February 27, 2016February 27, 2016 mohammedsexlife

Everything Screenwriters Need to Learn From the 2016 Oscar-Nominated Screenplays

We’ve compiled everything screenwriters can learn from the ten 2016 Oscar-Nominated Screenplays. Creative Screenwriting Magazine offers links to their amazing and exclusive interviews with all of the 2016 Oscar-Nominated writers and we’ve provided direct links to the actual nominated screenplays as well.

Please note that most of the screenplays are either shooting drafts or written by auteur directors/writers, so take that into account when looking at the format and length of the script. Ignore the scene numbers, Cut To:, camera directions, etc. — all of which should benot present in your spec scripts (scripts written under speculation that they’ll be sold).

The 2016 nominees have offered an excellent array of great stories, characters, and genres. Below you’ll find the likes of spy thrillers, science fiction, animation, music figure biopics, character dramas, and exposés.

Explore the scripts and interviews below, and take what you can from each and every one. Apply whatever you’ve learned or been inspired by and hone your own process, storytelling techniques, and style. Knowledge is power.

Best Original Screenplay

Bridge of Spies

Interview with the Writer: Spielberg, The Coens and Tom Hanks.

Bridge of Spies screenwriter Matt Charman on “the most incredible film school you could ever have.”

Read the Script

Ex Machina

Interview with the Writer: Writing For Robots.

Ex Machina writer/director Alex Garland discusses his new film, the trick to exposition, and the connection between writers and actors.

Read the Script

Inside Out

Interview with the Writers: “Is this the Best Story We Can Tell?”

Josh Cooley and Meg LeFauve discuss why their lead character was the most difficult to write, how they emotionally connected to the story, and the advantages of working in a creative environment like Pixar.

Read the Script

Spotlight

Interview with the Writer: The Burden of Truth.

Josh Singer discusses his commitment to truth and authenticity, the power of the newsroom, and the challenge of condensing life stories into a 2 hour film.

Read the Script

Straight Outta Compton

Interview with the Writers: Uncomfortable Truths.

Andrea Berloff and Jonathan Herman discuss commitment to research, refusal to shy away from difficult subject matter, and the importance of presenting the truth.

Read the Script

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Big Short

Interview with the Writer: Banking on the Big Short.

Charles Randolph on adaptation, collaboration, and Oscar nomination.

Read the Script

Brooklyn

Interview with the Writer: Writing Obsession.

Brooklyn screenwriter Nick Hornby discusses his first rule of screenwriting, why he doesn’t trust characters without obsessiveness, and how indie filmmakers can “cast up” by creating interesting minor characters.

Read the Script

Carol

Interview with the Writer: “Less is More” when adapting Highsmith.

Carol screenwriter Phyllis Nagy discusses adapting Patricia Highsmith, writing for theatre, television and the screen, and how she rations her writing time.

Read the Script

The Martian

Interview with the Writer: Life Goes on.

The Martian screenwriter Drew Goddard discusses the challenges of adapting a scientifically-detailed novel, what he loves about collaborating with others on screenwriting, and why something that seems like a setback might be the best possible thing to happen to a film.

Read the Script

The Room

Interview with the Writer: Making Room.

Room screenwriter Emma Donoghue on adapting her best-selling novel, the locked room as metaphor and the universal experiences of parenthood.

Read the Script

February 27, 2016February 27, 2016 mohammedsexlife

Chris Rock is the perfect Oscars host for this controversial awards season

One of the biggest questions going into this year’s Oscar ceremony isn’t whether Leonardo DiCaprio will finally win a lead actor trophy or which one of the best picture nominees will score the night’s big prize.

It’s WWCD (What Will Chris Do)?

Speculation has been building for weeks over how the ceremony host Chris Rock will address the #OscarsSoWhite controversy that has plagued the Oscars since the nominees were announced in January. Voters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences failed to nominate any actors of color in the top prize categories.

The furor has put Rock, considered one of the nation’s hottest comedians, into the hottest seat in Hollywood given that several African American artists, including Will Smith and Spike Lee, announced they would skip the ceremony.

It’s a situation that has resulted in Rock, 51, doing what no other Oscar host has done in the past — refusing to do any publicity for the ceremony. Except for a brief appearance at Largo last week to try out some Oscars-related material, he and his writing staff have remained largely underground.

That cone of silence has highlighted the delicacy of Rock’s mission: to address the controversy with the right tone but still stay focused on maintaining the spirit of the evening, which is to honor the best film achievements of the year.

The dilemma has prompted commentary from a stream of insiders and observers — ranging from entertainers who have worked with Rock to academics who study race in Hollywood — to predict how Rock will do when the curtain rises at the Dolby Theatre on Sunday.

“I think he will definitely be in the pocket,” said comedian Chris Spencer, executive producer of BET’s hit reality spoof “Real Husbands of Hollywood” on which Rock has appeared. “He will make some people very uncomfortable, but he will also be very, very funny.”

Added Lee Bailey, executive producer of EUR/Electronic Urban Report (EURweb.com), a website dedicated to black-related entertainment news and issues. “This is a tailor-made situation for Chris. His stuff has always been about race. He’s been known to go hard, and I’d be shocked if he didn’t. The Oscars need him more than he needs them. They are in deep doo-doo.”

While the comedian will no doubt be armed with the fearless sharp-edged punch that has made him an A-list star — and which he employed when he first hosted the ceremony in 2005 — observers say he will face far more scrutiny than Billy Crystal, Ellen DeGeneres, Seth MacFarlane, Neil Patrick Harris or other previous masters of ceremonies of the Academy Awards.

Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, said that Rock’s hosting “creates an opportunity for a huge impact. This is something that will really define who Chris is.”

Those who have worked with Rock are confident he’ll rise to the occasion. “Chris will have a staff of comedy writers working on his monologue with him, so a lot of thought will definitely go into it,” said Franklyn Ajaye, an actor, writer and comedian who was a writer for Rock when the entertainer appeared in the mid-1990s on “Politically Incorrect.” “My guess is that Chris will go at it straight in his usual direct and fearless manner. He’ll comment on it upfront to make a point, and then not dwell on it the whole night, which would make the evening a downer.”

Rock gave a bit of a clue as to what he might do as host when he dropped in unannounced last week at the Largo during a comedy night hosted by writer-director Judd Apatow.

