Month: March 2011

What was the Worst Best Picture Winner of All-Time?

As you’ve been reading throughout the week, I asked quizzo regulars Mike Minion, Junior, and Koob to submit their favorite and least favorite movies that won the Best Picture Award. They’ve all three agreed on Casablanca as one of the five best films to win Best Picture. (I disagree, btw. I think it’s way overrated.) There is also one film they all agreed was one of the worst: Dances With Wolves. All three of them hated this film. Of course, part of the reason they all hated it is that it’s a bad movie that knocked off one of the greatest films of all time. Here are their comments, as well as the one Best Picture winner Mike Minion refuses to watch.

Junior: This movie was the one which made Kevin Costner think he could do anything. I would have liked it a lot more if Costner wasn’t in it,  but he was EVERYWHERE!  Too earnest and self-conscious and self-satisfied.
Better Choice:  GoodFellas

Koob: This movie was just long, slow, and boring and it beat out Goodfellas which is one of my favorite movies of all time and probably my favorite Scorsese movie.
Mike: When Kevin Costner cares about a subject, he can make a decent movie. He likes baseball, so Bull Durham and Field of Dreams are pretty good. Apparently, he doesn’t care for oceans, the US Postal Service or Native Americans, as Waterworld, The Postman and Dances with Wolves are not. Three hours of Kevin Costner being “earnest” is about 173 minutes too long. To quote Lisa Simpson, “Poor Mr. Costner, he tries SO hard.” Even worse: it beat out Goodfellas for the award.
As for the movie that Mike won’t watch, because he’s ridiculously stubborn so principled: The only Best Picture I haven’t seen is Titanic, and I never will. I have seen the You-Tube version: The Titanic in 5 Seconds. Now, THAT I like. But when you take an engrossing tale of tragedy, heroism, cowardice, nobility and fate and ruin it with a sappy and impossible love story (steerage passengers did NOT look like Leo DiCaprio; they had bad teeth and smelled like yesterday’s catch), I just can’t get on board.
My take on Mike and Titanic: You had Gigi in your top 5, so who knows what you’ll like. Who knows? You might love Titanic. Personally, I don’t like it, but I don’t hate it either. Everything other than the dumbass love story is pretty awesome. But the love story is incredibly cliche and obnoxious.

Koob’s Worst Best Pics

Here’s Koob’s worst four Best Picture winners. Believe it or not, I’ve only seen one of them. It was Shakespeare in Love. I liked it, but it wasn’t great. Winner pics coming later this afternoon. Of course all three guys hated the same film. I’ll post it a little later today as well.
Ordinary People. Not a terrible movie and it was actually very well acted.  Timothy Hutton won a deserving Best Supporting Actor Oscar and Mary Tyler Moore and Donald Sutherland were both great as his parents.  It’s more on this list because it beat out Raging Bull which is a far superior movie.
Driving Miss Daisy – This was a pretty weak year for Best Picture noms.  Once again, not a terrible movie, and very well acted, but pretty cliche and forgettable when all is said and done.
Shakespeare in Love – A pretty forgettable romantic comedy with some good acting performances and some genuinely funny moments, but this was probably the biggest Oscar robbery of all time when this movie won Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan.
Million Dollar Baby. This might come as a surprise to some people, but I just did not like this movie at all.  I thought it was a pretty good underdog story with the gritty Hillary Swank convincing the crotchety Clint Eastwood to become her boxing trainer up until the last third of the movie which I don’t want to spoil in case you haven’t seen it, but it just seemed to be one of those plot twists that was manipulative just for the sake of being manipulative and making people cry.  At least this movie finally got Morgan Freeman a much deserved Oscar.

Junior’s Worst Best Pics

On Monday, Junior gave us his best Best Picture movies. Today we’re getting his worst. Junior was kind enough to not only post his worst Best Pics, but also provide a film that was nominated that year that should have won. The only ones I’ve seen are Crash and Last Emperor. Crash I commented about on Mike’s, and Last Emperor, I saw it a while ago and don’t really remember much about it. So obviously I didn’t think it was very good.

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.
Betty Hutton really grates on the nerves. Typical back-stage drama boredom with a circus theme. Embarrassing.

Better Choices: High Noon or The Quiet Man

THE LAST EMPEROR. Overlong and tedious. And it won everything it was nominated for…go figure. This was one of those films that the Academy honors to feel good about itself. High honors for high art. Yawn!!

Better Choices: Broadcast News or Fatal Attraction

CRASH. Even Jack Nicholson was surprised when he opened the envelope to announce the winner. The Academy is not brave enough to award a movie with a major gay theme. Crash was about self-involved Los Angelinos acting like idiots…..hey, wait a minute……..

Better Choices: Brokeback Mountain or Good Night, and Good Luck

The Worst of the Best:

OLIVER! Kids. English kids. Orphaned English kids. Dancing orphaned English kids. Singing and dancing orphaned English kids. Overblown production numbers. Bad English accents from authentic English performers. Cloying. Sickening attempts at pathos. Unsuccessful attempts at comedy. Well, it was 1968 and the Academy was definitely on a bad LSD trip when they awarded this piece of tripe.

