I'm sure we've got a thread on it somewhere, but I just didn't want to search and decided to create a new big one for some discussion as the Oscar season slows down for a couple of weeks till January.

What I'm talking about here is NOT what you personally consider big snubs (like: "OMG, they didn't nominate Kill Bill!!"), but much rather genuine surprises (good or bad), considering the precursors and so on and so on.

Basically, some really big surprises, whether concerning nominations or wins - doesn't matter.

Moreover, I said "recent history", meaning a vague time frame of about 10-20 years, since I doubt many of us here know a lot abput what has been going on in each year before that and how the precursors were and all, especially considering that things like SAG awards haven't been around for a long time.

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That said, here are my thoughts:


Biggest Nominations Surprises (no order):


- Almost Famous being snubbed for a Best Picture nom despite getting a DGA nom, a PGA nom, three SAG noms (including SAG Ensemble), winning several critics groups and winning Best Picture (Comedy/Musical) at the Globes - still stands as one of the biggest Academy snubs in many years as far as nominations go. Just can't imagine what the hell they were thinking...


- Which leads me to another huge surprise - Chocolat for Best Picture. It didn't even make an appearance on BFCA's Top 10 List, no noms at the DGA or PGA and I don't think it appeared on any critics awards lists. I assume that the SAG Ensemble nom was a bit foreshadowing..but still. It still remains probably the worst-reviewed BP nominee in a long time (62% at RT!)...and it didn't even have an "important message" to tell!


- Being John Malkovich missing a Best Picture nomination - okay, given the weirdness of the movie, it doesn't seem too surprising in retrospect, but let's see:

- It got on BFCA's Top 10 list
- Got a BP nom at the Globes (Comedy/Musical)
- Got a DGA nom
- Got a PGA nom
- Several critics awards lists
- Got three SAG noms (including one for Ensemble)

Cameron Diaz missing a Best Supporting Actress nom for this, despite a GG nom and a SAG nom in favor of Toni Collette in The Sixth Sense was quite surprising as well


- Paul Giamatti (Sideways) losing the Best Actor nom to Clint Eastwood - the hell?! Eastwood didn't appear anywhere, I mean really anywhere before the announcement of the Academy Awards nominees, whereas Giamattigot a GG nom, won the NFCCA, won in Toronto, Chicago and several other smaller critics circles and got a SAG nom....that was really probably the biggest WTF acting snub that I personally witnessed.


- Alan Alda (The Aviator) - another one with no precursors whatsoever getting a nom because of the Academy's general love for The Aviator


- Cold Mountain getting no Best Picture nom - okay, the DGA snub and the lack of a SAG Ensemble were foreshadowing, but hell, it got 8 (!!!) Golden Globes noms (must be a record for a movie not nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars), a PGA nom and was generally pretty much the Oscar bait-y movie of the season.


- City of God getting four nominations, including Best Director/Screenplay - barely any precursors, except for several Best Foreign Picture wins and it was a January release!!


- Obviously Dreamgirls getting snubbed after a big box-office success, a DGA, a PGA and a SAG Ensemble noms as well as a GG Picture win must be up here, it being snubbed is actually more surprising than Letters from Iwo Jima being nominated the same year.


- Amistad not getting a Best Picture nom. The movie certainly had the "importance"-factor and I honestly think that about 5-7 years later, it would have been nominated. It got a GG Drama nom, a DGA nom and a PGA nom...and got kicked out of the Oscars Top 5 by The Fulkl Monty which won SAG Ensemble, showing how important that one is.


- Leaving Las Vegas not getting a BP nom - it loszt it out to Il Postino or Four Weddings and a Funeral. Okay, this is only a half-surprise because it missed out on a PGA nom, but it won NFCCA Best Picture as well as LAFCA Best Picture (actually sweeping in Los Angeles) and it got the GG Drama as well as the DGA nom!


- Djimon Hounsou (In America) and Samantha Morton (In America) had their precursors only in smaller critics circles and missed the SAG noms and the GG noms...and still got in, especially surprising since Morton got in over the SAG and GG-nominated Evan Rachel Wood (Thirteen)


- Scarlett Johansson missing an Actress nom for Lost in Translation - she got mentioned in almost every critics circle and got a Globes nom...only missed out on SAG which apparently sealed the deal.


- Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith missing out on a Best Visual Effects nomination - d'uh!


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I'm sure there are myn more and this is your turn to come up with some others or agree with the ones above or argue them or whatever...

I'll do the Winners-Surprises at a later point.

The infamous example is Marisa Tomei winning for My Cousin Vinny, obviously.

I still frequently forget that Dreamgirls wasn't a Best Picture nominee, which I guess kinda shows just how shocking it was.

Also, the 2000 race was the first race I woke up on nomination morning for, so the shock when the announcer said "Chocolat" instead of "Almost Famous" is a pretty strong one.

I also remember not getting a reception the morning of the 2003 Oscar nominations, so I had to wait for OscarWatch to upload the nominations. The Cold Mountain snub was kinda shocking, but more in a "So they DID snub it!" kind of way. Eons more shocking were the Keisha Castle-Hughes mention in LEAD Actress, and that Fernando dude (Who's name was almost certainly misspelled) in Director. I had no idea what movie it was for, and then I saw the film in Adapted Screenplay! Insanity, I say.

Alas, outside of Walk the Line getting snubbed for Munich and Dreamgirls for Iwo Jima, these last two years have been pretty lacking in genuine shockers nomination morning.

