how about the Top Ten Worst Movies to Win Best Picture?

Titanic
Titanic
Titanic
Titanic
Titanic
Titanic
Titanic
Titanic
Titanic
Titanic

I'm still pissed that Harry and the Hendersons didn't even get nominated.

1 First movie I thought of. I still remember my girlfriend at the time thought that the final scene was so romantic, where DeCrapio gives that girl his piece of wood (no pun intended, seriously) so she can stay afloat and live while he dies. I thought it was stupid and would only apply to about 1% of men on this planet - where they'd die over a girl they just met on a cruise. I still think that was one of the sappiest and dumbest scenes I've ever seen.

I loved Ordinary People.

Oliver! should make that second list. That's when I stopped taking awards seriously, because even as a kid I knew that movie sucked.

3 LOL. I can see why she's no longer your girlfriend and you're left with posting messages on the internets!

Anyway, a nominee for top-10 worst movies to win the oscar = Gladiator. What a farce. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Traffic" were both better movies (though neither were classics).

Russel Crowe's win (for Gladiator) over Tom Hanks (for Castaway) for best actor also has to rank up there with the all-time gaffes by the Academny.

Forrest Gump? Worst movie? Are you insane?

yeah harry and the hendersons is an instant classic.

Also, anyone read that igawa was talked about in potential santana talks (read that over on rotoworld)

I think sorta like the MVP award, we need a definition of what makes a movie 'great'. I know there is often a lot of emphasis on the 'artsy' aspects of a flick. I for one, see a movie for one reason above all. To be entertained.

And yes, tickling my intellect and emotions are certainly within the realm of entertainment. But I still think the 'enjoyment' factor is the most important.

We need more categories in these awards.
There needs to be a place for movies like 'Where's Papa' and the (original) 'Producers'.

Will a musical with 'Springtime for Hitler and German' be dropdead funny in a 100 years?

Was Forrest Gump good? Yikes. It's in the Field of Dreams mushfest category for me. The only movie where a major star plays a mentally hanicapped person that I've found honestly moving in the past 20 years is My Left Foot. Funny, you mention Oliver! (one of four musicals to win the award in the sixties). I know some people who love that movie and others who really dislike it.

Titanic, yeah, that's a good one too. Ordinary People goes under the heading of the Earnest Drama, like Kramer vs Kramer and American Beauty. All well done enough. Ordinary People won over Raging Bull. In 1990, Dances with Wolves (aka, Plays with Camera) won over Good Fellas. Whitebread wins again!

Keys to winning Best Picture:

1. Spend lots of money
2. Have lots of extras (i.e. peasants, warriors, countrymen, etc. running around in the background)
3. Use lots of film (i.e. make the movie really long)

It was friggin' criminal that Gump won over Pulp Fiction...

Amadeus was one of the worst winners in my opinion.

My shoulda won list (off the top of my head):

Goodfellas
A Few Good Men

and 3 from 1987:
Moonstruck
Broadcast News
Fatal Attraction

RE: Santana Talk...
Is anyone else disappointed that the Yankees couldn't get more creative in their offers for Santana? Maybe a little out-of-the-box, and see how Minn. reacts?

They want young. They want talent. They want cheap. Could we include Matsui in a deal, where we pay his salary? Maybe Shelly? How about quanitity from Tier 2?

The truth is, we really only have to offer better then Boston. I don't know if Minn. can afford to risk only getting 2 draft picks.

IPK, Melky, Duncan, AGon, 2 other Tier 2 guys?
What's 2 years of a paid for Matsui worth?
If we were willing to give up Phil, how about Melancon and Betances instead?

Aren't there about a dozen decent 'groups' we could try?

I didn't include Moonstruck in the shoulda, coulda category, but that was a really good comedy, soup to nuts.

Keys to winning the Big One. Make an epic, or a "serious" or "important" drama. War movies and bio-pics do well. Musicals do okay too. And, nowadays, yeah, spend mucho loot publicizing it.

I loved Forrest Gump, although it got long at times. The way they worked him into presidential history was a blast.

