Oscars rehash ’04, Year of Movies from Good Books

When adapting a much-loved book into movie, it's best to follow the Peter Jackson's approach: make the movie so long that by the time it's over, most people will have forgotten any liberties you took with the source material.

It is not for me to say what Charles Frazier intended when he wrote the novel Cold Mountain. I have only my reaction to the book. It is a love story, sort of, but not a love story as Hollywood would imagine it. There is a meet cute of sorts, but the lovers in question -- Inman and Ada -- are both awkward people who meet and then are separated (or torn asunder in the Hollywood version) by the pesky Civil War. My take on the novel was that the war did not so much tear the lovers apart as make their love seem grander than it actually was. It was more the idea than the fact of each other that mattered most.

In the Hollywood version of this story, Inman and Ada are destined lovers torn asunder, and the war -- rather than amplifying their perception of love gets in the way. So much of Anthony Minghella's movie version is right -- the slog and chaos of a war that too often is portrayed as orderly and destined, full of battles, not doubt -- but getting the entire point of the story wrong negated whatever good he managed. In the end, I was left trying to puzzle over the likelihood that any man, having escaped this ware and been chased by all manner of pursuer on his odyssey home would make one of his first acts upon seeing his previously torn-asunder lover is to shave his beard. With an open blade. Dry. In the cold.

Not a chance. If it really was a destined love, she wouldn't find a little scruff.

That Cold Mountain did not even get nominated for Best Picture remains proof that while Hollywood's Oscar taste is often so bad (see again: Crash), it is not blind.

What should have won: There were better films and some overlooked films, but all five Best Picture candidates were more or less worthy of a nomination. No one was just happy to be nominated, a rare occurrence during the hay days of Miramax's absurd Oscar campaigns.

Lost in Translation belongs in the class of movies that awkwardly get marketed as romantic comedies rather than romantic dramas and live to tell about, proving -- as (500) Days of Summer did again this past year -- that someone, somewhere can still make movies about romance and find no need for Matthew McConaughey or Kate Hudson. Translation is also the only movie up for Best Picture that came from an original screenplay.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World had a terrible name but it was, even with its nomination, an underrated movie and again defied whatever expectations anyone might have had for Russell Crowe's taste or career choices.

Seabiscuit felt at times like a big-screen version of something Ken Burns would have made for PBS and was very close to just being happy to be nominated. If one movie should have been bumped in place of something bolder -- like 21 Grams, City of God or In America -- this would be it. But Jeff Bridges was good enough that it was possible to ignore the fact that Tobey Maguire looked nothing like a jockey. And if more historical dramas felt a little closer to Ken Burns than, say, Michael Bay, Hollywood would be a much better place.

Clint Eastwood would get a makeup award the next year when Million Dollar Baby won. In any other year, Mystic River would have been pretty much a no-brainer, but not in the final hurrah of the hobbits.

The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King won this award more than a year earlier when the release of the second movie in the series proved that Peter Jackson had done something remarkable in bringing Tolkein's epic to the screen. The third movie is my favorite of the three, and I may be one of the few people who saw the movie and liked the epilogue of pseudo-endings and was not bothered that the original ending of the third book -- the battle at the Shire -- was changed.

Better movies that got screwed: Despite being sullied by later sequels that were less entertaining and less surprising, Pirates of the Caribbean was pure fun, a popcorn movie with real butter, and featured one of the greatest character introductions in history. Finding Nemo was stunning visually, but felt a little more Disney than Pixar by the time it was done. City of God was good enough to earn a Best Director nomination, but was screwed out of the Best Picture race. In America, 21 Grams, The Barbarian Invasions and American Splendor all would have been worthy Best Picture nominees. If Kill Bill Vol. 1 had been released as one movie with Kill Bill Vol. 2, it would have been a very long movie but might have received the credit it deserved. Whale Rider, A Mighty Wind, The Good Thief and Love Actually all had their moments.

Worst award: Renee Zellweger is a fine actress, and that this is a terrible award has more to do with the writing of her part than her performance. Her character in the book was a binding force that held together a sometimes confusing narrative and kept it from slipping into melodrama. Her character in the movie was comic relief and almost completely without nuance. She won for Acting rather than acting. Rather than honor Zellweger for Bridget Jones' Diary and Chicago with an award for Cold Mountain, how nice would it have been to see Patricia Clarkson get some credit for Pieces of April? Also, Charlize Theron was fine and all in Monster, but Naomi Watts and Samantha Morton were better and didn't have to put on a fat suit to be convincing.