Oscars 2010: the 10 worst injustices in Academy Award history

By Tom Chivers Published: 3:32PM GMT 03 March 2010

Comments 81 |

Previous of Images Next Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, knocked about to the 1941 Oscar for Best Picture by How Green Was My Valley The movie print for Raging Bull, display Robert De Niro Photo: UNITED ARTISTS Hey, it"s President Bartlet all lonesome in mud. Martin Sheen goes for a drop in Apocalypse Now Sylvester Stallone in Rocky - a improved movie than Taxi Driver, according to the Oscars Photo: AP Malcolm McDowell in Stanley Kubrick"s A Clockwork Orange, knocked about by The French Connection on all 4 of the Oscar nominations Photo: WARNER BROS Janet Leigh in Psycho"s important showering scene. Neither Alfred Hitchcock nor his majority important movie ever won an Oscar Photo: AP Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick"s Dr Strangelove - not as good as My Fair Lady, assumingly Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, one of Martin Scorsese"s hat-trick of longed for Oscars Photo: AP Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump; a cut of 1950s values that someway survived all the approach to 1994 Photo: REX FEATURES Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan, knocked about in 1998 to the Best Picture Oscar by Shakespeare in Love Photo: DREAMWORKS Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana in Avatar, or Dances with Wolves in Space 3D, to give it the operative pretension Photo: REUTERS

Whether an Oscar is deserved or not is of course a biased judgment. This is the list, and we could have enclosed majority some-more (a couple of examples, picked at random: The Shining wasnt even nominated for any awards in 1981; bloated, conceited Crash violence Brokeback Mountain and Capote in 2005; Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago violence Meryl Streep in Adaptation to the 2002 Best Supporting Actress prize), but marry conclude your submit below.

The entries are in no sold order. With interjection to Twitter users @Archie_V and @malkinbister. Full credits for the images are in the slideshow above.

Oscars: a tip story Jeff Bridges: songs in the key of Oscar How James Cameron took on the universe Oscars preview: Who is sloping to win what?

1. How Green Was My Valley is, by all accounts, a poetic film; a nauseating see at family hold up in a south Wales mining locale at the spin of the 20th century, formed on a Richard Llewellyn novel of the same name. It was important for populating the Rhondda hollow with such important Welshmen and women as Roddy McDowall and Maureen OHara, and has been recognized by the US Library of Congress as "culturally significant". A poetic film. But not, we can probably all agree, the biggest movie ever made. Which is given it is startling that it kick Orson Welles Citizen Kane (above) mostly pronounced to be only that to the Best Picture endowment in 1941.

2. A identical story ideally good movie beats all-time good to the Oscar took place in 1980, when Robert Redfords directorial entrance Ordinary People, a see at a family entrance to conditions with one sons genocide and the others mental illness, took Best Picture forward of Martin Scorseses Raging Bull (above). To supplement insult to damage for Scorsese, Redford additionally took the Best Director prize, whilst Timothy Hutton kick Joe Pesci to Supporting Actor. The awards came among claims that Scorsese was being punished for his progressing movie Taxi Driver, that assumingly had shabby John Hinckley Jr in his gangland slaying try on President Ronald Reagan. Robert De Niro won Best Actor.

3. Kramer vs Kramer is an additional unequivocally good film. A classic, you competence legitimately say. But was it unequivocally the majority appropriate movie at the 1979 Academy Awards? We ask given additionally nominated that year was a little-known movie called Apocalypse Now (above). Francis Ford Coppolas sweeping, hallucinatory Vietnam War epic was nominated for eight awards, together with Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor and Best Director, but won only dual the satisfaction prizes of Cinematography and Sound. Admittedly the cinematography and the receptive to advice (Ride of the Valkyries, anyone?) were astonishing, but one cant assistance but feel it deserved more.

4. Rocky, created by and starring Sylvester Stallone(above), is essentially an underrated film. It isnt helped by the unconstrained sequels (we dont think about either the Rocky IV or Rocky V that has the drudge butler, and the bit at the finish of IV where Rockys disjointed post-fight wayward seems to move about the finish of the Cold War is utterly ludicrous), but the touching, unobtrusive fare, and Stallone does well in the purpose he built for himself. Still, the a bit of a widen that it kick Scorseses Taxi Driver to the 1976 Oscar for Best Picture.

5. Is A Clockwork Orange (above) a improved movie than The French Connection? Maybe theyre both greats. Was William Friedkins citation improved than Stanley Kubrick? Possibly, nonetheless Kubricks movie was a relentless fusillade on the senses, formulating a bizarre nonetheless plausible world. Was it a improved blending screenplay? Who knows? Certainly it was true to Anthony Burgesss book both in calm and style. Was it improved edited? Again, we wouldnt similar to to comment. What we can pretty say, though, is that whatever your thoughts on these particular questions, it is a outrageous misapplication that A Clockwork Orange, Kubricks mad, violent, pleasing masterpiece, was nominated for 4 Oscars in 1971 and won precisely nothing. The French Connection kick it to all four.

6. Another good movie by a good director, Psycho, was additionally rigourously denied, this time at the 1960 ceremony. Alfred Hitchcock famously never won an Academy Award for Best Director, notwithstanding being majority peoples collect for the majority appropriate executive ever. 1960 was the last of the five times he was nominated, losing out to Billy Wilder and The Apartment. Astonishingly, Psycho itself was not even nominated for Best Picture; it picked up 4 nominations in total, and was knocked about in all four.

7. Returning to Kubrick, his black anti-war humerous entertainment Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb additionally lost out, in 1964. Some would contend that Jack L Warners My Fair Lady, starring Audrey Hepburn, was a estimable winner, but those people would as if be the same ones who thought The Sound of Musics win the following year over Dr Zhivago was acceptable. Essentially, musicals set the authors teeth on edge, and this is his list.

8. Dances with Wolves isnt a bad film. Its dual utterly good films, stitched together similar to Frankensteins beast in to a vastly overlong duty that seems to go on for decades. Goodfellas isnt a good movie the a great, good film, beautifully scripted, filmed and acted. Naturally, Kevin Costners everlasting story won the 1990 Best Picture prize, and Costner himself kick Scorsese out of nonetheless an additional Best Director. At this stage, Scorsese contingency have wondered what he had to do to win; as it incited out, it was "keep operative for an additional sixteen years and have a quite-good reconstitute of Infernal Affairs".

9. For over-emotional sentimentality, for controversial description of guidance disability, and for intensity conservative values, you cant kick Forrest Gump. Unfortunately, they dont give out Oscars for any of those things ("The Academy Award for bold romantic strategy goes to…"), so in 1994 the Academy had a rummage around and found a gangling Best Picture they could pin on the lapel. Unfortunately, that year additionally saw The Shawshank Redemption and, of course, Quentin Tarantinos magnum musical composition Pulp Fiction. Robert Zemeckis additionally took home the Best Director prize, violence Tarantino again.

10. Shakespeare in Love. Entertaining, well-made confection, or cinematic great? We think the former; the Academy thinks the latter, to the border that Steven Spielbergs despotic Saving Private Ryan was ignored in the favour. We think that 1998s Oscars were voted for by 15-year-old boys whose forthrightness was busted by Gwyneth Paltrows topless scene.

And finally: 2010s majority viewable intensity misapplication will District 9 be knocked about by Avatar? We feel that given Dances with Wolves already got one (see above), the probably not required to give Dances with Wolves in Space 3D (or may be Pocahontas in Space 3D) a apart one twenty years later. But we shall see.