Anyone every see 'The Music Man' with their kids?
I bought it for my baby daughter. She must have watched it 30 times. And no matter how tired and bleary eyed she would get, when '76 Trumbones' come on at the end, she would ALWAYS pop up and march in place to the music.

Gotta be some kind of award for that!

0 I don't see how you can put Million Dollar Baby at the same level as Crash. MDB was more or less in a vacuum, while literally every other movie that was nominated deserved the Oscar more than Crash.

Hey... has anyone every seen numbers on a stat called: sOPS+

Man, I love Moonstruck.

I live in the neighborhood where it was filmed. This sounds ridiculous, but I swear that's a part of my attachment to the place...

Great soundtrack, btw.

Did I miss Chicago on your list? I will never have those 2 hours back...

I enjoyed several movies on your worst list. Though I agree that some didn't deserve to win the top prize.

0 I'd add the following to your list:

Wizard of Oz
Double Indemnity
Miracle on 34th Street
The Caine Mutiny
Anatomy of a Murder
The Hustler
To Kill a Mockingbird
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Witness
L.A. Confidential

And...because this is a Yankee blog:

The Pride of the Yankees

12 Believe it or not, today's Star Tribune mentions that the Yankees and Twins had talked about a Hughes, Melky and Igawa deal. In other words, I am sure the teams have been creative, but I'd imagine the Twins wouldn't budge off of Hughes..nor should they (of course, I also think they shouldn't budge off of Buccholz).

How about "The Usual Suspects" not being nominated?

Not saying it could have taken "Braveheart" but it deserved a best picture nod.
Heck, it won best screenplay.

Did I miss Chicago on your list?

Ugh. Terrible.

16 Yes...its OPS+ split into home and away components. B-R.com also tracks tOPS+, which is the split component, but compared to a players team instead of MLB.

Not yet mentioned underappreciateds (off the top of my head; dunno if they were nominated):

Diner
The Wild Bunch
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Down By Law and/or Mystery Train
Ghost World
Touched By Evil
McCabe and Mrs. Miller

20 I believe they can get a deal done with Hughes, but I, and many others (including Cashman) am against it.

While Buchholz is better then IPK, there are other players that can make our deal better then the Sox. Plus, the Sox have never offered Buchholz.

Don't you agree that Minn has to make a deal?
Do you believe their bluster that maybe they can keep him? Run against Detroit for 2008?
Might they hold tight thinking someone will take them seriously in July 2008? I think the deeper into 2008 they go, the less bargaining power they have.

Are you telling me WE can't come up with an IPK List that will get the Job done? We're are competing against 'Lester and Crisp'.

And is subbing Iggy for a Tier 2 prospect creative? He still costs $4.5m/yr. Even if we pay his salary, what's he worth?

Shelly?
Marquez?
Hilligoss?
Duncan AND Duncan?
Duncan AND Duncan AND Gardner + IPK, Melky and Melancon?

And what about sOPS+?

A few more of the worst to win:

Shakespeare in Love
English Patient

A few that should have won (although maybe not against the movies they were up against):

Shawshank (one of my top movies of all time)
In the Name of the Father
Full Metal Jacket

Hey Josh, I don't think any of those movies were nominated. Do you mean Touch of Evil the O. Welles movie? I don't think I know Touched by Evil. McCabe is one of my favorites, and I love Diner too.

Moonstruck was actually filmed mostly in Toronto, though they do have a couple of shots on Court street and of course, the bakery on Henry street, which is now, what? a trendy little restaurant, right? What was it, Madonia? It was still the same bakery as the one in Moonstruck when I lived in Carroll Gardens from 94-2000, though it closed around 98-99, something like that.

I didn't dislike Chicago as much as some of you guys, though it's not a movie I'd willingly sit through again. Mostly, my issue with the movie was that it has so many cuts that you deprives the audience of the basic joy of watching singers sing and dancers dance. Then again, since none of the principals, with the exception of CKJones, had any chops, the medium--fancy editing, whizzing camerawork--had to make-up for their limitations.

Then again, the cinematic language that made muscials so winning through the fifites, and what made Silent Comedies so great, is but a memory. A simple pratfall just isn't filmed properly anymore. Everything is close-up. It's not funny, if you need to use more than four cuts, and include slow-motion, to film a guy slipping on a bannana peel. You know, one of the worst musicals is "Finnegan's Rainbow," an early Coppola movie, where he films all the dances sequences from the waist up.

