The Oscar Challenge

If you've been following my 50,000 Movie Challenge thread you might have seen me mention that I'm also looking to watch every single movie that was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. This thread is for keeping track of that. And if anyone wants to join in and try to complete this goal as well, or if you just want to see how many Best Picture nominees you've seen in the grand scheme of things, please feel free to join me.

I'll create a Google Doc with a complete list of the nominees, in chronological order, and post the link here after I've completed it. The titles you see in bold are those that I've seen. And in case anyone is keeping score, there have been a total of 503 movies nominated for Best Picture since the Academy Awards began.

Edit: Almost forgot, but the first film listed for each year is the one that won the Best Picture Oscar. Except for this year because the awards haven't happened yet.

Full list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wW0tkPhYvp0tMgIEBtzGS_Utuowifn2wGnklknxaK_4/edit?usp=sharing

Hmm, screw it, I'll list out the movies I've seen. And yes, your craziness is rubbing off on me.

Academy Awards Ceremonies

1 (1927 & 1928) - none
2 - none

1930s
3 - none
4 - none
5 - none
6 - none
7 - The Thin Man
8 - none
9 - none
10 - none
11 - The Adventures of Robin Hood
12 - Gone With The Wind (Winner), Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, The Wizard of Oz

1940s
13 - none
14 - Citizen Kane, Maltese Falcon
15 - none
16 - Casablanca (Winner)
17 - none
18 - The Lost Weekend (Winner)
19 - none
20 - Miracle on 34th Street
21 - Hamlet (Winner), Treasure of the Sierra Madre
22 - none

1950s
23 - Sunset Blvd.
24 - A Streetcar Named Desire
25 - High Noon
26 - Julius Caesar, Shane
27 - On The Waterfront (Winner)
28 - none
29 - The King and I
30 - Bridge on the River Kwai (Winner), Witness for the Prosecution, 12 Angry Men
31 - none
32 - Ben-Hur (Winner), Diary of Anne Frank

1960s
33 - The Apartment (Winner)
34 - West Side Story (Winner), The Hustler
35 - Lawrence of Arabia (Winner), To Kill A Mockingbird
36 - none
37 - My Fair Lady (Winner), Dr. Strangelove, Mary Poppins
38 - The Sound of Music (Winner), Dr. Zhivago
39 - none
40 - In The Heat of the Night (Winner), Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner
41 - Romeo and Juliet
42 - Midnight Cowboy (Winner), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

1970s
43 - Patton (Winner), M*A*S*H
44 - French Connection (Winner), Clockwork Orange, Last Picture Show
45 - The Godfather (Winner), Deliverance
46 - The Sting (Winner), American Graffiti, The Exorcist
47 - ALL (Godfather Part II Winner, Chinatown, The Conversation, Lenny, Towering Inferno)
48 - One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (Winner), Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Nashville
49 - Rocky (Winner), All The President's Men, Network, Taxi Driver
50 - Annie Hall (Winner), Star Wars
51 - The Deer Hunter (Winner)
52 - Apocalypse Now

1980s
53 - The Elephant Man, Raging Bull
54 - Raiders of the Lost Ark
55 - ET, Tootsie, The Verdict
56 - The Big Chill
57 - None
58 - Witness
59 - Platoon (Winner), Hannah and Her Sisters, The Mission
60 - Fatal Attraction, Moonstruck
61 - Rain Man (Winner), Working Girl
62 - ALL (Driving Miss Daisy Winner, Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Poets Society, Field of Dreams, My Left Foot)

1990s
63 - Dances With Wolves (Winner), Ghost, Godfather Part III, Goodfellas
64 - Silence of the Lambs (Winner), Beauty and the Beast, JFK
65 - Unforgiven (Winner), A Few Good Men, Scent of a Woman, Crying Game
66 - Schindler's List (Winner), In The Name of the Father, The Futigive
67 - ALL (Forrest Gump Winner, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, Shawshank Redemption)
68 - Braveheart (Winner), Apollo 13, Babe
69 - English Patient (Winner), Fargo, Jerry Maguire
70 - ALL (Titanic Winner, As Good As It Gets, The Fully Monty, Good Will Hunting, LA Confidential)*
71 - ALL (Shakespeare in Love Winner, Elizabeth, Life is Beautiful, Saving Private Ryan, The Thing Red Line)
72 - ALL (American Beauty Winner, Cider House Rules, Green Mile, Insider, Sixth Sense)**

