I always associate movies with their year of release. So I have to minus one and then try to remember the movie from that year. I like the old way better...
That's definitely NOT how most people see it. Not those who follow the Oscars. To paraphrase what you yourself said on the football quiz, that's like crediting the '85 Chicago Bears with 1986.
Quizmaster, I must object to your reasoning. I believe most people see it as follows: "The Best Picture of 2014 is....Birdman". The date of the award ceremony is not nearly as relevant as the year the film was released to theaters and viewed by the public, and the date Leonard Maltin and IMDB put in parentheses after the title. I'm afraid I have to agree with all the other dissenters. If you say "Gone With the Wind," I immediately think 1939, not 1940!
@Quizmaster: people complained about having the release year for the award-winning movies and wanted you to change it to this current way? As I wrote below, in football the 1985 Chicago Bears are one of the best known single-season teams in NFL history and even though they won Super Bowl XX in early 1986, they are considered the 1985 champions.
The Oscar ceremonies always judge the movies of a particular year from January 1st through December 31st, and they then hold the ceremony in February or March of the following year.
If those who complained found the test unworkable, that should be on them and not you. This is a particularly glaring weakness with all-time great years like 1994 and 1997 , as people do NOT mean 'Schindler's List' when they speak of '94's Best Picture, just as they do NOT mean 'The English Patient' for '97. What they REALLY mean is Forrest Gump and Titanic, respectively. Changing it to what it now is in order to kowtow to a vocal minority weakens the quiz.
The year of the ceremony is the only way that makes sense. It's the 2016 Oscars this year. Spotlight won the award in 2016. It doesn't matter when the film came out.
@Jerry928. I'm not going to set up a poll because I don't care. The only way to be wrong about this is to have a strong opinion either way. It just does not matter at all.
The stats make me chuckle because people get so worked up over who was or wasn't nominated...yet only six years after The Departed won Best Picture, only one in four players remembered it. Very interesting. And does anyone still think Shakespeare In Love was better than Saving Private Ryan?
Didn't even know that The Departed won Best Picture... it was a disappointment to me, a lot of wasted potential IMO. And I don't get it why The King's Speech, No Country for Old Men and Braveheart won too...
I've NEVER heard someone say that about The Departed. I still think it's brilliant. As for Braveheart it was a weak year (Sense & Sensibility, Il Postino, Babe, Apollo 13). I still prefer Babe.
One reason for Braveheart's win is that directing a costume drama with battle scenes and large crowd scenes, on location, is difficult. The Academy was recognizing the extreme difficulty of the shoot when it gave the Best Director and Best Picture awards to it.
The Departed is fine for what it is, which is a slickly made, slightly goofy crime thriller. Best Picture? Come on. My guess is the Academy was trying to make it up to Scorsese after missing the boat (by a mile) on Raging Bull and Goodfellas. And I've always thought that after the D-Day sequence (which is astounding), Saving Private Ryan is kind of boilerplate Spielberg. If I had to choose right now, I'd rather watch Shakespeare in Love. And I get the reservations about No Country for Old Men. But, man, it's so good and disturbing. I'm okay with that one (although I probably would have picked Michael Clayton for Best Picture, if I'd had a vote).
The first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan were pretty striking but after that it kind of dragged. At least up until the last 20 minutes. Both good movies, though.
With 85 answers to enter and only 8 minutes to do it I doubt if I could finish even if I was typing from a list. You'd have to enter a movie title every 5 1/2 seconds, and that's without taking any time to think. This quiz needs more time!
Completely agree with eric29cocoa. Totally need more time. I was typing constantly and only got 61, largely because i was typing so fast i kept making mistakes. Not everyone is sitting at a 40 WPM-quality keyboard and desk.
Great quiz but it would be better if the years for for the years the films won and not the year of the ceremony. When people say "What was the Best Picture for 1994?" They mean Forrest Gump, not Schindler's List. It is the same with Super Bowls - the Seahawks are champ for 2013...2014's champ won't be known for almost a year.
By the way, there should be books written about 1994 for movies. If you spread out 3 of the 5 nominees amongst the following years (1994-1996) they might have won all 3 years, and Forrest Gump was - in my opinion, the weakest of the 3. If I had to rank the top 5 of 1994 - the best year ever for nominees - I'd go:
1.) The Shawshank Redemption - Best movie ever...imdb #1
2.) Pulp Fiction - imdb top 10
3.) Forrest Gump - All-time great film but today we wonder how it beat out the two I listed above it.
4.) Quiz Show - Excellent film...could have won in a year like 96, 02, 05, or 08
5.) Four Weddings and Funeral - Good but not worthy to be listed w/ these 4 classics.
The Lion King, The Hudsucker Proxy, and The Professional also came out in 1994. I'd argue with placing Quiz Show anywhere higher than 7th on the list of movies that came out in 94. Probably lower, in fact, since I happen to hold a soft spot in my heart for Clerks and Ed Wood.
I meant of the nominees, as I love Hudsucker Proxy (it is my favorite Coen Brothers movie) and believe it and, as you said, Lion King and The Professional are also superior to Four Weddings, however my personal preference for Hudsucker ans Professional notwithstanding, I think Quiz Show might be a BETTER movie. So here's my list for my favorite movies of '94 (and remember just because I like a movie more does not mean that movie is best...I think Forrest Gump is a better movie than The Paper, but I like The Paper more.
1.) Shawshank
2.) Pulp Fiction (and I think they are also the 1st and 2nd best of the year)
Quiz Show is a classic only in your mind. Sorry, that movie's been completely forgotten for valid reasons. Forgettability being foremost among them. And I don't think 94 holds a candle to 93. Schindler's List, The Piano, The Remains of the Day, Short Cuts, Philadelphia, In the Name of the Father, What's Love Got to Do With It, The Fugitive, Six Degrees of Separation, The Age of Innocence, Fearless, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Farewell My Concubine, The War Room, Mrs Doubtfire and my personal favorite Strictly Ballroom.