The New York Observer’s Andy Wang, who was present at the performance, wrote that Rock’s material addressed the furor over the lack of diversity among the nominees, adding that Rock had “an impressive arsenal of material” to polish before the show.

The comedian explained why he wasn’t abandoning the ceremony, and considered how the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. might react to the issue if he were alive. Wang wrote that Rock riffed on the absurdity of one particular boycott: “That bit included a withering, perfect punchline involving two celebrities, but Mr. Rock knew it was too lewd to get by the Oscars censors.”

Other jokes delivered that night — a reference to the uproar over actresses earning less than actors, suggestions on making the pool of Oscar nominees more diverse — were examples of why Rock still resonates in the comedy world. Jamie Masada, the founder of the Laugh Factory comedy club, called Rock “a doctor of the soul.”

Rock, of course, has never been silent on the subject of race. In his first Oscar stint in 2005, his opening monologue touched on the African American nominees that year, who included lead actor nominee Jamie Foxx (“Ray”) and supporting actor nominee Morgan Freeman (“Million Dollar Baby”).

“It’s a great night tonight — we have four black nominees tonight,” he said. “It’s like the Def Oscar Jam” (both Foxx and Freeman won).

He has been an equal opportunity provocateur when it comes to unleashing his rants against both whites and blacks. His 1996 HBO special, in which he prowled the stage like an eager boxer during his routine about black people and the N-word, is considered a classic.

Rock wrote a scathing article in the Hollywood Reporter in 2014 denouncing the lack of multiculturalism in Hollywood and calling it a “white industry.”

It’s that brutal honesty that many feel makes Rock the perfect Oscar host now.

“The Oscars are about the celebration of film, and Chris will uphold that part of it, but he will also talk about us having the opportunity to tell our stories,” said Felischa Marye, chair of the Writers Guild of America West‘s Committee of Black Writers.”

Amy Aniobi, a writer who is working on HBO’s upcoming comedy series “Insecure,” said she has lost interest in tuning into the Oscars until she remembered that Rock was going to be the host. “I was just over it. Then it dawned on me. This is really the best scenario that could happen.”

Spencer has already made his plans for Oscar night. “I’m going to have a bunch of people over. Then when Chris’ monologue is over, we’ll go into another room. I’ll have one of my white friends watch the awards, and when Chris is back on, he can call us in to watch.”

February 27, 2016 mohammedsexlife

Oscars 2016: ‘Taxi Driver’ to ‘Carol’; biggest snubs of all time

The 88th Academy Awards are all set to roll out this Monday morning. The years’s list of nominees includes many obvious names in the expected categories, but as it happens every year there are some glaring omissions as well. The biggest snubs of 2016 are ‘Straight Outta Compton’ and ‘Carol’.

‘Straight Outta Compton’ was one of the greatest, most exciting and dramatic, most socially relevant, and most critically acclaimed films of the year. It played almost like a summer blockbuster. The PGA and SAG, with two of the biggest, most powerful voting blocks in the Academy nominated ‘Straight Outta Compton’ in their equivalent ‘best picture’ categories, but the Oscars let it go. Presumed to be a leading contender for Best Picture and Best Director, as F Gary Gray’s work was unquestionably one of the finest of the year. It’s lack of nomination has raised serious concerns about the ‘whiteness’ of this year’s nominees, so much so that even ‘Straight Outta Compton‘s single Oscar nomination was for its ‘white’ screenwriters. And this has got the whole industry talking about it!

‘Carol’ retained strong support and the presumption of Best Picture nominee status for months. However, the lack of a nod from the PGA was seen as a possible indication.Its momentum had fizzled and wouldn’t carry through to the Oscar nominating process. While it did score the expected nods for lead and supporting actress, Carol couldn’t secure a spot on the Best Picture list.

Another snub is ‘Martian’ director Ridley Scott. ‘The Martian’ earned its Best Picture nomination, along with nods for lead actor, adapted screenplay, sound mixing and editing, production design, and visual effects. However, the lack of a nomination for director Scott was totally unexpected, and surely means the film’s chances for a Best Picture are next to nil.

Well, 2016 has seen its share of snubs, lets’ take a look back at the biggest Academy Awards snubs. Oscars knows how to create a buzz before it’s show with the hits as well as misses:

Leonardo DiCaprio, ‘Titanic’

When Leonardo DiCaprio didn’t even get a nod for his role in ‘Titanic’ it came as a shock to many. In fact, after 25 years in filmdom, DiCaprio has never won an Oscar, walking away empty handed year after year. Maybe 2016 will be the year when the A-lister can finally put a shiny gold Oscar award on his mantelpiece . The star has been nominated for Best Actor for his performance in this years’ frontrunner ‘The Revenant’ and has already won Best Actor at Golden Globes, BAFTA and other major awards.

Jamie Foxx, ‘Django Unchained’

Jamie Foxx failed to even get an Oscar nomination for his performance as Django at the 2013 Academy Awards. He played the leading role in Quentin Tarantino’s controversial slavery-themed blockbuster ‘Django Unchained’. The film’s other lead Kerry Washington also failed to receive a nomination while their co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Christopher Waltz did.

Jack Nicholson, ‘The Shinning’

One of the classic horror films of all times was made scarier by the lunatic act of Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shinning’. Yet, the legendary Hollywood tar did not receive an Oscar for his breathtaking performance in the 1980’s classic. Despite making the thriller into an all-time classic as the wild-eyed Jack Torrance, Nicholson couldn’t get a nomination at the Academy Awards.

Bette Davis, ‘Of Human Bondage’

This snub is in a league of its own! Fury was sparked when Hollywood star Bette Davis didn’t make the 1934 list of Best Actress Academy Award nominees for her incredible performance in ‘Of Human Bondage.’ There was such a massive public outcry that the Academy essentially owned up to their mistake and allowed a special write-in campaign to get her on the ballot.

Martin Scorsese, ‘Taxi Driver’

It’s not an overstatement to say that Martin Scorsese, who made Hollywood classics including ‘Taxi Driver’, ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘Raging Bull’ is one of the best directors of all time. Still, Scorsese’s classic ‘Taxi Driver’ wan’t able to fetch him an Academy nomination for Best Director, despite being nominated for Best Picture.