However, on the winner's end, the most shocking for me would probably have to be The Pianist winning Actor over Nicholson and Day-Lewis, then SCREENPLAY over. . .everything, and finally Director over Scorsese and Marshall (I had actually decided to predict it there just to be unique, but I doubted it actually happening!). It was almost a shocker/disappointment when Chicago still won Picture! Also shocking for me in the 2000 race was when Marcia Gay Harden won S. Actress over Kate Hudson (It's amazing to consider that she was once an Oscar frontrunner now...). Also, of course, Crash.

Crash was just shocking. I said WTF out loud when it won instead of Brokeback Mountain.

saving private ryan losing best picture.

Definitley Jack saying Crash and then the board crashing from too many "LOL" and "WHAT THE FUCK" comments.

We were saved by chat last year, but without it this year it's entirely possible. Do we have a chat that we can use?

In 2000.

Marcia Gay Harden winning for Pollock, everyone at my party was like "What!"

Last year's Original Song was sort of a surprise as it was crap, but Dreamgirl's 3 songs split the votes. Oh, and the song from the year before "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp," if that even qualifies as a song, was atrocious.

gene hackman winning best actor at GG but failing to even get a nom for Royal Tennenbaums

Many of the wins shockers that you mentioned will appear on my Shocking Wins list later today.

As far as the shocking nominations go...I didn't include Keisha Castle Hughes for one reason - her SAG nom and pretty much every single critics list mentioning her as THE newcomer of the year. While I was still predicting Kidman instead of her, it didn't come as much a surprise to me back then. CM snubbed for BP/BD seemed much bigger a shocker.

That was not surprising, though. I realized they would want to reward Hustle & Flow somehow and obviously Terrence Howard wasn't going to win.

Eh, that happens very often in the Musical/Comedy category.

George Clooney won for O Brother, where art thou?

Jim Carrey won for Man on the Moon and The Truamn Show and didn't get an Oscar nom.

Renee Zellweger won for Nurse Betty and got no Oscar nom.

And so on...

Biggest Win-Surprises (no order):


- One of the biggest one, without a doubt is of course Crash winning Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain. Looking back at it, the SAG Ensemble win was foretelling, but hell, it still had no precedence. The last movie to win Best Picture without a Golden Globe Picture nom was The Sting, I think and that made $150+ million in theatres whereas Crash wasn't even the biggest nominee in its year and Brokeback Mountain sweeped the awards before it.


- Another already mentioned one would be The Pianist winning Best Actor/Director/Adapted Screenplay - it was not a frontrunner by far in any of these, so the whole thing was "WTF?!". In Best Actor, we all thought that it'd be a tight two-way race between Day-Lewis and Nicholson, Director was obviously going to Scorsese or Marshall and Adapted Screenplay to the much lauded Adaptation or to The Hours. Hell, The Pianist didn't get a WGA nom even!


- Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny) winning with pretty much not a single precursor was baffling, especially since Judy Davis (Husbands and Wives) and Joan Plowright (Enchanted April) both seemed to have a great chance winning several big precursors.


- Marcia Gay Harden winning for Pollock without even a SAG nom or a GG nom was equally msyterious. I mean the only precursor she had was winning Best Supporting Actress at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards...and that's it!


- Shakespeare in Love winning Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan was surprising because Ryan won the PGA and the DGA before, but to a less degree because SiL also won the Golden Globe for BP (Comedy/Musical) and led the nominations count that night.


- However Braveheart winning BP certainly was somewhat of a surprise. I bet what helped immensly was the lack of a Best Director nom for Apollo 13 and Sense and Sensibility. Braveheart remains the only BP winner not to be nominated by the SAG for Best Ensemble and it wasn't nominated for a PGA awards either.


- Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful) winning Best Actor was quite a shocker as well

God, I hate that movie. Benigni is intolerable without a good director controlling him.

I think Life is Beautiful is a very good flick (much better than, say, Shakespeare in Love), though that Oscar should have gone to Edward Norton for American History X.

It was the biggest injustice in the Academy's history hands down. I was pissed off for weeks.

Around the world in 80 days is the biggest injustice oscar injustice ever.

I think equally if not more shocking/surprising/upsetting than the Crash win was the fact that Brokeback Mountain lost. Please find me another film in history that collected as many Best Picture prizes from everywhere leading up to Oscar. I'm almost positive it has at least.

The Crash upset will undoubtedly go down as one of the all time "WTF" moments in Oscar history.

Well, if NCFOM loses this year, I'm sure it'll beat BBM in that department.

however, all of the films competing against NCFOM are nearly as heavily praised as it was. What makes the Crash thing so crazy was that Crash had gotten basically no critical support outside Ebert, and even at critics awards/guilds it wasn't scoring bigtime. If TWBB or Juno win, at least they'll be films that critics adored, performed extremely well at early awards and such, and beat it since NCFOM had been a frontrunner for so long [since early November, basically].

Saving Private Ryan.

Yeah, that's pretty kuch true.

SPR won:

BFCA (Best Picture/Director)
DGA award
PGA award
Golden Globe (Best Picture/Director)

Critics awards won for Best Picture:

Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards
Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards
London Critics Circle Film Awards
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
New York Film Critics Circle Awards
Online Film Critics Society Awards
Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards
Toronto Film Critics Association Awards


I'd definitely say it rivals Brokeback Mountain in terms of precursors.

The one i'm most upset about in recent times would definately have to be Crash over Brokeback Mountain....such idiocy and shows just how far we still got to go...

Kinda makes me think what would happen if LOTR won 10 Oscars but didn't bag the final one for Best Picture.

Brokeback lost to a better movie, though

(now I will be assassinated by the entire KJ)