I didn’t catch it in its entirety and it occurs to me that I’ve never watched the entire telecast from start to finish, even in the years that I was most curious/had the time to do so.

One of the nice things about the internet is that the next day you can pretty much catch everything of importance that occurred in the form of clips and the plentiful articles.

I know I’m not stating anything revolutionary here, but it sure saves time!

…at least according to Entertainment Weekly:

http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20311937_20572218,00.html

What I like about this list is that they offer you the winning Oscar motion picture and then note which films it beat out.  I tend to agree for all the mentioned films.

This, of course, puts me in the mind of something I posted a little while back (Oscar talk is slowly but surely building as we close in on the event) wherein Slate magazine offered ways to fix the Oscars, in this case Lowen Liu felt we should have a 10 year “re-vote”:

http://ertorre.com/randomthoughts/2012/02/15/how-do-we-make-the-oscars-better/

As I mentioned back then, the Oscar awards should be looked at as what they are:  A snapshot of personal tastes at that time.  Often, we may watch a film and have a reaction to it but, as time goes by, we may re-examined and revisit it and form a completely different opinion, to the better or to the worse, about what we’ve seen.  As is the case with many of the films listed in the first link, while successful when first released, the films simply don’t stand the test of time.

On the other hand, one of the more delightful things that could happen is that you see a film you don’t like and over time you come to understand it and it becomes a favorite.  This has happened to me on at least two occasions and both with horror films:  Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.  I can’t deny it, when I first saw both films (the former during a television airing and the later when it was first released to theaters) I didn’t like them.  At all.

I found The Birds, frankly, dull and pointless, building to a bizarre, equally pointless ending.  I was especially disappointed because I was a fan of Mr. Hitchcock’s work and wondered how audiences could have viewed this film as anything approaching “good”.  Or so I felt then.  One day, I happened to see it on TV once again and gave it another try.  And for some reason, that second attempt did the trick.  While watching it I understood exactly what Mr. Hitchcock was up to.  He was doing his version of those almost endless “creature feature” films of the 1950’s, but he was turning the genre completely on its head.  Instead of an attack of some huge bird/fish/octopus/grasshopper(!)/spider/etc. etc., Mr. Hitchcock has a town attacked by birds.  Ordinary, common birds.  And in those 50’s creature feature films, where the horror is usually caused by some kind of nuclear or scientific accident, there are no answers given.  Nature has simply run amok.  The ending, too, made perfect sense.  In the creature films, a brilliant scientist and the military through diligent work come up with a way to defeat the menace.  In The Birds, we are the ones that are ultimately defeated.

As for The Shining, as mentioned I saw it in theaters when it was first released and I really, really didn’t like it.  As with The Birds, I thought it was pointless, not all that scary, and way, waaaay too long.  And then the movie started appearing on TV and I’d catch glimpses of it here and there.  Then more.  Then more.  Gradually, perhaps over a period of a few years, I “got it”.  To this day, I think this is one of the best horror films every made, a brilliant piece that literally transports you to a world of darkness and isolation, a place where there is nowhere to run.

Brilliant, brilliant stuff.

How about a 10 year Oscar re-vote?  So opines author Lowen Liu at Slate Magazine:

http://hive.slate.com/hive/fix-the-oscars/article/the-10-year-oscar-re-vote

Of course, such an idea would never happen as its waaaay too embarrassing, controversial, and just plain nasty an idea.

However…

Ms. Liu points out something that is perplexing about the public’s views on art in general and something I’ve noticed on more than one occasion:  What might be popular -even wildly popular- today may be passe or worse tomorrow.

Actors Paul Newman and Al Pacino were famously nominated (and sometimes not nominated) for works they should have, in hindsight, won awards for.  In the end, Mr. Newman was nominated some nine times for an Academy Award but finally received one for his work in The Color of Money, the Martin Scorsese directed sequel to The Hustler.  While The Hustler was (and is!) considered by many, including myself, a cinematic classic, there are few who hold as high an opinion of the belated sequel.  In fact, to my mind the sequel is an incredibly mediocre film, perhaps one of Mr. Scorsese’s rare misfires.  Mr. Newman wasn’t terrible in it, but neither was he as scintillating as he was in so many other, better films.  The Award, it felt, was given in lieu of awards he should have received in the past.

As for Al Pacino, he was also nominated multiple times for his acting in very, very strong films.  Ultimately, he was given an Academy Award for his role in Scent of a Woman.  This award, too, felt like a gift for past transgressions.  While the film was a success upon its release, I suspect there are few today who would consider this film anywhere near the level of many of Mr. Pacino’s “great” films, films that he deserved to win an award far more than this one.

In the end, however, Oscars have to be viewed as what they are:  A snapshot of the times.  Sure, there are going to be films and actors who should have won but didn’t, yet ultimately great work, for the most part, is recognized over the course of time.  And works that were perhaps not as good as one thought, well, they slowly are forgotten.