Top 10 Oscar Surprises

To celebrate the upcoming 8^th Academy Awards we’re starting our series of features focusing on the Oscars. This week we’re counting down the Top 10 Academy Awards surprises, both pleasant and unpleasant.

10. Clean Sweep

The Surprise: Arguably not the strongest of the trilogy, few people expected The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to do as well as it did at the 76^th Academy Awards, especially with the previous instalments only bagging 7 gongs between them. Though the Hobbits came, saw and conquered when ROTK bagged all 11 awards it was nominated for including the elusive Best Director for Peter Jackson and Best Picture.

9. The Dark Who?

The Surprise: The Dark Knight, arguably one of the greatest comic book (and action/thrillers) ever made misses out on nominations for both Best Picture and Best Director for Christopher Nolan. In a year where the 5 nominations for Best Picture were Slumdog Millionaire, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk and The Reader it still remains baffling as to how Nolan missed out on both these nods.

8. Saving Private Oscar

The Surprise: Saving Private Ryan misses out on the Best Picture at the 71^st Academy Awards, losing to Shakespeare in Love. ‘Nuff said.

7. Divorce Proceedings

The Surprise: There’s nothing quite like the feeling of getting one over on the ex, especially on one of the biggest stages in the world. That’s exactly what happened to Katheryn Bigelow at the 82^nd Academy Awards where she beat ex-hubby James Cameron’s Avatar to the Best Director and Best Picture prize for The Hurt Locker.

6. Who?

The Surprise: The Best Actor nominees at the 75^th Academy Awards consisted of some big names with Cage, Caine, Day-Lewis, Nicholson and Brody all up for the award. Wait, who? Adrian Body? Barely anybody had heard of him let alone even given him a shot at scooping the prize for his performance in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. Yet he defied the odds and took home the award, much to the entire film community’s surprise. He also planted a smooch on Halle Berry as he accepted the award, writing his name into Oscar folklore in the process.

5. Gate Crashed

The Surprise: Whilst Crash was always considered a decent film, not remarkable, nobody expected it to move any mountains at the 78^th Academy Awards. It faced stiff competition from Munich, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck and, the hot favourite, Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture which made it even more surprising when Jack Nicholson read out Crash to the disbelief of the entire audience.

4. ‘Affleckted’

The Surprise: At the 85^th Academy Awards Argo was nominated for 7 awards, winning 3 including Best Picture. Therefore it was a massive surprise to see Ben Affleck miss out on a nomination for Best Director, an award it won at the BAFTAs a month earlier. Even host Seth MacFarlane was quick to point out the Academy’s mistake in his opening monologue pointing out ‘They know they messed up Ben, it’s not your fault.’

3. No Way Scorse(se).

The Surprise: Everyone beating Martin Scorcese to Best Director. Nominated 8 times altogether, not scooping the big prize until 2007 where he won for The Departed, which doesn’t really stand up to some of the films he has missed out with including Raging Bull and Goodfellas.

2. Shawshank Snub

The Surprise: The Shawshank Redemption won nothing. Diddly squat. Zip. It was nominated for 7 awards (including Best Actor, Best Screenplay and Best Picture ) missing out to Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction. Surprising considering it is widely considered one of the best films ever made.

1.       Citizen Shame (sorry)

The Surprise: Once considered the greatest movie ever made by Sight & Sound, topping the American Film Institute’s 100 Years…100 Movies list, one of the first films preserved in the National Film Registry and boasts an exceptional 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, yet amazingly Citizen Kane and Orson Welles did not win Best Picture or Best Director, respectively, at the 14^th Academy Awards. What did win you ask? John Ford scooped both awards for How Green is my Valley.