The biggest awards ceremony in the entertainment industry, The Oscars, is to take place on Sunday, to honour what are supposedly the best movies from 2012. However, we all had a good whinge when the nominations were announced, as we do every year, that certain people (and one director in particular) were snubbed, causing us to question how valid the show's prestigious reputation really is. The Academy has a weird knack for making bizarre choices, likely owing to the demographics that it is comprised of; Oscar voters are primarily middle-aged, white and male, which of course is not a representative cross-section of society or a reflection of the films vying for competition. The result is that the same sorts of films tend to be nominated every year, while far more challenging, ambitious fare falls by the wayside. Still, these 10 snubs should have been, on the whole, sure things, given how widely acclaimed each achievement was, and the comparatively lesser competition they were up against. A reminder that Oscar has always been out of step with audiences, here are the 10 most ridiculous Oscar snubs of all time...
10. Dennis Hopper - Blue Velvet
Though Dennis Hopper was compensated with a Best Supporting Actor nod that year for his turn in Hoosiers, it's a shame his far more memorable performance in David Lynch's twisted neo-noir Blue Velvet didn't get the recognition it deserved. Playing Frank Booth, the foul-mouthed nitrous oxide-inhaling maniac, Hopper delivers one of cinema's most lurid, frightening and hilariously demented bad guys, perfectly suited to Lynch's eccentric cinematic sensibilities. The film is very much defined by Booth's relationship with Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), and Lynch depicts the disturbing nature of their relationship - hinging on sexual violence - in painstaking detail. Of course, it's easy to draw a connection between Booth's addiction-infused mania and Hopper's own dances with the Devil back in the 60s and 70s - like so many of the best performances, it was probably coming from a very real, dark place indeed. Though a year packed with great supporting turns in films like Platoon and Hannah and Her Sisters, Hopper's iconic turn really deserved some recognition here.