It would depend, too, on how you stretch the definitions. You might include "The Right Stuff" and "Apollo 13" (about space, even if about real events), the three "Lord of the Rings" movies (allied field of fantasy), or even "Dr. Strangelove" (nuclear war, a familiar SF theme).
(My list only goes up to 2007---was "WALL-E" nominated for Best Picture?)
Of course they expanded best picture this year to 10 nominees so they could add more diversity.
Has any scifi movie won? I know fantasy won with RoTK...
2001? dang not even a nom....
Also I know buddies who tend to places bets online over stuff like this. (Heck they place bets on government elections! crazy...) This'll make their choices harder, hehe, and maybe they'll see a movie or two.
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Do you think the put in 10 this time just for ratings?
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1935)
"Lost Horizon" (1937)
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939)
"Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1941)
"Heaven Can Wait" (1943)
"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946)
"The Bishop's Wife" (1947)
"Miracle on 34th Street" (1947)
"Hamlet" (1948) (won)
"King Solomon's Mines" (1950)
"Around the World in 80 Days" (1956) (won)
"Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964)
"The Sand Pebbles" (1966)
"Doctor Dolittle" (1967)
"A Clockwork Orange" (1971)
"The Exorcist" (1973)
"Jaws" (1975)
"Star Wars" (1977)
"Heaven Can Wait" (1978)
"Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981)
"E. T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982)
"The Right Stuff" (1983)
"Field of Dreams" (1989)
"Ghost" (1990)
"Beauty and the Beast" (1991)
"Forrest Gump" (1994) (won)
"Apollo 13" (1995)
"The Green Mile" (1999)
"The Sixth Sense" (1999)
"The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001)
"The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" (2002)
"The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003) (won)
"Finding Neverland" (2003)
Lost count...did I have the right number? Or did I exclude one? (Started to include "The Postman," but the one nominated for an Oscar was a different one with the same title.)
Mmm...now I've got thirty-three.
I guess we need to distinguish between "realistic" fantasy like Ghost and movies like LOTR. I think Meredith had the right term - a 2nd world fantasy.
What about oscar noms/wins for 2nd world fantasies only? That oughta shorten the list.
and for sci-fi...i dunno i guess Avatar can be considered a 2nd world scifi story. Starwars is one sort of. any other?
But what about regular home-world scifi...E.T is one for sure - but's wheres the cutoff? Do we start including all the James Bond films?
Also I'm not sure if movies likes Forrest Gump or Dr. Strangelove should be included - seems more like alternate reality or something and there are no magic-like fantastical elements nor any major sci-fi element (ok maybe the doodmsday device but still...c'mon!)
Odd ones are like It's A Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street...calling them a fantasy is bound to offend someone...
Apollo 13 seems more historical/biographical than science fiction...
"It's a Wonderful Life" : Alternate history.
"The Right Stuff" and "Apollo 13" : Space travel.
"Dr. Strangelove" : Nuclear war.
I'm amused that "Heaven Can Wait" (1978) is a remake of an earlier move on the list---but of "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1941), not "Heaven Can Wait" (1943).
"The Right Stuff" and "Apollo 13" : Space travel; but then every movie that uses a computer is scifi...there's no science that doesn't exist yet - wouldn't be more historical?
"Dr. Strangelove" : Nuclear war. To me nucleur war doesnt make it scifi - any more than 13 Days or True Lies is scifi...The only thing that may be scifi is the Doomsday Device...I'm not sure is such a thing existed...that would technically make it scifi...right?
"Forrest Gump" falls into fantasy because it puts its protagonist anywhere and everywhere.
As for "The Right Stuff," "Apollo 13," and "Dr. Strangelove," excluding them would be excluding themes of SF long included. Just because the events were real, or could be real, would not make them not SF. (Also, "Apollo 13" resembles the "Engineers Solving Problems" school of SF found in Analog and elsewhere.)
Not every movie that uses a computer is sci-fi, but every movie that is about a computer is, whether true, possible, or otherwise. Historical science fiction is a valid sub-genre.
True Lies is Sci-fi, the gadgetry alone gives it its credentials. Not that spy movies have to be sci-fi, they just usually turn out that way. (I can't comment on 13 days, never heard of it.) From what I've seen of Strangelove, I could see someone making it into an Outer Limits episode without blinking.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2010-02-23-scifirules23_CV_N.htm
They only list three SF movies...
If it exists - then we should ask is tech in the story used as it was/is at the time.
Exampls:
1) radio telecommunication existed a hundred years ago, but a story of that time that has telecommunication tech for the masses vs one which had telecomm as part of cutting edge naval technology would make the former sci-fi and the latter straight up normal fiction.
2) if a story written in the 1940s had a computer the size of large book in every household that's scifi; but if that story has it the size of a large room at a government think-tank with vaccum tubes etc., then that's straight up fiction.