2000s
73 - ALL (Gladiator Winner, Chocolat, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich, Traffic)
74 - ALL (A Beautiful Mind Winner, Gosford Park, In The Bedroom, Fellowship of the Ring, Moulin Rouge)
75 - ALL (Chicago Winner, Gangs of New York, The Hours, Two Towers, The Pianist)
76 - ALL (Return of the King Winner, Lost in Translation, Master and Commander, Mystic River, Seabiscuit)
77 - ALL (Million Dollar Baby Winner, Aviator, Finding Neverland, Ray, Sideways)
78 - ALL (Crash Winner, Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich)
79 - ALL (The Departed Winner, Babel, Letters From Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen)
80 - ALL (No Country For Old Men Winner, Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood)
81 - ALL (Slumdog Millionaire Winner, Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixion, Milk, The Reader)
82 - ALL (Hurt Locker Winner, Avatar, Blind Side, District 9, An Education, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up, Up In The Air)

2010s

83 - ALL (The King's Speech Winner, 127 Hours, Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter's Bone)
84 - ALL (The Artist Winner, The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, Tree of Life, War Horse)
85 - Amour, Argo, Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty

*This is the year I started watching every nominee before the ceremony
** The last true "Best Picture" race in my eyes, the merit of the award went downhill after this

207 out of 503, not bad. That's 41%. I'm right behind you with 205 out of 503.

Oh snap! I've seen more than you, at least at this current moment in time. I'm sure in about 5 hours that will change.

Give me 24 hours. :lol: It's now 3 a.m. on the east coast and I'm about to go to bed. Also, there's a handful that I didn't mark as having seen because I'm pretty sure I've seen them but I'm not 100% sure. I'm a little disappointed in myself. I was planning on watching another 6 movies today, as I've done for the past 3 days, but I only managed to watch 3. Although one of them was Adabisi's "Darkly Dreaming Dexter", which is almost 3 hours long. Oh well, I'm sure I'll make it up. :lol:

I've thought about doing this. I've already seen all the winners, so it'll be interesting to see how many nominees total I've seen when I add them all up later today.

Neglify said:

** The last true "Best Picture" race in my eyes, the merit of the award went downhill after this

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STRONGLY concur. I can't even watch the awards anymore, it puts me into a state of pure rage.

Nevermind. But on a sort of related noted, how the hell did Gladiator win best picture over Traffic?!!!

Gatos said:

Nevermind. But on a sort of related noted, how the hell did Gladiator win best picture over Traffic?!!!

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More accesible?

DominicCobb said:

I've thought about doing this. I've already seen all the winners, so it'll be interesting to see how many nominees total I've seen when I add them all up later today.

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Every single winner? Going all the way back to the first awards show in 1929?

Gatos said:

Nevermind. But on a sort of related noted, how the hell did Gladiator win best picture over Traffic?!!!

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I feel the same way about Rocky. How the hell did that beat All The President's Men, Network, and Taxi Driver. Can't comment on Bound For Glory because I haven't seen it, but the other three films were much better than Rocky.

Another thing that I don't understand is why was Nicole Kidman nominated for Best Actress for The Hours while Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep only received Best Supporting Actress nominations for their work in the same film? I can understand Meryl Streep only getting the supporting nomination but not Julianne Moore. Sure the movie was centered around Nicole Kidman's character, but really the movie was about Julianne Moore's character. Julianne Moore also had more screen time than Nicole Kidman, appearing in two of the three "stories". She also gave a much better performance than Kidman.

