. It's also far better than Gladiator, the other Crowe genre film that won Best Picture.
As an emsemble film, Return neither received nor deserved any acting nominations.
I'm in complete agreement with the technical awards. Return probably would have won Cinematography if it had been nominated, over the more deserving M&C.
Titanic had a slippery Kate Winslet. They also killed DiCaprio.
So it wasn't all bad.
t
Thomas Covenant was the worst. I hated the character but I couldn't stop reading the books. I kept buying these books centered around a character that I loathed. I was so glad when he died. I could finally stop reading those books. Everytime you thought Thomas could go no lower, he would find a way. I felt like a spouse being beaten and always winding up going back for more. I am starting to feel sad for myself again. Gotta stop. Maybe read some more Thomas Covenant to take my mind off of it.
Sorry my bullshit sensor overloaded.
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
(quick cut to an army of ghosts flying out of a brown cube)
Only the select few heroes dare to tread in such dangerous grounds.
They are..... The Four Playable Characters!!
(Demi Moore, as the Valkyrie, holds a dying elven Richard Gere on the cold stone floor of Level 17...)
Gere: "green... elf... needs fo-od bad..ly....."
(random fast-cut action scenes, with a horn crescendo buildup....... duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUUUU --
COMING SUMMER 2005 -- DUN!!
(2004-03-01) -- Oscar-sweeping director Peter Jackson this morning said he would team up with Pixar Studios, which last night won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film, to produce a rollicking adventure tentatively titled "Finding Smeagol." Read the rest...
No, he'll do that in a few years if Jackson wins for King Kong...
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Someone should make a book out of it.
On the other hand... best line of the night, from the acceptance speech for the "FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS":
"We're so glad that Lord of the Rings doesn't qualify for this category."
Although if you think about it, there was elvish in it...
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Am I the only one who is sick and tired of the standard "blockbuster" films getting Best Picture while more unique, original (and lower-budget) films get shafted year after year?
Why does LOTR deserve best picture over Master and Commander, Lost in Translation, or dare I say (even though it wasn't nominated) The Last Samurai? Because it had a bigger budget and was hyped more?
I stopped watching or caring about the academy awards when Gladiator (the hyped big-budget movie of 2000) beat Crouching Tiger and Chocolat for best picture. Either of those movies deserved best picture ten times more then Gladiator.
Let the big budget films have best actor/actress if they actually earned it (Crowe did in Gladiator). But it seems like they are automatically destined to get Best Picture -- which annoys the hell out of me. Though I realize I'm in the minority and probably begging to get modded flamebait by speaking out against LOTR on /.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.