The 76th Annual Academy Awards

The 2004 Academy Awards show was was pretty plain this year, with no surprise winners and this year lacked tons of nominations. The Best Picture this year went to the obvious third sequel "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" with eleven wins tying with "Ben Hur" and "Titanic". Billy Crystal was fine as the host, he usually has a good sense of humor, but this year as the Master of Ceremonies probably wasn't his greatest compared to the 1997 Oscar show. The Best Director went to Peter Jackson for "Lord of the Rings", and Sofia Coppola won the Best Screenplay award. Blake Edwards took the Lifetime Honorary Achievement Award for his long career as a comedy director. The acting awards were kind of odd, I was hoping Bill Murray would win the Best Actor Oscar for "Lost in Translation", but he lost to Sean Penn for Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River", Tim Robbins won the Supporting Actor for "Mystic River" and Renee Zellweger took the Supporting Actress award for "Cold Mountain". Charlize Theron won the Best Actress Oscar as real life serial killer Aileen Wuornios for "Monster" the film's only nomination and win. Another odd thing about the acting awards this year was the International stars that didn't win. We have New Zealand born actress Keisha Castle-Hughes for "Whale Rider". Hughes was the youngest ever nominated in the Best Actress category. Japanese actor Ken Watanabe was nominated for "The Last Samauri", African American actor Dijimon Honseu was nominated for "In America" as was English actress Samantha Morton and Iraq born actress Shohreh Aghdashloo for "The House of Sand and Fog". Other known nominees for acting included Diane Keaton for "Something's Gotta Give", Johnny Depp for "Pirates of the Caribean", Alec Baldwin for "The Cooler", Ben Kingsley for "The House of Sand and Fog" and Holly Hunter for "Thirteen". Academy President Frank Pierson did a terrific job at presenting the In Memoriam segment of the show, which was very long this year to pay tribute to the many stars that died this year. They included Gregory Peck, Bob Hope, Hope Lange, Wendy Hiller, Charles Bronson, directors Elia Kazan and John Schlesinger, Buddy Hackett, Buddy Ebsen, Art Carney, Jeanne Crain, Guy Rolfe, Ron O'Neal, Hume Cronyn, Karen Morley, Robert Stack, John Ritter, Ann Miller, Donald O'Connor, Gregory Hines, Michael Jeter and a very special memorial to screen legend Katharine Hepburn.

"Lord of the Rings - Return of the King" was NOT what won all 11 awards, now was it. EVERYBODY who made a speech in accepting an award talked about ALL the movies. So...why didn't they just hold up on the first two, not include them in those award nominations for the last two years, and then allow the whole trilogy to be nominated this year, since that is, in fact, what really won those awards. And, I, not being a fan of the books (Oh, Heavens, a heathen in our midst!!!) did not find the movies to be engrossing. After talking to so many people, including those in my own family, I truly believe that it is those people who loved the books, who loved the movies, and wanted them to win. I WAS BORED! "The Return of the King" was especially boring without the first two movies. All it was, was one computer generated graphic battle scene after another. At least in the first two you had the interesting bits with the two wizards. Personally, I would have preferred to see any of the other four pictures win, and I didn't even see all of them. And I liked "Cold Mountain" and would have liked to see that one nominated. I want a movie with a story to win. "Titanic" had a story. The movie was masterfully done, so there is no comparison to it's awards.

But hey, at least "LOTR-Return of the King" didn't have any acting nominations. Why do you think that was??? The only one that would have even deserved a nomination out of the 3rd movie was Sean Astin. I was so GLAD to see all the actors that were nominated, and the ones that did win. All the comments so far have hardly mentioned any of them in a positive light. "Mystic River" should have won Best Picture. "Lord of the Rings" should have won some specially made up award for endurance that would have applied to all three movies. I also really, really liked "Master and Commander". I learned a lot about a lot of things. Sword fighting on a small ship for instance. How you can learn from nature and apply it to warfare or anything else. And THAT movie really built a real ship to work on, and had REAL battle scenes that were not computer generated. WOW!! What a novel idea! Oh well, I guess Buster Keaton had that idea first, when he did his own real stunts off of real trains, and clock towers and all kinds of things. And that was in the "silent era" of movies. People were really clever then. NO WAY ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH should the final LOTR have won all those awards for all three movies in one year, unless they had asked to be allowed to do that to begin with. Many of those technical awards should have gone to "Master and Commander", "Seabiscuit", "Pirates of the Caribbean", etc., etc. Any other year they would have. Who votes on these things anyway??? Some somebodies need to get a grip. That is all.

This was one of the good Academy Awards ceremonies before they started getting out of touch. Billy Crystal was a good host and he brought life to all the worthy nominations.

I always watch with immense pleasure The Oscars as they proved to be the most important and influential event in the film business. Producers, directors, screenwriters, actors all around the world wait for their work to be acknowledged as a sign of recognition of their talent, commitment and inspiration!

TALENT, COMMITMENT AND INSPIRATION!...Key words! They are the essence of true art; it's like Soderbergh so nicely put it (on winning the much coveted Oscar)that we should first of all thank all those who take a pencil and create a piece of canvas or write a script before thanking friends and relatives.

You can imagine my surprise with last year's Oscar Ceremony:Lord of the Rings won 11 out of 11 nominations... a film that otherwise lacks both talent and inspiration but unfolds as a continuous futile effort to shock and amaze!!

Nevertheless I have to give Peter Jackson credit for his commitment(the only key word that applies for the production)to put an end to this long, long sometimes too long struggle to adapt(very poorly!) a book which conquered the hearts of millions of children and adults worldwide!

But is this the true purpose of The Academy? Do we still have to praise films which are beautifully "dressed" like an artificial Christmas Tree with impressive decorations but eventually lacks branches!

I'm not Minghella's number one fan but "Cold Mountain"was the best of 2004! Not by far though! Perhaps Cold Mountain's best merit would be that it respects truthfully the golden rule of Hitchcock's films: the real villain is never shown! We can sense it in this raw and brutal environment, we can feel the presence of ravens floating above the reddish snow but we are never told precisely what forces govern the destiny of two main characters! (Well done for Law, Kidman and Zellweger)

Anyway here are MY Oscar winners for 2004:

Best Picture: Cold Mountain

Best Director: Fernando Meirelles (City of God)

Best Actor: Sean Penn (21 Grams)

Best Actress: Charlize Theron (Monster)

Best Supporting Actor: Tim Robbins (Mystic River)

Best Supporting Actress: Marcia Gay Harden (Mystic River)

Best Foreign Language Picture: Good-bye Lenin

Best Animated Feature: Finding Nemo

Nevertheless a poor year for the Oscars! My vote for the 2004 Ceremony 7/10

boy was this not cool to watch.

it seemed every other award was won by LOTR:ROTK

i was sick of it

i wanted to see other winners

instead it was all LOTR

take it easy jackson. stop showing off

thank god the lord of the rings is over

it better not happen again with the hobbit

other people want to win awards jackson

3/10

the 49,000,000,000th time billy crystal has hosted