I believe they said that Kidman won because she was unrecognizable in her role. I call bullshit on that because you can very clearly tell who the actress behind the make-up is. I'd have no problem with Moore getting a supporting nomination, since all three women starred in the film, if Kidman had only gotten a supporting nomination instead of a lead nomination. My guess is they gave Moore the supporting nomination because she was also nominated for Best Actress for her work in Far From Heaven. Tough call on which of her two performances was better, because it's been a while since I've watched The Hours and Far From Heaven, but regardless of that her performance in Far From Heaven should have won her the Best Actress Oscar over Kidman.

Frantic Canadian said:

Every single winner? Going all the way back to the first awards show in 1929?

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I've seen all the Best Picture winners. It was a goal of mine I accomplished last February.

Damn, Dom is crazier than Neg and FC.

Neglify said:

Damn, Dom is crazier than Neg and FC.

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I don't know Neg. Maybe we should start a thread to keep track of every movie we watch during the year, one thread per year, and see who's watched the most movies at the end of that year. I'm pretty I'd take that crazy cake. :lol: I mean, it's only February 5th and I've already watched 136 movies, 22 this month alone. Susan Powter may say "Stop the insanity!", but I say "Strap yourself in and enjoy the ride!". :lol:

So this isn't a Sesame Street challenge? Oh well.

I've now added Imitation Of Life (1934), Friendly Persuasion (1956), The Sundowners (1960), Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolfe? (1966), and Cabaret (1972) to my list. That brings my total to 210. Percentage-wise that's 41.7% so basically 42.

Frantic Canadian said:

That brings my total to 210. Percentage-wise that's 41.7% so basically 42.

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I was told there would be no math.

Neglify said:

Damn, Dom is crazier than Neg and FC.

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A certain type of crazy, for sure. I tend to be very picky in my movie choices, watching only films I think will be great, and, thus, the reason I've seen so many BP nominees.

I've only seen 25 movies so far this year (though I'm really slacking - I've been watching a lot of TV instead, such as all 53 episodes of Arrested Development and the majority of the first season of House of Cards), so maybe I'm just not the same crazy as FC.

For the record, in 2011 I saw more movies than in any other year of my life, something upwards of 400, with over 300 being movies I had never seen before.

DominicCobb said:

A certain type of crazy, for sure. I tend to be very picky in my movie choices, watching only films I think will be great, and, thus, the reason I've seen so many BP nominees.

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I'm not too picky. If a movie sounds or looks good I'll give it a viewing.

DominicCobb said:

I've only seen 25 movies so far this year (though I'm really slacking - I've been watching a lot of TV instead, such as all 53 episodes of Arrested Development and the majority of the first season of House of Cards), so maybe I'm just not the same crazy as FC.

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I'm the complete opposite. I've been watching mostly movies this year. In fact I've pretty much stopped watching tv altogether. And for the record I just watched my 143rd movie of the year, 29th for the month.

DominicCobb said:

For the record, in 2011 I saw more movies than in any other year of my life, something upwards of 400, with over 300 being movies I had never seen before.

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In 2011 I watched 577 movies, 576 if you count the double viewing of Police Academy. In 2012 I watched 588 movies, although there were several films I watched more than once. I think I watched "Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter" 5 times. That includes the theatrical cut, the tv cut, and two viewings of [MENTION=9578]Neglify[/MENTION]'s edit. Once on its own and once with the commentary track. I may have also watched the workprint, of the movie not the edit, but I can't be sure without checking my list.

I started, in 2011, what I guess you could call a new lifestyle, or rather a new way to spend my alone time, and that was watching movies. Since then I've watched very little TV and pretty much dropped video games and books altogether (books a little less so because of school and such). As the months have gone on, though, my pace has sullied, due to the fact that, like I said before, there have been some TV shows that have taken my attention, and the fact that I'm finding it harder to find movies that I think'll be great that I haven't already seen.

Anyway, like I said before, I've been slacking this year, so I hope to get cranking again, probably with some of those BP noms I haven't seen. I just set up a shit ton of TCM recordings on my DVR, so I'm ready to get rolling!