It's an honor just to be nominated.

Or so they tell me. So I get my newest issue of Entertainment Weekly and it's their annual Academy Awards Issue. They go into each of the major awards and the nominees and give you all manner of info about them and so on and so on. I read some of it and skipped some of it based on the person or movie that was being talked about but what I didn't do was give half a squirt of piss about the Oscars at all. I don't really feel the Academy Awards can claim to have any sort of relevance anymore, if they ever could have made that claim. Allow me to explain. I promise to limit myself to just my absolute biggest gripes.

1. Rocky wins Best Picture.

I never did understand why everyone seems to love this movie. The depiction of boxing is so wildly unrealistic it borders on being a bad joke and anyone that thinks Stallone is anything other than a terrible actor should never be allowed to watch another movie. But even if you leave everything that is bad about the movie aside, here is a short list of films also released that year that the Academy thought were not as good as Rocky:

Taxi Driver - Clearly the movie that should have won. It's one of the greatest films of all time.

All The President's Men

Network

The Omen

Marathon Man

Hell, even such comedies or "genre flicks" as Murder By Death, Logan's Run, Assault on Precinct 13, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Silver Streak or The Bad News Bears are movies I would watch over Rocky any day.

2. Hitchcock and Scorsese never won for Best Director

How do you have an award specifically to reward great film direction and then never give it to either of the, arguably, best directors ever? The very idea is such complete nonsense that it makes my brain twist. I know that Scorsese can still win but the fact remains that he didn't win, multiple times, when he should have. The fact that Hitchcock never won (the lifetime achievement Oscar does NOT count) is a stain on the Academy that they can never wash off.

3. Around The World In 80 Days wins Best Picture

I figure this thing won because everybody and their mother was in it and everyone that was in it voted for it. It's not a good movie. It is, in fact, a bad movie and shouldn't even have been nominated. A short list of films from 1956 that the Academy thought were not as good as this pile of ick:

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Baby Doll

Giant

The Searchers

The King and I

The Ten Commandments

4. Titanic wins Best Picture

Really? Titanic? What the hell are you people smoking? Ignore for a moment that yes, Kate Winslet is very very good in it and did deserve her nomination for acting (she has been nominated for and won many acting awards so yeah, she's pretty good) and focus on the film itself. It isn't that good. It's average, at best. This got nominated and then won based solely on the fact that it shattered box office records (though it only did that if you don't adjust for inflation. If you adjust for inflation it comes in at #6 behind Gone With the Wind, Star Wars, The Sound of Music, E. T. and The Ten Commandments) and that is a completely idiotic reason to give it the award. Movies from that year that are, apparently, worse than this not very good at all film:

As Good As It Gets - This should have won, hands down.

Good Will Hunting

L. A. Confidential

Amistad

Gattaca

Affliction

Waiting For Guffman

Boogie Nights

And if I stop to think about it probably 10 or 12 more from that year that I'd rather watch instead.

There are plenty more examples of the gross ignorance of the oh so important Academy but these are, for me, the worst. Come Oscar night I say skip the awards and celebrate good cinema by watching some. That's what I'll be doing.