Mila Kunis, ‘Black Swan’

Mila Kunis, transformed from television comedian into serious actress with her role in ‘Black Swan’, and though she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress by the Golden Globes, SAG Awards and Critics’ Choice Awards, she was completely snubbed by the Oscars. Well, the Academy Awards has a tendency of doing it.

Christopher Nolan, ‘Interstellar’

Christopher Nolan was skipped from the list of ‘Best Director’ nominees for 2015 sci-fi blockbuster ‘Interstellar’. Not once has he won an Oscar for his efforts be it for ‘Memento’ or ‘Dark Knight Rises’ . ‘Interstellar’ can now join this list after dominating the tech categories with nominations for Best Visual Effects, Sound Mixing and Production Design – but with no cap-doff to the director.

Selma

Just like ‘Carol’, last year ‘Selma’ was considered an Award’s favourite, only to end up empty handed in the end. African-American actor David Oyelowo didn’t even get a look in. The same was also true for DuVernay, who, had she been nominated, would have been the first Black female in history to be up for a Best Director’s gong. Guess the problem of black representation at the Oscars started showing itself from the last year.

February 27, 2016February 27, 2016 mohammedsexlife

The history behind Ukraine’s Eurovision song about Stalin’s deportation of Crimean Tartars

Jamala has been chosen to represent Ukraine at the 2016 Eurovision contest with her song ‘1944’. Inna Sokolovksa/EPA

Most entries to the Eurovision song contest are frothy pop tunes, but this year’s contribution from Ukraine addresses Stalin’s deportation of the entire Tatar population of Crimea in May 1944. It may seem an odd choice, but is actually very timely if we dig a little into the history of mass repression and inter-ethnic tensions in the region.

Almost a quarter of a million Tatars, an ethnically Turkic people indigenous to the Crimea, were moved en masse to Soviet Central Asia as a collective punishment for perceived collaboration with the Nazis. Between a third and a half of them died on the journey or in the “special settlements” of the Gulag that became their home. The death rate, combined with the aim of the regime to blend the Tatars into the Muslim, Turkic peoples of Central Asia, has led some to call the episode an attempted genocide, including the Ukrainian parliament in 2015.

The deportation was one of many examples of the mass repression of ethnic minorities in the history of Soviet Russia – which by no means limited mass repression to ethnic minorities.

Stalin and much of the Soviet leadership were peculiarly sensitive to the threat various groups presented to the Bolshevik Revolution in the years after 1917. In the years they spent planning and preparing for the seizure of power, they sought to understand why previous global revolutions (in 1789, 1848, 1871, 1905) had failed. They commonly drew the conclusion that previous generations of revolutionaries had failed adequately to anticipate the energy and violence with which the establishment (the “bourgeoisie”) would react.

The Soviet leadership’s own experience in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917 served to reinforce this view. Between the late spring of 1918 and the end of 1921 they had to overcome the combined forces of the old imperial army (the “Whites”) and foreign armed forces from Germany, Britain, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Japan among others. It was an exceptionally violent struggle, and the Bolsheviks tended to creditthe prosecution of a ruthless “Red” terror for their victory.

While there were no immediate threats to Revolution in the 1920s, the political police were instructed to look for evidence of counter-revolutionary conspiracy at home and abroad, and were given powers that predisposed them to exaggerate the threats they did find. Non-Russian ethnicities were not initially high on the list of threats – although this was not because they were seen as being sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, which they weren’t.

The threat within

The new regime had a hard time drawing many of the republics on the Russian periphery into the Soviet “Union”. Initially in the 1920s the Bolsheviks actively courted the non-Russians with promises of “freedom” from policies of forced assimilation characteristic of the Russian Imperial regime. Joseph Stalin was Lenin’s commissar of nationalities, and together the two developed a nationalities policy that encouraged the flourishing of national and ethnic cultures, as long as they remained “socialist in content”.

But it was not long before Stalin became concerned that this conciliatory nationalities policy was encouraging separate identities that would present a challenge to central power. By the mid-1930s, the threat of war deepened with the rise of the virulently anti-communist Nazi regime in Germany and the militarists in Japan. After the assassination of Politburo member Sergei Kirov in December 1934, the regime became hyper-sensitive to potential “counter-revolutionary” threats.

Between 1936 and 1938, the regime lashed out, murdering three quarters of a million people it considered real or potential enemies of the regime. Many of the victims were non-Russians, and many national groups, including Poles, Germans and Koreans, were targeted because their loyalty as nations to the USSR was held in doubt. During and after World War II, the regime deported over 3m members of non-Russian ethnic groups suspected of collaboration with the Nazis. The 240,000 Crimean Tatars shared their horrendous fate with many other victims.

After the Nazi army took over the Crimean peninsula in October 1941, it’s true that there were many detachments of Crimean Tatar soldiers recruited to the Wehrmacht – perhaps as many as 20,000 soldiers – but they could legitimately claim that they had little choice but to accept the Germans’ “offer”. The probability is that some fought because they wanted to defeat the Soviet regime, some fought because joining the Wehrmacht was a way to ensure a steady diet when food was scarce, and others were afraid of reprisals.

Battle for compensation

Stalin died in 1953, and his successor Nikita Khrushchev denounced many of Stalin’s crimes, including the deportations. The charges of collaboration against the Tatars were formally dropped in 1967, but in contrast to some of the other persecuted national groups, they were not allowed to return home until the late 1980s.

Hundreds of thousands did then return to the Crimea, but their villages and property had long since been redistributed, such that most had to rebuild their lives from scratch often on land where they were little more than squatters.

They are still seeking recognition for their plight, and some form of compensation, from Russian, Ukrainian and European authorities. The challenge of coming to some sort of solution has, however, been exacerbated by the poverty, political instability, ethnic tensions and corruption endemic in the region.

A monument in Sudak, Crimea, to the 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

The annexation of Crimea by the Russian government in 2014 added another layer of complication. Many of the historically persecuted ethnic minorities of the former Soviet Union – including many Ukrainians – blame the “Russians” for their plight, rather than Stalin and subsequent Soviet and post-Soviet elites.

