My one entry on New Oscar Categories just wasn’t enough. Here are a few more ideas:
- Best WWII/Holocaust Film: I feel like this needs to be a category unto itself because, honestly, it’s not fair. Every year Hollywood churns out at least half a dozen quality, Oscar-worthy films who’s only flaw is their failure to invoke the Holocaust (I told you, Spielberg, you would’ve totally won your first Oscar 11 years earlier if you had just listened to me and had E.T. hide in Elliot’s attic to avoid the Nazis instead of a bunch of silly scientists. Big mistake!) And it’s not as though World War II isn’t a very interesting war. It is. As far as sequels go, it’s a good one. I’d put it right up there with Godfather II and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Hitler… er…Kahn. It’s just sad to me that all the other wars have gotten so screwed over. Do you realize that Tom Hanks has not starred in even one film about the War of 1812? This is an outrage.
- Worst Follow-Up Movie to an Oscar-Nominated Performance: Most actors, even the good ones, seem to have no discernible taste in screenplays. (I’m pretty sure they choose projects by lining up the scripts they’ve been offered and chucking a penny to see where it lands – like a carnival game worth millions of dollars). So when an actor finally hits upon an Oscar-worthy role it is a giant mistake to assume their next project (probably already shot and ready to release) is going to be anything but a giant heap of crap. Need proof?
Eddie Murphy followed up Dreamgirls with a little train wreck called Norbit.
Queen Latifah won an Oscar for Chicago and chose to use her new-found clout to make Bringing Down the House and Barbershop 2.
Mira Sorvino went from Oscar gold in Mighty Aphrodite to something sounding very Cinemax-y called Tales of Erotica.
Jamie Foxx won for Ray and decided the only way to top his pitch-perfect Ray Charles impersonation was to soar across the big screen in a Top Gun knock-off called Stealth. (I’m sure he was hoping that it was more than just the planes in that film that could turn invisible)
And Nicolas Cage followed up his Oscar win in Leaving Las Vegas with, um, every other movie he’s done since then… (Con Air, Snake Eyes, 8MM, Gone in 60 Seconds — which ironically, was that amount of time it took for Nic’s credibility as an actor to completely vanish)
I propose we line up the year’s worst post-Oscar offenders, and whoever wins for worst follow-up film, we take their original Oscar and melt it into a gold-plated figurine of a prostitute. For obvious reasons.
- Worst Oscar Acceptance Speech: This would be a fun category. Let’s bring back five previous winners who’s acceptance speeches have best exemplified the narcissistic, humorless and self-indulgent tendencies of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
What are some of my recent favorites? Gosh, they are so many and so they are so varied it’s hard to choose. Tom Hanks outing his gay but in-the-closet acting teacher while accepting for Philadelphia is certainly a classic for the ages. But it’s hard to top Angeline Jolie’s pseudo-incestuous rant (“I’m so in love with my brother right now!”) during her acceptance for Girl, Interrupted. You can practically hear crickets:
But for sheer gratingness — Julia Robert’s self-satisfied litany of thanks after winning for her portrayal of real-life hero Erin Brockovich in which she fails to thank… er… Erin Brockovitch.
But ya know, when it comes down to it, Sally Field set the bar so high (or low) it’s may never be topped:
Worst sequel of Oscar winning movie: Rocky 3
No no. Have you ever sat through rock 5? 4 is awful too. But Godfather 3 has got to be the most painful one