Oscar Best Movie Poll - Who *Should* Win

[Martinus]

Not having seen the movie, I can't comment, but I agree that "best director" seems too often to go to the "best picture" even if it is not fully justified. I can see that one movie could win best picture but another best director - for example, a movie like Grand Budapest Hotel could be a good contender for best director, even if there are better movies out there.

[celedhring]

A director "directs" everything in the film. In theory - although that's highly dependent on your personal power - you decide everything that goes in the film, using the "proposals" of all the other professionals. You correct the actors' performances, you ask the screenwriter to change things in the script and approve them, you sit besides the editor and give him instructions, you talk with the DoP to have this or this kind of photography for a given scene, etc... You don't supplant them or their work, but you certainly direct them. So in a way, it's hard to have the best picture without the best director.

However, I'm a believer that "best director" awards should focus only on the only exclusive competence a director has: deciding shots and mise en scène, and then include the director among the recipients of "best picture" awards (nowadays only the producers are awarded).

[Martinus]

So there are people actually whining that because Selma did not win the best picture, it proves Oscars are a racist affair? 

[Liep]

So there are people actually whining that because Selma did not win the best picture, it proves Oscars are a racist affair? 

I haven't seen it, but it was heavily criticised here as trivial and a missed opportunity for a great biopic. But discussions about racism is what America does.

[The Larch]

Selma's promotion strategy was also considered to be all kinds of wrong. It opened too late, didn't compete for the other awards, and so on.

[CountDeMoney]

So there are people actually whining that because Selma did not win the best picture, it proves Oscars are a racist affair? 

I don't think anybody is whining more about that movie than any of the others; I think the bigger issue was that there was a real lack of diversity in this years' films.

Other than some gay shit, it was a relatively boring year.

[celedhring]

So there are people actually whining that because Selma did not win the best picture, it proves Oscars are a racist affair? 

I don't think anybody is whining more about that movie than any of the others; I think the bigger issue was that there was a real lack of diversity in this years' films.

Other than some gay shit, it was a relatively boring year.

I personally don't think the issue is with the awards. When there's quality films with black people in them or doing them, they get recognized. The problem is that not many get made due to lack of diversity in the industry as a whole.

[The Larch]

If you want to read the outraged, oh so outraged, opinion of an unhinged Guardian columnist on this year's Oscars regarding race, sexuality, politics and more, here you have it!

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/23/academy-strange-relationship-with-race-on-display-oscars-2015

This year's Oscars unmasked Hollywood's most dubious views

Despite stirring support for the spirit of Selma, and big prizes for Hispanic film-makers, it was the unfortunate throwaway remarks which will linger longest after the 87th Academy Awards

"Who gave this sonofabitch his green card?" Sean Penn demanded before presenting Mexican film-maker Alejandro González Iñárritu the best picture Oscar for Birdman, giving a whole new political dimension to the racism of the 87th Annual Academy Awards.

Penn, who starred in Iñárritu's 21 Grams all the way back in 2003, probably thought it was a funny joke with an old friend. But racism from friends assumed to be benign can be the worst kind, especially at an awards show: just ask black author Jackie Woodson, whose "friend" used presenting her with a National Book Award to make a watermelon joke.

The incident highlighted Oscar's uneasy relationship with race, which was on full display throughout last night's ceremony. Along with Tinseltown's fraught relationship with American militarism, Penn bookended a politically awkward and often uncomfortable evening, which started with host Neil Patrick Harris making a joke about Hollywood celebrating its "best and whitest".

Four hours later, Penn reminded the world that white supremacy is never far away in America, and it's at its most insidious and powerful when wielded by self-proclaimed Hollywood liberals – like Penn.

Right before Birdman won, it seemed as if some of the racial tension I had anticipated going into the evening would be muted. Selma, the biopic of Martin Luther King, had been snubbed for its director Ava DuVernay and star David Oyelowo. But, it had won for Glory, its politically charged theme song (which beat out the vapid Everything Is Awesome) and gave John Legend the chance to say: "We live in the most incarcerated country in the world." Legend then excoriated America for allowing incarceration to be more prevalent for black men now than slavery was in 1850. As Deray McKesson, one of the main organizers in Ferguson, tweeted: "@johnlegend tonight gave us a one-person protest. And I'm all for it."