For that reason, the Ukrainian Eurovision entry makes sense. This is not because the Crimean Tatars are ethnically Ukrainian (which they are not as they are Turkic), but because with the Tatars, many ethnic Ukrainians share a sense of grievance with “the Russians” about the annexation of Crimea, the war on their frontier with Russia, and a longer history of perceived persecution on ethnic lines.

February 27, 2016 mohammedsexlife

‘Gone With the Wind’ Oscar is missing

Michael Jackson’s ‘Gone With the Wind’ Oscar is missing

King of Pop Michael Jackson’s one of the most prized possessions, the Oscar for best picture awarded to “Gone With the Wind” producer David O Selznick, has gone missing.

Michael Jackson, Gone With the wind, oscars 2016, Michael Jackson Gone With the Wind, Michael Jackson Oscar award, Gone With the Wind Oscar Award, Entertainment news King of Pop Michael Jackson’s one of the most prized possessions, the Oscar for best picture awarded to “Gone With the Wind” producer David O Selznick, has gone missing.King of Pop Michael Jackson’s one of the most prized possessions, the Oscar for best picture awarded to “Gone With the Wind” producer David O Selznick, has gone missing.

The music legend, who died unexpectedly in 2009 at age 50, had purchased the Academy award in 1999, paying USD 1.54 million in a Sotheby’s auction, said The Hollywood Reporter.

The 1940 Oscar was awarded before there were rules against selling them.

“The estate does not know where the ‘Gone With the Wind’ statuette is. We would like to have that Oscar because it belongs to Michael’s children. I’m hopeful it will turn up at some point,” Jackson’s attorney Howard Weitzman said.

The “Beat it” singer’s three children, Michael, 19, Paris, 17, and Prince, 14, as well as his mother Katherine Jackson, were named beneficiaries of the trust he established and to which he left all his assets, according to the term’s of his 2002 will.

Jackson is presumed to have kept the Oscar at either his Neverland estate near Ojai, California, or at the LA home where he was living when he died. But the Oscar was not found among his belongings, according to the estate.

February 27, 2016 mohammedsexlife

In romantic comedies, it’s cute. In real life, it’s stalking.

Imagine this: A man named Ted hires a private detective to track down his prom date from 13 years prior. The detective finds her, falls in love with her, lies to Ted about the object of his affection in an attempt to make him lose interest in her. Meanwhile the PI goes to great, if somewhat, creepy lengths to win her over.

Ted emerges on the scene and deceives his longtime crush. (She didn’t know about him hiring a detective to find her, you see.) His lying is exposed, yet somehow he still gets the girl.

In real life, this could be the beginning of a stalking case. In “There’s Something About Mary” and other rom-coms like it, the message is: Grand gestures will make a woman fall for a man, even if she seems uninterested. No matter how high the obstacles, love conquers all.

But take out the comedy, and some of the most “romantic” movies of the past 30 years are actually super-creepy. If viewers are still laughing, though, does it matter that the story line is a little sick?

A new study says that it does. “I Did It Because I Never Stopped Loving You: The Effects of Media Portrayals of Persistent Pursuit on Beliefs About Stalking,” published in the journal Communication Research — finds that movies portraying persistent romantic pursuit of a female character can influence viewers’ beliefs about stalking.

Namely, if a viewer thinks of a romantic comedy as realistic, they’re more likely to agree with stalking myths such as: “Many alleged stalking victims are actually people who played hard to get and changed their minds afterwards” or “An individual who goes to the extremes of stalking must really feel passionately for his or her love interest.”

The study looked at 426 female undergraduates’ responses to romantic comedies (“There’s Something About Mary” and “Management”) and psychological thrillers (“Enough” and “Sleeping With the Enemy”) that feature a man persistently pursuing a woman. When the study participants watched the scary movies, they were less likely to believe myths about stalking, and to see the behavior as dangerous.

But in a comedy, the creepiness somehow looks sweet. The research, run by Julia R. Lippman at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, noted that media depictions of men aggressively pursuing a woman who doesn’t seem interested “can in fact have a clear and negative impact, in that they can lead people to see stalking as a less serious crime than they otherwise would.”

Encouraging stalking behavior can have real, damaging consequences.According to the National Center for victims of Crime, one in six women and one in 19 men have experienced stalking.

What would “There’s Something About Mary” look like if it were framed as a thriller rather than a comedy? My colleague Daron Taylor made a faux trailer for the film that gives it a completely different sentiment. Watch it above and you’ll see that the tone of this light and funny comedy suddenly turns dark.

February 27, 2016February 27, 2016 mohammedsexlife

This is why it’s so hard to host the Academy Awards

Whatever movies or actors are up for big awards at the Academy Awards from year to year, one idea about the biggest night in movies remains constant: Hosting the Oscars is a very hard job to do well. Bob Hope, who hosted the ceremony for the first time in 1940 and the last in 1978, seemed to have figured out a formula that got him invited back 18 times after his first outing, and Billy Crystal, who came back in 2012 to revive the show after a sense that the Oscars had lost their way, took nine turns on the Oscar stage. But many other hosts have treated the Academy Awards hosting job as a kind of ordeal, or wilted under the glare of the international broadcast.

By contrast, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler made hosting awards shows look easy at the Golden Globes. So when I got on the phone this week to talk to Robert Carlock about “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” the movie he wrote for Fey in which she plays a war reporter based out of Afghanistan, I took a moment to ask him about writing material for the Golden Globes and what it takes to succeed on the Oscar stage.

Carlock was quick to point out that the Globes and the Oscars are very different tasks. Part of what separates the Oscars from the Golden Globes is scale, and not simply in terms of the size of the broadcast audience. The International Ballroom at the Beverly Hilton, the site of the Golden Globes, can hold 1,400 people. That’s less than half the capacity of the Dolby Theatre, where the Academy Awards are held; that space can seat 3,332 people.

The formats of that seating are also different. In the International Ballroom, guests are seated at tables, a configuration that makes it easier for them to chat with one another. The Television Critics Association Awards happen each summer at the International Ballroom, and I can attest that it’s a smaller space than it appears to be on television, and one with a decidedly intimate vibe. At the Dolby Theatre, the guests are seated as they would be in a traditional concert hall or movie theater, in long rows, all facing toward the stage: It’s a setup that means Oscar attendees, like the audience watching the television broadcast, are focused on the host as their sole source of entertainment.