Say what you will about Forest Gump, but I really enjoyed that movie. Its fair to say it wasn't a particularly great film, but it was a fun watch.

I can't believe Raging Bull isn't on your top 20 considering Ordinary People is on your bottom 10. Raging Bull was so powerful and one of the greatest performances by any actor.

I'm going to throw in The Grapes of Wrath and The Ox-Bow Incident. And for a non-nominee I select Once Upon a Time in the West and that completes my Henry Fonda trifecta.

I liked In the Name of the Father. Great music-cue/cut to "All Along the Watch Tower" early in the movie.

I still don't think it's accurate to adjust OPS+ by a ParkFactor which is based on runs scored.

I am currently working on a DB that will create a PF based on OBP and SLG. How many times has 1 team 'out slugged' another but put up less runs.

I think DeNiro's performance in Raging Bull is one of the most overrated in movie history. At the time, people seemed to judge the merits of his acting based on how much weight he gained and lost. Scorsese once said that Raging Bull was about a man who lost everything and then gained it back spiritually at the end of the movie. Based on that, I think the movie was a failure. I never found that LaMotta captured any grace. Visually, it's brilliant, though most of the images were co-opted from movies like Body and Soul. The editing and the sound are incredible too. But like with Good Fellas, I think the technique overwhelms the story. It is just so dazzling that it becomes the story, especially in Good Fellas, where I think it might work even better, because he was trying to capture the feeling, the lifestyle of these crooks.

For my money, I prefer Taxi Driver, which is expressionistic and scary and funny.

1 3 i am very proud of the fact that i have never seen titanic.

20 25 buccholz is (wrongly) being put in the same class as joba and that's my guess as to why the twins are "allowing" the red sox to go to their "next best 'prospect'"

I don't know if I could put it in a "worst to win" catagory, simply because I liked the trilogy as a whole, but LOTR: Return of the King was not a Best Picture. Fellowship, however, should have won. Of the three, that is the one that best stands alone as a complete film. Also, A Beautiful Mind, which won that year, was dreadful. ROTK won because the trilogy was excellent and they had to reward it.

The problem with the Academy Awards is that they are constantly correcting past mistakes. I mean Denzel Washington wins Best Actor for Training Day? That performance doesn't crack his top 5. He should've had at least 2 Best Actors already, though, so everybody voted for him that year. It was like a, "Oh, we better make sure he wins one" kinda thing. Crowe for Gladiator was kinda the same thing. I guarantee Depp will win this year for Sweeney Todd.

This was mentioned earlier, but Shakespeare in love's win over Saving private ryan was the night that I ceased watching the Academy Awards...It was analogous to the day in high school where I discovered that the Heisman trophy was a complete sham: When Ty Detmer won over Rocket Ismail.

Say what you want about Spielberg's decisions in the middle 1/3 of SPR, it was still clearly better than that overly melodramatic claptrap.

Belth: Last scene of Taxi Driver -- Is DeNiro dead and is picking up C. Shepard in his version of Heaven, or is this chance encounter an "actual" event?

I never thought about that. I always took the last scene at face value.

Oh, and I don't take the Award seriously. I lost any belief in them around the time I knew there was no Sanity Claus. Still, like the MVP voting and the Hall of Fame voting, it's fun to bs about it.

I thought Pesci gave the best performance in Raging Bull. Cathy Moriarty was good too.

25 By creative, do you mean trick Minnesota into something they don't want? It seems pretty clear to me that the Twins want Hughes...period. I am not sure how you can get creative with such a hardline stance. Now, you may think the Yankees can craft a non-Hughes package that is better than Boston's, but the Twins also seem to really like Ellsbury. Like it or not, it's Hughes versus Ellsbury on this one.

As for Iggy, the Star Trib implies that the Twins were interested in him.

For sOPS+ see 23 .