The Academy honored the black, pacifist film for its aspect which most directly linked the civil rights movement of 1965 to Black Lives Matter movement of 2015. Meanwhile, American Sniper, the incredibly jingoistic bio pic of Navy Seal Chris Kyle (which has appealed to America's most base prejudices as a box-office hit) only one won Oscar. As did Boyhood, a film I had a lot of white supremacist reservations about, even though I loved it.

In fact, as the evening wore in, it became apparent that neither white nor black but Hispanic film-makers behind the camera for Birdman were the breakout stars of the night. Mexican director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki won for Birdman (after winning last year for Gravity), and Iñárritu won for writing, directing and producing Birdman (following up Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón winning for Gravity).

It was a big moment when Birdman won best picture – and Sean Penn took a big dump on it when he said: "Who gave this sonofabitch his green card?"

Iñárritu was gracious in saving the moment, making light of two Mexicans winning back to back as meaning the Academy needed to look at its immigration policy. He then championed political reforms for Mexicans in Mexico and immigration reform for Mexican Americans in the United States.

Iñárritu later called the joke "hilarious". But as a Hollywood director, he isn't likely to feel the fallout of increased racism Americans will wage against more vulnerable Hispanics, armed with justification from the likes of a good liberal like Penn. And it was only the final slight of presenters treating artists of color poorly. Neil Patrick Harris made an odd joke about Oprah being as big as American Sniper's profits (though he tried to say he was talking about the size of her wealth) at the top of the night, before engaging Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer in a cringeworthy and unfunny bit about why she needed to keep watch over his Oscar predictions; he even went so far as to tell her she couldn't eat or go to the bathroom to watch his stuff. In those predictions, he made a joke about mispronouncing Chiwetel Ejiofor's name – when he mispronounced it again! And he also weirdly referred to David Oyelowo as a nominee when he wasn't, before involving him in an unfunny bit.

And, despite having a black woman, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, as its president, and no shortage of black performers, the Academy has a long history of having an overwhelmingly white membership, having few minorities in positions of power, and for only rewarding black actors for playing subservient roles.

The Academy's relationship with gay rights had a couple of interesting moments. Though the host, Harris, is openly gay, he is as tall, blond and heterosexually oriented as any Hollywood leading man ever has been – whether he's singing opposite Cinderella, starring in How I Met Your Mother, or parodying himself with Harold and Kumar. The evening's interesting gay moment was when screenwriter Graham Moore, who wrote the biopic The Imitation Game about gay mathematician Alan Turing, won and said: "When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself ... And now I'm standing here ... for that kid out there who thinks she's weird or she's different or she doesn't fit in anywhere. Yes you do."

The role of militarism in the US, and how both Hollywood and the American news media facilitate through both mindless and deliberate propaganda, was tensely played out. On the red carpet, I was kind of appalled at how Taya Kyle, widow of Chris Kyle (the subject of American Sniper) was attending the Oscars, as if Hollywood was wrapping itself in war as shamelessly as politicians do.

But Hollywood's ambivalence about the military was a bit more nuanced. Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 won the documentary short award, and Harris chose to follow up the film-maker's touching speech about her veteran son committing suicide by making a joke about her dress. (Patricia Arquette's call for women's civil rights was enough to bring Meryl Streep to her feet, but I guess Reese Witherspoon's call to #AskHerMore and not reduce women to their clothes wasn't enough to keep Harris from reducing a mom talking about her dead son to her dress.) Then, Citizenfour won best documentary feature. As Guardian alumnus Glenn Greenwald took the stage, it was hard not to think the Academy wasn't embracing a critique of US militarism at least as probing as when it award Moore his Oscar.

The politically conscious high point of the night to me was when Selma's song Glory won. Everything is Awesome is still the year's most memorable movie song. But despite its original mission to critique if everything is awesome, it's became as bland a ballad as last year's most memorable nominated song (Happy) to maintain the status quo. Hollywood likes to think it is cutting-edge on social issues, but it's usually very conservative. So it was good to see Glory's musicians provide at least reference to what the hell has been happening in America between Happy and Everything is Awesome.

And Penn's penultimate moment of the broadcast was its lowest point, when he brought to the fore not just the simmering, weird way race was near at hand with several African Americans who weren't nominated. He showed that white supremacy in Hollywood needs to assert itself even in the face of minority exceptionalists who are nominated and actually win – that it needs to remind a brown film-maker receiving the Academy's highest honor that he is still a sonofabitch with a green card, ostensibly stealing work from good white folk.