The difference in venues and atmospheres makes the task for Golden Globes hosts decidedly easier. At the Globes, hosts can — as Fey and Poehler did so successfully on three occasions — “go out and do jokes to the camera. There’s no band. It’s a bunch of really famous folks really close to you and they’re drunk,” Carlock said, suggesting that this tendency toward tipsiness makes the Golden Globes audience a more receptive crowd to work with.

The scale of the Oscars also means that hosts feel obligated to do more than simply deliver a great monologue and be funny; they have to sing, they have to dance and they generally have to work themselves into a flop sweat trying to keep the crowd engaged. When I asked him about this, Carlock said that he thought it might be wise for the Oscars to pare down expectations, and allow hosts to focus on talking directly to the audience in the theater and to the camera, as he hopes Chris Rock might be able to do as host this year.

“I think Chris’s skill set might allow us to take a little break from that demand in a refreshing way,” Carlock speculated. “I don’t think he’ll do song and dance.”

Carlock emphasized that hosts also have to know how and when to pull back throughout the ceremony, especially as the biggest awards approach, and even more so after the recipients of those awards have stepped off the stage after giving their speeches.

“Know when the show is over,” he said. “When your three hours end and you take a step out to do a comedy bit, just as a producer, I [know you’re testing the audience’s patience].”

February 27, 2016 mohammedsexlife

The Oscars always get it wrong.

The Oscars always get it wrong. Here are the real Best Pictures of the past 40 years.

#OscarsSoWhite? How about #OscarsSoWrong? The inability of the academy to find a single non-white actor to nominate in two years may seem baffling, but remember — this is the same academy that is painfully misguided and short-sighted when it comes to awarding trophies.

Let’s take a walk through the past four decades of Best Picture winners of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It’s an almost unbroken chain of incorrect decisions! But with the perspective lent to us by the passage of time, we can now confidently look back and discern what was actually the best. Doing our best to set the record straight here, but don’t hesitate to argue with us in the comments section. Let’s start with the last time Sylvester Stallone was a nominee . . .

1976

Nominees: All the President’s Men, Bound for Glory, Network, Rocky, Taxi Driver

Best Picture winner: Rocky

The actual best picture: Network

Tough year! And “Rocky” was actually a moody, refined piece of filmmaking, in addition to great popular entertainment . . . but “Network” transcended entertainment and became prophecy in perpetuity (Howard Beale’s latest incarnation is, of course, Donald Trump). The ambition of its writing, the wickedness of its cast, the firm hand of director Sidney Lumet — “Rocky” may go the distance, but “Network” wins by decision.

[Oscars 2016: Who will win, should win and should have been nominated]

For the second year in a row, no people of color have been nominated for an Oscar in the acting categories. Here’s a timeline history of nominations and wins for non-white actors at the Academy Awards. (Nicki DeMarco,Thomas LeGro,Julio Negron/The Washington Post)

1977

Nominees: Annie Hall, The Goodbye Girl, Julia, Star Wars, The Turning Point

Best Picture winner: Annie Hall

The actual best picture: Annie Hall

Surprise! “Star Wars” is frequently considered one of Oscar’s great misses, but wow, “Annie Hall?” The academy got it right this time. Woody Allen’s film reinvented the rom-com in ways that are still being ripped off to this day, and it changed the way we talk about our own relationships. (Says Dan Zak: I know which one I’d rather watch over and over again: the one that involves a large vibrating egg.)

[Did Star Wars cause ADHD? (Okay, maybe not directly, but consider this…)]

1978

Nominees: Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, Heaven Can Wait, Midnight Express, An Unmarried Woman

Best Picture winner: The Deer Hunter

The actual best picture: An Unmarried Woman

“The Deer Hunter” launched Christopher Walken and Meryl Streep, and it has some lovely, haunting sequences, but the Vietnam scenes feel dated now. Meanwhile, “An Unmarried Woman” is so lovely, down to its whimsical jazzy score by Bill Conti. And when Alan Bates gives Jill Clayburgh a giant painting at the end . . . bliss.

1979

Nominees: All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now, Breaking Away, Kramer vs. Kramer, Norma Rae

Best Picture winner: Kramer vs. Kramer

The actual best picture: Apocalypse Now

What a bonkers roster. “Kramer vs. Kramer” is a gorgeously spare, simple movie about divorce and parenting — can you believe that 105 minutes of talking without CGI or explosions was not only the Oscar winner but the box-office champ for 1979? But it’s hard not to love every shot of “Apocalypse Now,” which routinely makes Top-10 lists of the best films ever. If this lineup were voted on today, “Apocalypse” would win in a landslide.

1980

Nominees: Coal Miner’s Daughter, The Elephant Man, Ordinary People, Raging Bull, Tess

Best Picture winner: Ordinary People

The actual best picture?. . .

Dan Zak claims: 1980 came to epitomize Oscar injustice, when Robert Redford’s predictable tale of suburban angst won over Martin Scorsese’s gorgeous boxing epic. “Ordinary People” is no dud, but here I bow to the sweep of “Raging Bull,” instead of intimacy. (And how did “Tess” even get into this conversation?)

Amy Argetsinger maintains: Wrong! “The Shining” reinvented the horror film (what if the monster is inside your head?), holds up to endless analysis and still scares the hell out of me. A frighteningly gorgeous film, every shot laden with meaning, but it wasn’t even nominated.

[These charts explain how Oscars diversity is way more complicated than you think]

1981

Nominees: Atlantic City, Chariots of Fire, On Golden Pond, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Reds

Best Picture winner: Chariots of Fire

The actual best picture: Raiders of the Lost Ark

And so the Oscars began its hopeless love affair with “prestige” pics — posh British accents, period costumes and vaguely noble-seeming themes. And thus it missed the chance to reward the movie that raised the bar for action-adventure and special effects, launched Harrison Ford as the most important star of the 1980s, and remains an absolutely thrilling film to this day.

1982

Nominees: E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Gandhi, Missing, Tootsie, The Verdict

Best Picture winner: Gandhi

The actual best picture: Tootsie

Raise your hand if you’ve seen “Gandhi.” Anyone? It’s hard to think of a movie that had a shorter shelf-life after the Oscars. (But hang in there, we will.) “Tootsie” and “The Verdict” are two of the tightest screenplays ever written, and feature two beloved actors (Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman) in career-best performances. “Tootsie,” with its deft handling of comedy and romance, is the greater feat. Watch it now: It’s still laugh-out-loud hilarious.

