There was a time when being one of the highest grossing movies in history actually counted for something with the Academy Awards. Gone With the Wind was the highest-grossing movie ever in 1939 and won 10 Oscars, including Best Picture. The Sound of Music was the new highest-grossing movie ever in 1965 and won Best Picture, despite or perhaps because it was “awful and sentimental and gooey,” in the words of Music star Christopher Plummer. The Godfather became the highest-grossing movie ever in a long-ago time period when people went to see bleak three-hour crime epics that didn’t star Batman. The Godfather won Best Picture; the next three “highest-grossing movies ever” were nominated, but didn’t win. Jaws lost to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, an oversight you can blame on the hippies. Star Wars lost to Annie Hall — a justifiable loss, since as awesome as Star Wars is, it would clearly be much better if it featured a scene where C-3PO sneezed into a mound of cocaine. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial lost to Gandhi, which proves definitively that the ’80s were much lamer than we tend to think. READ FULL STORY »
