I love that a heated discussion over
Titanic's infamous Oscar sweep of 1998 has already begun over at
Laurent's excellent retrospective. I guess it's just the nature of this particular film. There is something about Titanic that hits a raw nerve in people and they feel a need to defend/criticize it so passionately. As it happens, I fall in the 'unconditional love' category and I'm not afraid to admit it. To this day I have a passion for Titanic, a film that so perfectly matches what a glorious, spellbinding, big spectacle romance against an historic backdrop should be, and those films are so rare, especially when they are made with such precise and meticulous detail from
James Cameron. We shouldn't be embarrassed over how much we loved Titanic in the 90's. We should embrace it. So as our third 'Choose The Winners' article, we are asking you whether Titanic has lasted the test of time and whether it still deserves it's Oscar win. Should period noir
L.A. Confidential, a fine movie in it's own right have taken the golden statue? How about
Good Will Hunting or Quentin Tarantino's
Jackie Brown which is so highly regarded these days I could see it going all the way this time around. Surely
Pam Grier (who wasn't even nominated!) and
Robert Forster gave the best performances of that year?
Below is the OWF Oscar Ballot, a new feature where we give our dear readers the chance to vote for what movie/performances should have taken home the Oscar in a particular year because we all know the Academy rarely get it right the first time! All you need to do to make your voice heard is fill in the following form with your 5 choices for each category (1 being the highest weighted, and 5 being the lowest) and after a week we will let you know the results and give out an OWF Award to whichever movie/performance ranks the most popular. You can also check out the results from our 2000 Retrospective and 1999 Retrospective in the mean time. Both times you guys declared the Academy got it wrong, and they should have nominated Fight Club the Oscar at the 2000 Awards over American Beauty, and Saving Private Ryan the statue a year earlier over Shakespeare in Love (a film which you gives didn't even give a nomination to). Gonna be interesting to see if that trend continues...