1983

Nominees: The Big Chill, The Dresser, The Right Stuff, Tender Mercies, Terms of Endearment

Best Picture winner: Terms of Endearment

The actual best picture: Terms of Endearment

The last Best Picture winner that passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors and still has room for Jack Nicholson. Eminently watchable — good luck trying to flip away from it if you stumble upon it on cable some night — and exquisitely tear-jerking still. (“The Big Chill” is almost unwatchable today — no, really, try it — and took a nomination slot that should have gone to a little movie called “Testament,” starring Jane Alexander as a mother struggling to keep her family alive after a nuclear attack.)

1984

Nominees: Amadeus, The Killing Fields, A Passage to India, Places in the Heart, A Soldier’s Story

Best Picture winner: Amadeus

The actual best picture: Amadeus

Surprise! Yes, “Amadeus” was awash in posh accents and wigs. But with Tom Hulse, it brought a dusty historic icon like Mozart to giggling life, while tapping into our own feelings of inadequacy in the person of F. Murray Abraham’s Salieri — the man just brilliant enough to recognize he wasn’t brilliant enough. And it connected thrillingly to the music. It probably truly was the best, even in a year that included “Ghostbusters.”

1985

Nominees: The Color Purple, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Out of Africa, Prizzi’s Honor, Witness

Best Picture winner: Out of Africa

The actual best picture: Back to the Future

God bless Meryl, but “Out of Africa” was a pristine, color-by-numbers costume drama, elevated by some pretty scenery. Did anyone sit down in the past year and watch this again? Anyone in the entire world? Two of this year’s best screenplay nominees deserved to be in the best picture category: “Back to the Future” and “The Purple Rose of Cairo.” For its sheer cultural endurance, let’s pick B2TF. This would’ve been the appropriate time to honor director Robert Zemeckis, instead of in 1994, but we’ll get to that soon. . .

1986

Nominees: Children of a Lesser God, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Mission, Platoon, A Room with a View

Best Picture winner: Platoon

The actual best picture: Hannah and Her Sisters

Kids, would you believe us if we told you that there was once a Best Picture Oscar winner that starred Charlie Sheen? Yes, there was, and it was Oliver Stone’s pompous and bombastic Vietnam drama. Meanwhile, we can deal with our complicated feelings about Woody Allen elsewhere; “Hannah” proves itself to be his best movie, as Dan’s annual viewings of this novelistic comedy-drama have determined.

1987

Nominees: Broadcast News, Fatal Attraction, Hope and Glory, The Last Emperor, Moonstruck

Best Picture winner: The Last Emperor

The actual best picture: Moonstruck

“The Last Emperor” was such a quintessential Oscar winner — a handsome but ponderous epic by a director (Bernardo Bertolucci) who is much better when sex is involved (“Last Tango in Paris,” “The Dreamers”).”Broadcast News” got so much so right about Washington journalism and dating-at-work, but James L. Brooks had just won big with “Terms” four years earlier; and “Fatal Attraction” was the apex of the era’s psychosexual-thriller craze but has not aged well. “Moonstruck,” on the other hand, is pure joy — a modern-day version of romantic comedies that won the top prize back in the Golden Era (“It Happened One Night,” “The Apartment”) but never do anymore.

1988

Nominees: The Accidental Tourist, Dangerous Liaisons, Mississippi Burning,Rain Man, Working Girl

Best Picture winner: Rain Man

The actual best picture: Big

You know what the best part of “Rain Man” is? Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise should’ve won best actor that year, instead of Dustin Hoffman. There. It’s been said. No way was “Rain Man” the best picture, not with the fizzy and delightful “Working Girl” in the running. Still, the actual best movie of 1988 did not even make it into the finals: “Big,” a deceptively simple fable about innocence and maturity disguised as fish-out-of-water romp.

1989

Nominees: Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Poets Society, Driving Miss Daisy, Field of Dreams, My Left Foot

Best Picture winner: Driving Miss Daisy

The actual best picture: Field of Dreams

There was so little enthusiasm for the polite little “Driving Miss Daisy” that director Bruce Beresford wasn’t even nominated; the day after the Oscars, the world forgot that this movie ever existed. Whereas the plaintive mysticism of Kevin Costner hearing the voices of dead White Sox . . . a movie so cornball-potent it sent legions of dads and lads on pilgrimages to a cornfield baseball diamond movie set in Dyersville, Iowa. (They do know it was just a movie set, right?) Plus, by rewarding a Kevin Costner film, we might have gotten it out of our system and thus avoided . . .

1990

Nominees: Awakenings, Dances With Wolves, Ghost, The Godfather Part III, Goodfellas

Best Picture winner: Dances With Wolves

The actual best picture: Goodfellas

“Dances With Wolves” was like an Oscar trap — a gorgeous, sweeping epic directed by a red-hot leading man (Costner), but empty at the center and barely remembered today. Whereas “Goodfellas” was Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece — a dark, funny, anthropological take on mob life that paved the way for the “Sopranos” and is still ripped off annually by some lesser filmmaker or another. And rewarding Scorsese then would have lifted the pressure to over-reward his perfectly acceptable but far from groundbreaking “The Departed” 16 years later.

1991

Nominees: Beauty and the Beast, Bugsy, JFK, The Prince of Tides, The Silence of the Lambs

Best Picture winner: The Silence of the Lambs

The actual best picture: The Silence of the Lambs

It’s still amazing that academy members made this pick. And oh what a pick. It was dead right. The culture has filed “Silence” in the horror-film category, but really it’s a feminist Western. And an artful, thrilling experience. (But how, at the same time, did they manage to deny a nomination to “Thelma and Louise”? #OscarsSoWrong.)

1992

Nominees: The Crying Game, A Few Good Men, Howards End, Scent of a Woman, Unforgiven

Best Picture winner: Unforgiven

The actual best picture: Unforgiven

Once again, they got it right. “Unforgiven,” a beautifully contemplative Western whose hero grapples with what it means to kill someone, also had the meta-appeal of serving as an apology for Eastwood’s gleefully bloody “Dirty Harry” years. Still, this lineup of nominees doesn’t reflect how fun movies were that year — “A League of Their Own” and “Death Becomes Her” and “Sneakers.” Hey, how about “Sneakers” for best pic?