3) The best example is that story of Clarke's that posed the use of geocentric satellite tech; it was written before a satellite was put in orbit - so it's scifi; A story of putting satellites in space after a satellite was already in orbit i say has to be called fiction. Like Clakre said scifi has to go a little beyond the edge of known science toward the realm of the impossible. Just a little taste of things that dont exist but could be possible. That's scifi.
That's why to me, Apollo 13 is straight up historical fiction, but something like The Astronaut Farmer is scifi - becuase we don't documented people who have built a rocket in their barn - not yet!
Dean Koontz writes, in a commentary attached to a new(er) version of Demon Seed, that when the movie came out, some critics gave it a bad review because the computer expert had a computer in his own home. Think about the implications of that.
Arthur C. Clarke mathetmatically worked out, and realized the importance of, the geosynchronous orbit...however, he thought it would be of importance only for communcation purposes. He didn't realize practically every other thing he predicted would be done in Earth orbit would be done up there. (And, as has been coming out lately, the geosynch orbit produces too much of a light-speed delay for some aspects of modern communication, and, it would seem, some lower-orbit satellites are needed.)
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I predict The Hurt Locker as the winner.
Honestly, I didn't think Up in the air was that great. I'm surprised it got even a nom. And didn't like push either - I mean I get it - but didn't think it was worth a nom.
I didn't get to see Avatar until late January - and it's the only movie I thought was good enough to hold up to Hurt Locker. To me it was only between Hurt and Avatar. If hurt didn't win, it had better be avatar that won - no freaking Up in the air or Push taking best pic.
In fact I look at Hurt and Avatar as a sort of complement to each other. You see the military from both sides. The addiction and trauma and derangement that drive soldiers to do crazy things.
All in all 2009 was a good year for movies. Now if Cameron would just make Ender's Game...
I was more worried of the dreadful Up In The Air being picked over Hurt. I thought hollywood would ignore Hurt for it's violence and go for a smarmy fake movie. I understand the appeal of Up in the Air, but c'mon - best pic!?
I'm a child of television, who adapted quickly to videotapes and laserdiscs and now DVDs. (Haven't yet done much video downloading, but will eventually, I guess.) Movies happen for me when I turn on the TV and find one running on a channel, or pop in the disc I've just bought. They don't happen for me in theaters.
Actually, except for Up, none of the contenders for Best Picture appealed to me that much. I might watch some when they flicker across the television screen...but that's about it.
UP though is beautiful, and I stand by thinking it's best picture of 2009. I agree that WALL-E was better it was also more niche.
(Not that there haven't been other revivals I've gone to...a series of Hitchcock movies appeared in the mid-eighties and I saw all of them ("Rear Window" is way better, and way scarier, than anything put out these days.) "Gone With the Wind" came back. Disney's stuff was revived up till the videotape era (and it was the only way you could see any of it 'cause in those days they weren't on TV.) Also I caught the original "Star Wars" trilogy when it last blew through town ("Star Wars" is the only move I've ever seen three times in theaters---twice on the original run, once in the revival.))
I dislike violent movies too, I avoid horror and gore. But I'm very glad i went to see Hurt Locker - and it's one of the few movie that actually deserve the ticket money becuase it was a small film done on a tight budget. and the film makers and backers for the film need to rewarded for taking the initiative to put their money behind this.
So I hope that you do, this once, make an exception for hurtlocker and go see it in theatres.
I found this movie on tape and watch it every once in awhile. It's always been a favorite of mine. But now the part I mentioned above seems very, very tame, and I don't give it a second thought.
How times change how we look at things.
Tarentino's been stuck in one style - sarcastic, violent, reference-crazy dialogues - since 1989. It was okay till kill bill - now it's just getting old. Can he make a different kind of movie for once? I admit, though, his movie's are cinematographically (uh, real word???) beautiful to watch...
I watch a lot of Kung-Fu movies, so glorification of violence is not really the problem. (But I have vowed never to watch a Tarentino film, he, as a person, scares me.) By "not my kind of movie" I meant it's a drama. To me dramas aren't theater kind of movies, they are sit at home playing a videogame kind of movies.
Regarding ratings, Spaceballs and Airplane! were both among those early PG's. This was, I think, before the invention of the 13.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Gremlins
Splash
In that order.
Splash was released just before the new rating took place.
Red Dawn, 1984 was actually the first movie to receive the rating, but it wasn't released until after the other two.
With cable you have access to nearly every movie made and kids I think find a way to see them all. And with the internet - forget it. They are seeing stuff that makes my blood cold. I willing to bet every US child born in 1995 has seen real sex and murder on the internet by 2010 - unless they are Amish.
Can't fault them really. I guess as a kid everyone's ultimately interested in life and death, the beginning they can't remember, and the end they won't get to know - till the end. The only way is to watch others...
I wonder what we will get when the internet generation grows up?