by Amber Hoffman
February 11, 2008

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gathers each spring to award Oscars for excellence in film. And each year I’m left wondering how that actor won for that, or how that film managed to beat out four films that were far superior. When the nominees were announced for this year’s awards, I saw an opportunity for the Academy to redeem itself when it nominated the strongest four films in the Best Picture category in recent memory.

If all goes according to plan, the writers’ strike will be over by the middle of this week, and the 80th Academy Awards ceremony will go as scheduled. I’ll admit it: I’m a total film geek, and the idea of the Oscars being canceled was nothing short of horrifying. I can’t imagine the Oscars being reduced from its typically star-studded, swanky red carpet affair to a bland news conference like last month’s Golden Globes.

The strike will end just in time for the Academy to redeem itself for its many sins against cinema over its eight-decade history. Several notable examples come to mind, like How Green Was My Valley stealing the Best Picture Oscar from Orson Welles’s masterpiece Citizen Kane and Shakespeare in Love beating Saving Private Ryan in 1998. Peter O’Toole has never won an Oscar despite being nominated seven times, and Alfred Hitchcock never won, either.

You cannot mention the film Crash without me launching into a rant about how Brokeback Mountain should have won and why any other film nominated that year deserved the honor more than Crash.

The future looked brighter last year, when 40 million people tuned in to witness Martin Scorsese win his first Oscar for The Departed, which also won Best Picture. He should have also won for The Aviator two years prior, or Goodfellas, or Raging Bull, or Taxi Driver. Then, just when I thought there was some justice, Pan’s Labyrinth lost the Best Foreign Film category to some German film.

This year, the Academy is off to a good start with selecting the right nominees. I applaud them for nominating Ellen Page for Best Actress in Juno (also nominated for Best Picture). I don’t know how No Country For Old Men could NOT win this year or how Daniel Day-Lewis’s There Will Be Blood performance would  not win. The “I drink your milkshake” scene in the final moments is nothing short of perfection. But I wouldn’t put it past the Academy to once again choose sentimentality over content. I’m looking at you, Atonement.