Better Choices: The Lion in Winter or Romeo and Juliet

The Worst Best Picture Winners, According to Mike Minion

You already saw what Mike thought were the best Best Pictures ever. Now it’s time for his worst. There is one film that all three of our reviewers thought was one of the 5 worst. I’ll save that as one final post. There are two more that both Junior and Mike agree on. Junior’s reviews coming tommorrow. Here are films Mike loves to hate. His reviews are first. My two cents is 2nd.

GONE WITH THE WIND. I can’t think of a protagonist in any movie I loathe more than Scarlett O’Hara. She’d be a perfect guest for a special episode of the Dr. Phil show. If she could swear, Jerry Springer. But how can you have a movie about a love story when no SANE person could possibly fall in love with the romantic lead? In the history of cinema, no character ever made a better final choice than Rhett Butler. Oh yeah, it’s racist and stupid too.
JGT’s Take: Got it for a Christmas present a couple of years ago, but still haven’t seen it. Pretty sure I’ll hate it if I ever watch it. Not my kind of film.

OLIVER! Take one of Dickens bleakest novels (which weren’t a batch a sunshine and daisies to start) and turn the staving, exploited orphans into dancing, singing, smiling, lovable urchins. Who’s f***ing brilliant idea was that? But, it was 1968 and the whole country was stoned, so what the hell. P.S. Exclamation point? Really?
JGT’s Take. Never seen it. Never will. Hate almost all musicals.

CRASH. I can accept a lot of improbable things when I see a movie; after all, that’s part of the fun. But the plot of Crash goes way past improbable into the realm of “you’ve GOT to be kidding”. Not only that, but a better-acted, funnier, more-realistic, and well-scripted version of this piece of junk was made in 1991: Grand Canyon. Maybe they thought no one would notice. Who knows? Plus, it was a coward’s choice: Brokeback Mountain was one of the other nominees, and Good Night, and Good Luck hit too close to home.
JGT’s Take. I thought this movie was good. Maybe not Best Picture good, but I rather enjoyed it. I thought Matt Dillon was great and so was Terrence Howard. This movie and American Beauty have both been savaged by people, but I’ll take either one over Gladiator and The Departed, which both had flashes of brilliance but absolutely mind numbingly stupid endings. I have seen a lot of Best Pictures that were worse than Crash. That said, I did like Good Night, and Good Luck better.

FORREST GUMP. Now, I don’t really think this is a bad movie. It’s just that I think that it was the worst of the nominees, and I can’t understand how it won. The other films nominated in 1994? Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, and The Shawshank Redemption. Not only were the other nominees better, but Jenny is a close second to Scarlett O’Hara in the “Who’s the most unlovable love interest” race. If Forrest only had 5 more points of IQ, he’d have dumped her ass when she played Blowing in the Wind naked and wondered why no one was interested in her music.

JGT’s Take. Yes and no. Forrest Gump is actually a very good movie, but not nearly as good as Shawshank Redemption. It is obviously not one of the worst 5 films to win Best Pic, but perhaps one of the worst 5 choices to win.

Spring Invitational Rolls On Tonight

March Madness isn’t just for hoops. You’ll also find it in quizzo, as the JGT Spring Invitational has begun. Tonight, there are two more chances to earn some early points. We start at the Locust Rendezvous at 6:15 p.m. Been rocking lately. $2 Mooseheads this week is just incredible. It’s a tough place to get a win, so if you’re going for victory, be sure to bring out your big guns. A win here instantly gets you an invite to the Big Boy table.

On to the Black Sheep at 8 p.m. Not quite as cutthroat as the Vous, but it’s no cakewalk either (Your best bet for a win this week will come tomorrow night at the Ugly American.) A good crowd, great service, and 3 different winners in the past 3 weeks. Oh, and might want to study up on your dancers. No regulars played on Saturday, so I’m reusing one of the rounds. Hope to see ya tonight!

The Spring Invitational Has Begun!

That’s right folks, it officially began last night at the Westbury and will continue tonight! Teams earn 5 points for a win, 3 points for a 2nd place finish, and 1 point for 3rd. Team can also earn points for physical challenges. The first one has just been posted! After a couple of months, the Top 20 teams receive an invite to play in the Big Spring Event. The first couple of these were a load of fun, so get your best team together and come on out to quizzo! I’ll reveal the locale for the Big Spring Event next week.

TONIGHT: Four different places to earn points, including a couple where you’ve got a great shot. We start at O’neals at 8 p.m. Been kind of quiet the last couple of weeks, so this is a great place to get a win. $3.50 margaritas and a $50 GC for first place. I then move to City Tap House at 10:15 p.m. They will be having a Mardi Gras party in the bar area, so we are gonna be playing in the back room. We’ve done it a couple of times and it actually went pretty well. I have a feeling that getting through the bar is going to be a nightmare, but remember if you walk around the side outdoors you can enter into the back room, or at least the back of the bar area, so you won’t have to deal with that craziness.

Keep in mind also that Koob and Kristy will be hosting their POP! Quiz tonight at the Raven, and yes the winner of that can earn points in the JGTSpI. That begins at 8 p.m. and Kristy has promised a rather risque 50/50 round.

In Manayunk, Mike returns to the Terrace Taproom. Action starts at 8 p.m. He’s gonna be doing his Oscars quiz tonight, so be sure to study. I actually pulled a few out when I played last night by studying beforehand. Hope to see ya tonight!