31 Good points. The weight gain aspect never impressed me too much since really anyone can do that. But what gets me with DeNiro is the way he watches everything and how his eyes move around making you guess what is going on in that mind of his. Raging Bull and Taxi Driver are where he was on the top of his game. What makes me prefer Raging Bull is the simple fact that Travis Bickle's cause was a bit over the top while LaMotta dealt with emotions that are easier to relate with. on't get me wrong though, I love both movies.

32 The range of views on pitching prospects is really fascinating. Joe Sheehan seems to have it as Hughes, Buccholz, Chamberlain, while K. Law has the reverse. Basically, I think the Twins are giving each team an untouchable: the Yankees get Joba and the Sox get Buccholz. Unfortunately for the Yankees, Hughes belongs in that class as well.

27 Alex, don't burst my bubble.

The old Cammareri bakery was a series of little restaurants for a bunch of years but I think it is a bakery/pastry place again. You can still see the door to the basement where Nic Cage worked.

I'm pretty sure the exterior they used for the house shot is on Cranberry street.

And don't tell me that the scene with the old man and the dogs wasn't shot on the Promenade. Please...

Alex, I'll back you all the way on Forrest Gump. Lots of people adored that movie, and I couldn't figure out why.

Other thoughts for the first list:

The Third Man
Your favorite Hitchcock, unless your favorite Hitchcock is Rebecca, which I doubt.

Yeah, I know some people find Taxi Driver's violence synthetic, too tabloid. What's great about Raging Bull is that outside of the ring, Scorese uses slow motion almost exclusively from Jake's POV, which punches home his paranoia and jealousy.

Hey cercle:

Not only was Gladiator a good enough performance to win best actor, but the academy was justified to give it to Crowe because he was without a doubt the best male actor of the 1990's:
1) Hando in Romper Stomper...see it.
2) Then he turns around and gives a great performance as a conflicted, lonely gay guy. "The Sum of Us"
2) Bud White in LA Conf.
3) Wigand in the Insider.

27 : Yes, I meant Touch of Evil!

And Alex, you are right on about Raging Bull being overrated. Deniro is far better in Taxi Driver (not to mention King of Comedy).

Best part about Raging Bull is that it started the great running story of Frank Vincent getting brained. First Pesci did it to him with a car door in Raging Bull, then Pesci did it to him again when Vincent told him to get his shinebox in Goodfellas, then the Sopranos came to a climax of sorts with the crushing of Vincent's head by a car (no sign of Pesci). I think I once heard that Pesci and Vincent started out as a vaudeville team of sorts, but that sounds too good to be true.

Alex: I'm STILL waiting for a DVD release of "Tootsie" that even approaches the contents of my old Criterion Collection laserdisc (a precious two-disc platter now riddled with laser rot).

Rebecca is good, a great chick flick. And it's as much a Selznick movie as a Hitchcock movie. But I'm the wrong guy to ask about Hitch. I like the 39 Steps, Notorious, and some others, but mostly, I really dislike his movies. He had too much of a disdain for actors, and I think he cheated a lot when he got to America--all those cheesy blue screens. Obviously, he's a hugely influencial and talented filmmaker. Just not my taste. Then again, I don't like Kubrick either.

I guess when the "Yankees have an interest in ... Corey Patterson" you might as well talk about movies.

Cripes.

Also, if you can get Cain for Matsui, by all means do it. But I don't like the idea of trading him for "pitching help."

I love Giambi as much as the next guy but you know he's going to have some weird injury next May that will put him on the shelf for 2 months and without Matsui, that sorta leaves a pretty big hole.

Then, that Patterson quote scares the bejesus out of me.

1 I agree times 10.

Yeah, but Vincent--who was signing partners with Pesci before they got into movies--got his revenge in Casino. God, I think King of Comedy might be Scorsese's scariest movie. Man, Ruppert Pupkin. Get the willies just thinking about him.

Yo Josh...my fave scene in Casino is when F. Vincent is talking to the diamond merchant:

"Oh now he speaks English??!!?
Ok, let's talk turkey!!"

Vincent is great.

45 Disdain for actors? It always seemed to me that his movies relied heavily on them (I'm thinking about Dial M, Psycho and Rope, for example).

38 yes, it is really fascinating how the pitching prospects are being viewed and valued. and if you expa