20 of the worst Oscar winners in history

Tom Huddleston, you are amazing. I wonder, do you stay up nights trying to come up with clever put-downs and then quickly write them down when you get a "Eureka?" If not, you just have a natural knack for nasty insults, which would only be a compliment to drunken white trash. To say that Anthony Hopkins didn't deserve the Oscar for Silence of the Lambs is like saying The Beatles didn't deserve the Grammy for Revolver. While the Academy almost never represents the year's best movies and nearly always nominates the same handful of safe, big budget dramas (and one indie) for everything, you actually managed to denigrate some of their best choices. Congratulations.

I agree with most of your choices, although the list could've gone on another eighty slides. The Academy gets it wrong more often than not, and the Oscars have become a giant popularity contest. If the award for best picture actually went to the best film of the year, there would be many more foreign films nominated. How is it that the Blind Side is nominated for best picture but not Pan's Labyrinth? (Different years, I know).

I think you missed Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls. The award is for acting, right? Nobody who votes at the Academy noticed that she gave a one note, amateur performance? In the original stage musical Effie White is the lead character who goes from wide eyed young girl, to disillusioned young woman until finally a proud woman who triumphs. Jennifer Hudson gave us bitter, angry girl from beginning to end.

The Titanic was a self-serving and tedious movie, allowing its two characters, representatives of both lower and richer classes to come together -- big deal. No mention was ever that more rich white guys survived than poor women and their children. And the centurian proclaims that her romance liberated her from...well, everything. Forest Gumb is a sordid story about how one not-too-bright character's unintentional behavior continued to change history of its time. It goes down with all the tripe that leaves audiences feeling better about themselves. The Shashank Redemption might as well won best picture so certain hope would triumph against adversity.

I don't really understand why you've decided to put The Sound of Music in as a 'worst Oscar winner'. It's clearly a succesful film, and by your own description the most promising out of the other nominees? In fact, this entire list bar a couple is ridiculously innacurate.

You are very right and VERY wrong in this list. The right: Crash is terrible. The wrong: The Secret in their Eyes is beautiful. You also seem to have a big misunderstanding of context. Even dated performances deserved awards recognition at their given time, because they tapped into something manifest in the moment. Anthony Hopkins, for example, represented something aesthetically and culturally terrifying at a time when Bundy, Gein, and Heidnik were haunting our headlines.

What about American Beauty winning over Cider House Rules in 2000? Also, hope Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is not overlooked this year, should at least be nominidated.

Just opinions,--What I have noticed over the years is that the winners tend to be released late in the season and assume all of us rush madly to the box office as soon as a show is released. When I dine out I do not generally spend as much as a movie ticket costs, and although there is magic in the cinema, it is not the same as when there was a real curtain and the movie was watched in a theatre with gargoyles and balconies. I also realize there are social and political reasons for Oscar choices; only time determines a true classic.

This is a really embarrassing list: Gone With the Wind is apparently not very good, A Beautiful Mind is a TV movie, Anthony Hopkins most memorable performance is stupid and three of Disney's most celebrated songs come under fire. Idiot.

"I can't take anyone who thinks that Mulholland Drive is a better film than A Beautiful Mind seriously." - if you switched the movies in your sentence it would make more sense