1993

Nominees: The Fugitive, In the Name of the Father, The Piano, The Remains of the Day, Schindler’s List

Best Picture winner: Schindler’s List

The actual best picture?. . .

Dan Zak: I have seen plenty of Spielberg movies, but I have never seen anything like “The Piano.” It isn’t a film. It’s a portal.

Amy Argetsinger: Huh. I thought “Schindler’s List” was pretty darn undeniable. I’ll keep an open mind, though. . .

1994

Nominees: Forrest Gump, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, The Shawshank Redemption

Best Picture winner: Forrest Gump

The actual best picture: Pulp Fiction

“Forrest Gump” was a mawkish piece of cheap tone-deaf manipulation that was embarrassing to watch even at the time, even while it crushed at the box office. Perhaps the worst Oscar travesty of all time — especially in the year of the exhilaratingly creative, mindbending “Pulp Fiction,” which remains one of the best movies to come in on the middle of while cable-surfing at 11 p.m.

1995

Nominees: Apollo 13, Babe, Braveheart, Il Postino, Sense and Sensibility

Best Picture winner: Braveheart

The actual best picture: Not that.

Amy Argetsinger: The academy has a weakness for historic epics and doughty men and noble themes and actors-turned-directors — so why didn’t they just pick “Apollo 13,” which has all of that in spades and was a much, much better movie than the ambitious but mediocre Mel Gibson vehicle? Besides, rewarding Ron Howard properly this year would have kept them from overcompensating to him six years later . . .

Dan Zak: Oh my God I’m picking “Babe.” Will that do? Will that do?

Amy Argetsinger: That’ll do, pig.

1996

Nominees: The English Patient, Fargo, Jerry Maguire, Secrets & Lies, Shine

Best Picture winner: The English Patient

The actual best picture? . . .

Dan Zak: Any cinephile would pick “Fargo,” but I’ve never been able to forgive its all-too-coincidental climax, which crushes the movie’s delicateness with a deus ex machina the size of a tan Ford Sierra. “Seinfeld” made “The English Patient” into a punchline, but it’s a remarkable adaptation of the remote and interior Michael Ondaatje book.

Amy Argetsinger: Seriously? When was the last time you watched it? “Fargo” was the best distillation of the Coen Brothers’ unique voice, and rewarding them this time would have kept the academy from overcompensating 11 years later …

1997

Nominees: As Good as It Gets, The Full Monty, Good Will Hunting, L.A. Confidential, Titanic

Best Picture winner: Titanic

The actual best picture: Titanic

Yeah, “L.A. Confidential” — whatever. “Titanic” is a freaking masterpiece. A sumptuous production, two of the planet’s most likable actors, a gripping story, and visual effects that still hold up. Deal with it.

1998

Nominees: Elizabeth, Life Is Beautiful, Saving Private Ryan, Shakespeare in Love, The Thin Red Line

Best Picture winner: Shakespeare in Love

The actual best picture: Elizabeth

Harvey Weinstein’s egomania eclipsed what is actually a fabulous movie: “Shakespeare” is brimming with wit but light as gossamer, and with a gorgeous end that’s satisfying even though it’s not technically a happy one. But “Elizabeth” is the real cinematic achievement: visceral, painterly, and it introduced us to the force that is Cate Blanchett.

1999

Nominees: American Beauty, The Cider House Rules, The Green Mile, The Insider, The Sixth Sense

Best Picture winner: American Beauty

The actual best picture: The Sixth Sense

Here’s another best picture that has not aged well. “American Beauty” feels very of-the-’90s. Its earnestness, its plastic bag as metaphor for the fleetingness of life — I mean, jeepers. “The Sixth Sense” was more than just its twist ending. We keep thinking about the teary car scene between Toni Collette and Haley Joel Osment. That alone would’ve won our vote.

2000

Nominees: Chocolat, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich, Gladiator, Traffic

Best Picture winner: Gladiator

The actual best picture: None of the above.

A perfectly fine revival of the old chariots-and-togas genre, “Gladiator” was still basically just a solid B+ of a movie. However, it employed a lot of technicians and B-list actors (while launching Russell Crowe to the A-list), and that’s something that academy voters tend to see as in their own economic self-interest. So, whatever.

Dan Zak: “Almost Famous” or “Requiem for a Dream.”

Amy Argetsinger: “Memento.”

2001

Nominees: A Beautiful Mind, Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Moulin Rouge!

Best Picture winner: A Beautiful Mind

The actual best picture: In the Bedroom

If only the academy had rewarded Ron Howard for his “Apollo 13″ six years earlier, it wouldn’t have had to overreward this middling star vehicle. (Though in fairness, Russell Crowe probably deserved the Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind” instead of “Gladiator.”) We might have gone for “Moulin Rouge!” at the time, but “In the Bedroom” has since risen in our estimation. It’s a fast pitch down the middle, whereas Baz Luhrmann is just swinging a baseball bat at anything that comes his way.

2002

Nominees: Chicago, Gangs of New York, The Hours, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Pianist

Best Picture winner: Chicago

The actual best picture: Chicago

“Chicago” is still the standard bearer for movie musicals in the post-Gene Kelly era. It’s a thrilling, seamless experience. (But Spike Jonze’s “Adaptation” was robbed of a nomination.)

2003

Nominees: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Lost in Translation, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Mystic River, Seabiscuit

Best Picture winner: The Lord of the Rings

The actual best picture: Lost in Translation

There was a desperate inevitability to 2003’s win — Peter Jackson had pulled off this sprawling trilogy on a brisk schedule and with blockbuster receipts, and here was the last chance to reward him, so. . . It’s only with a decade’s distance that we can say, the third LOTR wasn’t nearly as memorable as the first, and the first wasn’t really all that great. But that was how the academy missed its chance to recognize a sweet, sardonic film by a female director (Sofia Coppola) that launched a new era for national treasure Bill Murray and a superstar career for Scarlett Johansson.

2004

Nominees: The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Million Dollar Baby, Ray, Sideways

Best Picture winner: Million Dollar Baby

The actual best picture: Million Dollar Baby

As Roger Ebert said: “a masterpiece, pure and simple, deep and true.” (But pour out some of your pinot for “Sideways,” a dark, character-driven comedy that you can watch every time it comes on TV and still find a moment of resonance.)

