Long an industry favorite, Clint Eastwood’s films has been nominated for Best Picture four times to date. But which of his nominated films has held up the best? In the eyes of our readers, his first Best Picture nominee (and winner), Unforgiven, still reigns. Bringing in a decisive 72% of the vote, Unforgiven trounced the competition. In fact, our readers preferred Eastwood’s orangutan comedies to any of his other nominated films by a margin of 17% to 11% (all brought in by 2004’s Million Dollar Baby). As for Mystic River and Letters From Iwo Jima, they got no love whatsoever from our voters. And while some would maintain these movies didn’t deserve to be ignored altogether, I believe it was Clint himself who once said, “deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”
Speaking of deserve having nothing to do with it, you may have noticed that Oscar nominations were announced this morning. And with the nominations come the inevitable surprises. Few people saw the The Reader (which has been met so far mostly with indifference from critics and audiences) being the force it was this morning, although if history teaches us anything it’s that tastefully-made adaptations of respectable Holocaust-related novels should never be counted out. Then again, some surprises were happier- for example, I didn’t see Michael Shannon’s nomination coming, but I was happy to hear his name called. And how awesome does “Werner Herzog, Oscar nominee” sound? On the other hand, there are the snubs. Some of them were obvious from the beginning- much as I loved Synecdoche, New York, I didn’t think it had much of a shot at anything. Others were more shocking, to say the least. In this week’s poll, I’ve listed five of the more notable snubs this year, four of which were considered legitimate front-runners, the fifth a longtime Oscar favorite who many thought might be invited back to the party again. So which of this year’s snubs was most egregious?
As always, the comments section is open, in case you’d like to complain or praise the nominations. See you next week!