In a way, Penn did us a favor: he exposed Hollywood's faux liberalism for what it truly is. Hollywood has an uneasy relationship with racism, feminism and militarism because it will exploit all of them to keep making money. It is not concerned with diversity or economic justice, except to the extent it can feign interest in any of them to perpetuate its own power.

• This article was amended on 23 February 2015. An earlier version said that Chris Cooper was the Navy Seal in American Sniper. It was further corrected on 24 February 2015 to remove an incorrect statement that Michael Moore won an Oscar in 2005 for his anti-Iraq war documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.

Steven W Thrasher is a weekly columnist for Guardian US. He was named Journalist of the Year 2012 by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, the Advocate and more.

[Admiral Yi]

 

[celedhring]

As did Boyhood, a film I had a lot of white supremacist reservations about, even though I loved it.

Wat.

[Martinus]

The Academy's relationship with gay rights had a couple of interesting moments. Though the host, Harris, is openly gay, he is as tall, blond and heterosexually oriented as any Hollywood leading man ever has been – whether he's singing opposite Cinderella, starring in How I Met Your Mother, or parodying himself with Harold and Kumar. The evening's interesting gay moment was when screenwriter Graham Moore, who wrote the biopic The Imitation Game about gay mathematician Alan Turing, won and said: "When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself ... And now I'm standing here ... for that kid out there who thinks she's weird or she's different or she doesn't fit in anywhere. Yes you do."

How is that a gay moment? The screen writer isn't even openly gay - that's another problem with the "stop bullying" campaign - the failure to acknowledge that kids may be bullied or want to commit suicide for reasons other than being gay. 

[garbon]

The Academy's relationship with gay rights had a couple of interesting moments. Though the host, Harris, is openly gay, he is as tall, blond and heterosexually oriented as any Hollywood leading man ever has been – whether he's singing opposite Cinderella, starring in How I Met Your Mother, or parodying himself with Harold and Kumar. The evening's interesting gay moment was when screenwriter Graham Moore, who wrote the biopic The Imitation Game about gay mathematician Alan Turing, won and said: "When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself ... And now I'm standing here ... for that kid out there who thinks she's weird or she's different or she doesn't fit in anywhere. Yes you do."

How is that a gay moment? The screen writer isn't even openly gay - that's another problem with the "stop bullying" campaign - the failure to acknowledge that kids may be bullied or want to commit suicide for reasons other than being gay. 

Presumably because everyone assumed he was gay.

Anyway, I think the author was trying to do something about NPH being a gay who passes and this "gay" guy at least touching on an issue that isn't so nice and clean as NPH representation of homosexuality. Of course, author comes across as dreadful for essentially judging how gay men act and if they are acting "gay" enough.  Apparently best way to act sufficiently gay is to not be gay!

[garbon]

As did Boyhood, a film I had a lot of white supremacist reservations about, even though I loved it.

Wat.

Look it up, there are a bunch of pages on it featuring on google.

[Martinus]

The Academy's relationship with gay rights had a couple of interesting moments. Though the host, Harris, is openly gay, he is as tall, blond and heterosexually oriented as any Hollywood leading man ever has been – whether he's singing opposite Cinderella, starring in How I Met Your Mother, or parodying himself with Harold and Kumar. The evening's interesting gay moment was when screenwriter Graham Moore, who wrote the biopic The Imitation Game about gay mathematician Alan Turing, won and said: "When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself ... And now I'm standing here ... for that kid out there who thinks she's weird or she's different or she doesn't fit in anywhere. Yes you do."

How is that a gay moment? The screen writer isn't even openly gay - that's another problem with the "stop bullying" campaign - the failure to acknowledge that kids may be bullied or want to commit suicide for reasons other than being gay. 

Presumably because everyone assumed he was gay.

Anyway, I think the author was trying to do something about NPH being a gay who passes and this "gay" guy at least touching on an issue that isn't so nice and clean as NPH representation of homosexuality. Of course, author comes across as dreadful for essentially judging how gay men act and if they are acting "gay" enough.  Apparently best way to act sufficiently gay is to not be gay!

The article is awfully misinformed, patronising and filled with faux misplaced outrage.

Or to put it differently, it is typical GUARNIAD.

Also, if NPH is "not gay enough" I don't know what's gay anymore.

[Martinus]

As did Boyhood, a film I had a lot of white supremacist reservations about, even though I loved it.

Wat.

Look it up, there are a bunch of pages on it featuring on google.

I bet there are a bunch of pages featuring on google explaining how Obama is an alien lizard. That does not mean it is a valid response to celedhring's question - the statement is clearly bullshit.