Not all films are polished masterpieces with excellent scripts and cinematography. Some are slyly subversive or positively wallow in their own crapulence. It may not be accepted practice for the Academy to recognise such films and probably most people would prefer to watch something boring like Brokeback Mountain or Lincoln. However there is a select group of us who would love to see our favourite movies given the recognition that they deserve. How much more cool would it have been to see Peter Jackson collect Best Director award for Meet the Feebles than The Lord of the Rings? Could you imagine the outrage if Zombie's Lake had been voted Best Picture? It could only happen in a parallel world inhabited by people like me (and the other one). So I present a mercifully short list of 5 films that would win an Oscar in a freaky parallel universe.
5. La Grande Bouffe (1973) - Best Foreign Picture
This picture is a very strong contender for our parallel world Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Directed by bonafide auteur Marco Ferreri, it boasts a quartet of the cream of male European acting talent - Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Phillipe Noiret and Ugo Tagnazzi. These four actors play four men who have become severely disillusioned with life. Plus they have the balls to use their own names in the film as thir character titles. The men gather in a beautiful villa and proceed to eat with great gluttony and shag women and prostitutes with great gusto until they die. Suicide by excess! It is a rather gruesome spectacle to behold but it is funny as well. The Academy could not fault the acting and the direction. They could only be biased against it because it features a lot of pooping and farting. Watching actors who have been in the greatest movies of the 20th century wallowing in faeces would be a bold, radical choice by the academy. To pick this Bunuel-esque, tragi-comic, anarchic film would be a victory for true freedom of vision.