Richard put up a post the other day about the worst films to take the Oscar, and I totally disagreed with the findings that Bravehart topped that list. I LOVED Bravehart. But I came across this little survey by the BBC on the best film to NOT win the Oscar for film of the year. The result? The Shawshank Redemption by a landslide.
I couldn’t agree more. Shawshank ranks at #4 on my all time greatest films ever made list. I always thought it was a crime that Forest Gump won the Oscar over it. I also thought it was a crime that Tom Hanks (who totally rules) won Best Actor over Tim Robbins that year. Oh well.
The good folks over at Guardian Unlimited offer us this:
The Shawshank Redemption has been voted the best film never to win a best picture Oscar. Results of a BBC radio Five Live poll announced this morning gave the prison drama 52% of the online vote, and an even clearer majority of votes cast by text message.
The film, by Frank Darabont, tells the tale of a man, played by Tim Robbins, who is wrongly imprisoned. But, after a life-affirming stretch inside, he breaks out, creating a hopeful example for the other convicts.
It easily beat what might have been thought stiff competition from Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’s masterpiece of hubris and defeat, and A Matter of Life and Death, Powell and Pressburger’s whimsical existential allegory. The two films split the remainder of the poll more or less equally.
Damn this movie is AMAZING. Now that I think about it… I think I’m gonna go throw it in the DVD player this afternoon. Now that I think about it…. I have never understood how A Beautiful Mind won best picture over Fellowship of the Ring.
