Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

This is a very (north) American centric board indeed. ABBA opus, for better or worse, was a major part of the soundtrack of the ‘70s of the eastern hemisphere. Waterloo winning the 1974 Eurovision was a major milestone in popular culture here. And of course so were the costumes those Swedes wore th...

I hated ABBA back in the 70s -- mindless, stupid pop slush in an era when, if you looked for it, there was so much interesting music being created. No serious music person gave then a second thought back then -- they were one half step up from the Bay City Rollers. And I never got the late 90s revi...

So, basically, it's like this: Italiano, Uri, Penelope and Akash hated Jennifer Hudson's performance. Everyone agrees they were a poor choice of words. Everyone but Criddic agrees that Thanking God in speeches is silly. After all I did, I'm still in the company of these bad, bad people? What else c...

And to my dear friend in Israel... well, understanding the "simple, humble people" 's cultural and religious superstitions can be sometimes more snobbish than treating them as equals and honestly, frankly criticizing them. Marco, why being able, as an Israeli, to understand, even justify ...

I didn’t say religious people, as a rule, ignore bad stuff. I did try to give one explanation of why certain religious people, at certain circumstances may do so. Religious thinking can and is in many occasions quite complex. Wrong, but Complex. (you’re invited to plant any emoticon of your choice ...

My name is Uri and I’m an atheist. I wish I could say I was an agnostic, and intellectually, I guess I am, but no, at the end of the day, the concept of God seems to me so conveniently fabricated to serve so many human needs and interests that I deeply, passionately believe there’s no god. Akash, D...

Uri, who was your choice to win? Blanchet gave the best performance and is probably the best actress of the five (then again, the other four I only saw in their nominated performances), but she had no business being nominated in this category, so I would go with Barazza. Interesting point – no one ...

God is definitely responsible for Hudson winning her Oscar. It was at his/her/its will Kikuchi lose hers (or was it Buddha’s responsibility in this case?). God is everywhere and in anything, isn’t he/she/it? If it wasn’t for God, I was not writing and you were not reading this now (and you shell al...

Ashcroft was an exception. Rules, as we know, are just fine. For the Plebeians. The Olympians are always granted their privileges. Paul Newman, two years after Ashcroft, was the last winner of one of the big six not to show up and he had Robert Wise, whether by his own choice or by the Academy’s I ...

flipp525 wrote:Why did Angela Lansbury accept the award if Ashcroft had specifically asked Banjerlee to do it?

I think it was a case of let’s get the professional Brit everybody knows and like onstage instead of that Indian nobody.

The practice stopped after Brando ruined it for everyone by having Sasheen Littlefeather refuse the 1972 best actor Oscar on his behalf. Well, at least as late as 1985, they kept the habit of other people accepting for absent winners. There was a mini scandal that year when Angela Lansbury picked P...

I just wonder. Pretend you don’t know who the actors were, where they’d been placed on the celebrity ladder of the time, what the order of the billing was and so on – just watching the onscreen unfolding of the story line and the characters. The story begins with Ritter’s character, follows her, al...