2005

Nominees: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich

Best Picture winner: Crash

The actual best picture: Brokeback Mountain

Your tolerance for “Crash” may vary, but let’s face it: It won because it employed a dozen well-liked B-listers, and it was filmed in the neighborhoods where all the academy voters live. A sensitive and groundbreaking film whose catchphrase (“I wish I knew how to quit you”) still haunts, “Brokeback” was robbed. One positive about the “Crash” win: Jack Nicholson as presenter. He should present all best pictures. Note his cheeky gestures and “whoa,” directed toward the wings, after announcing the winner.

2006

Nominees: Babel, The Departed, Letters From Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen

Best picture winner: The Departed

The actual best picture? . . .

Dan Zak: Was “The Queen” a comedy? It was to me. Scorsese had to go conventional to finally win, but I wouldn’t call it a compromise. “The Departed” is a sinfully fun movie.

Amy Argetsinger: Sure, but it’s not even one of Scorsese’s five best; and again, if they had only gotten it right in 1990, we wouldn’t have been in this quandary today. The real problem is that the actual best picture of 2006 was robbed of a nomination — and that was the bravely over-the-top and hugely entertaining “Dreamgirls.”

[‘It’s too loud’ and other reasons Oscar voters ignore black movies]

2007

Nominees: Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood

Best Picture winner: No Country for Old Men

The actual best picture: Michael Clayton

As our film critic Ann Hornaday said of “No Country”: Fine artists working at the height of their powers, “all to follow around a serial killer blowing people away with a cattle stun gun.” “Michael Clayton,” on the other hand, felt like it sprung straight from the 1970s, cinema’s second golden age. Plus, it had Tilda Swinton with one of the best best-supporting-actress performances ever. (Argetsinger adds: I will give you this one, Dan. “There Will Be Blood,” was the actual best picture, but I do not have the words to explain how it affected me.)

[Our definitive ranking of every Coen brothers film]

2008

Nominees: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire

Best Picture winner: Slumdog Millionaire

The actual best picture: None of the above . . .

Amy Argetsinger: I’m going to say it. “Twilight” is the best movie of 2008. Catherine Hardwicke managed to bring gritty indie-film texture and Pacific Northwest moodiness into a blockbuster, one of the rare teen flicks where the teenagers actually look like teenagers and their inarticulate pauses linger poignantly in the multiplex. But also a subtly camp sense of humor woven throughout, anchored by Robert Pattinson, that had me laughing throughout. Okay, maybe I had had a few drinks, but . . . a surprisingly lovely film.

Dan Zak: You are out of your mind. What about “The Dark Knight,” or “The Wrestler,” or “In Bruges”? Or even “Synecdoche, New York”?

2009

Nominees: Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire, A Serious Man, Up, Up in the Air

Best Picture winner: The Hurt Locker

The actual best picture: The Hurt Locker

There was much complaining that the Oscars had once again honored a prestigious indie film seen by few people instead of a popular multiplex hit — but the real complaint should have been, why wasn’t “The Hurt Locker” a popular multiplex hit? Yes, it was a psychological drama about a failed war — we get why you resisted popping it into the DVD player — but the action was superb, too.

2010

Nominees: Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech, 127 Hours, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter’s Bone

Best Picture winner: The King’s Speech

The actual best picture: Not that . . .

Dan Zak: Another prestige pic, in the mold of “Chariots of Fire,” except instead of an exciting race we have . . . a speech impediment. I’m a sucker for boxing movies and “The Fighter” was an electric reinvention of the genre, with the added bonus of seeing Christian Bale and Amy Adams at the top of their games.

Amy Argetsinger: Really? Come on. “The Social Network” wasn’t perfect, but name another movie that so expertly captured an era. I’m beginning to wonder if this was a good idea, you and me here.

2011

Nominees: The Artist, The Descendants, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, War Horse

Best Picture winner: The Artist

The actual best picture: Moneyball

The neo-silent film had its quirks and its charms, and amid so many bloated epics, it definitely deserves props for being the shortest Best Picture winner in a generation, at a brisk 100 minutes. But “Moneyball” is more than a baseball movie. It is a document of American masculinity at the turn of the millennium, when we began to inflict data on leisure in order to approximate the control of destiny. Sport convinces man that he is God, and this movie vibrates like a requiem for that hubris.

2012

Nominees: Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty

Best Picture winner: Argo

The actual best picture: Skyfall

Go big or go home. Listen, this was a tough year: “Argo” was delightful, but Spielberg was working at a much higher level of difficulty by making the weighty themes of “Lincoln” so human and relatable. But that’s beside the point: The academy had one chance to give a Bond movie the Oscar, and it was with the confident, thrilling, psyche-probing “Skyfall.” Bond may be the best franchise of all times, but its individual films rarely connect on all levels like this one did. (Note from Amy: Dan would surely veto this, but he’s walked away from the computer.)

2013

Nominees: American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, 12 Years a Slave, The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Picture winner: 12 Years a Slave

The actual best picture: 12 Years a Slave

In the hands of an artist like Steve McQueen, a historical epic sidesteps stodginess and uplift to become an intimate, wrought-iron tragedy.

2014

Nominees: American Sniper, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Selma, The Theory of Everything, Whiplash

Best Picture winner: Birdman

The actual best picture?. . .

Amy Argetsinger: Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and think, “That was a dream, right? ‘Boyhood’ didn’t really lose the Oscar, did it?” And then I look it up on my phone and am reminded that, somehow, Richard Linklater’s 13-years-in-the-making masterwork did not win. It gets me every time.

Dan Zak: Do you reward the time and effort it took, or do you reward the finished product? For me, it’s the latter. And thus it’s “Birdman.”

[I’m in ‘Spotlight’, but it’s not really about me. It’s about the power of journalism.]

2015

Nominees: The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room, Spotlight

Best Picture winner: TBA

The actual best picture?. . .

Our critics are split between “Spotlight” and “The Big Short.” Meanwhile, this exercise has demonstrated to us that it truly does take distance and perspective to determine the actual best picture of any given year. Check in with us in 2025 for our ruling on the most deserving film of 2015.