Quizmaster, you should change it back to the original format where the year corresponds to the release year, not the year of the ceremony. I'm fairly confident that there is a overwhelming consensus that they like that format better.
Quizmaster, I must object to your reasoning (your comment of Jan. 17, 2014). I believe most people see it as follows: "The Best Picture of 2014 is....Birdman". The date of the award ceremony is not nearly as relevant as the year the film was released to theaters and viewed by the public, and the date Leonard Maltin and IMDB put in parentheses after the title. I'm afraid I have to agree with all the other dissenters. If you say "Gone With the Wind," I immediately think 1939, not 1940!
The "overwhelming consensus" is wrong. If you go to the actual source - the Oscars.org database - you will see that it is the date the film was released that governs. You wouldn't change a correct answer to a wrong one based on popular opinion would you?
The problem is that you'll generally only hear from the people who are dissatisfied.
The only way to really gauge which group makes up the minority is to compare the outrage (and content of the arguments) that you received when you used the release year with what you're getting now that you're using the award year.
It's a bit of a temptest in a teapot either way, though, as I mentioned above. If you remember that Unforgiven won Best Picture, that fact that it gets displayed in an unexpected box doesn't negate that you just typed an acceptable answer. But FWIW, I've never associated the award year with the movie. Like someone else pointed out, that's like associating 1986 with the Chicago Bears Super Bowl championship. It's "the '85 Bears".
The awards are officially listed by the previous year from which they are given. The Godfather won the 1972 Academy Award, but we had to wait for all 365 days of 1972 to pass before the award could even be considered and we could watch Marlon Brando's stand-in refuse his actor award.
For example, the inscription on this screenplay award for Citizen Kane, given February 26, 1942, is inscribed 1941. It is the 1941 Oscar, not 1942. http://natedsanders.com/UserFiles/Image/36926.jpg
I feel that for some you have to be way too precise with the name. "Bridge over the River Kwai" --- nope, oh it's ON the river. Drat. Same thing about "At the Waterfront", -- nope.. ON again. Prepositions are tricky for us non-English. (Especially when my native language lacks them alltogether.) In general it's funny how many of these I clearly know when I see the answers, just couldn't retrieve from my brain.
The novel the movie is based on is called The Bridge OVER the River Kwai, so even though it isn't the movie title exactly, I kinda feel like "over" should be accepted (or maybe I'm just grumpy because I spent over minute trying different spellings for 'Kwai' and not getting why it wouldn't work.)
Then you could say the same about The Shawshank Redemption, which was based on the short story "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption". Not sure if anyone would ever attempt to write it out that way, though. And, yeah, it's - unfortunately - not an Oscar winner either. Just saying, novel titles in this case are irrelevant.
That article refers to the movie. kinjapan was discussing the source novel being titled The Bridge Over the River Kwai. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_over_the_River_Kwai
Quizmaster, i'm sorry but your going to have to change this quiz back to its original format. When I see 1939, I think "Gone with the wind", when I see 1972 I think "The godfather", I see 1994 I think "Forrest Gump" So p;ease change this back
My most lopsided results are that I got Mrs. Miniver, The Great Ziegfeld, and Mutiny on the Bounty (without ever having seen any of them) but missed Birdman, Casablanca, and Gone with the Wind.
Everyone has been having a good (and rightful) laugh about that mishap, but I wish more people would note how great the producer from La La Land was about the whole thing. If he hadn't graciously let everyone know what happened and quickly invited Moonlight on-stage, it could have turned into a total fiasco (instead of just an awkward 30 seconds). I suspect most people (especially with the egos in Hollywood) would not have so quickly and clearly conceded. Can you imagine if it that happened to Harvey Weinstein? They'd have to send in the national guard to get that statuette from him.
I wrote that comment months before Harvey Weinstein was outed for being a total sleaze. Looks like the national guard will be after him for more than statuette now...
What use would that be? The movie is always released the year before the ceremony, so just think of the year before.That's what I've done ever since the first time I tool this quiz.
Try watching the Greatest Show on Earth. Interminable, treacly garbage. I've seen probably 90% of these movies (including Moonlight). The Greatest Show on Earth and the Broadway Melody are the worst I've seen, by a comfortable margin. Moonlight is in the bottom quartile, but it's definitely not the worst of the lot.
There was a period around the late 90s when I actually cared. I always get all of those from that time... even while missing the bulk of the winners from the past decade.
A few years ago the Oscars changed the way that they vote. Source. The change has hurt big-budget blockbusters and helped small art house films. While well-intentioned, the change has been bad for the awards. The winner is now, more often than not, a film that few people have seen or even heard of. The Oscars are increasingly irrelevant.
The winners for the past four years have been especially forgettable. My sense is that studios are now going all-in on mega-budget movies to turn their profits, and then supplementing with a lot of comedies, horror, etc. that is really cheap to make. There appears to be very little interest among studios to throw money into great drama, so you no longer get sprawling and memorable movies like Gladiator, Private Ryan, Braveheart, and the like. They're seen as too risky compared to superheroes and pre-sold franchises. So we got a lot of quirky indie stuff that is usually well-written and well-directed, but doesn't have the big studio support to give it that real movie magic you feel with on-location shooting, massive sets, or top-flight cinematography. It's a lot of people having layered conversations, filmed at odd angles. And I enjoy that, but those movies rarely stay with you.
Yeah, as soon as I saw how much praise Black Panther was getting when it came out, I knew it was gonna get a Best Picture nomination solely because there's barely any white people in it. The Oscars used to be not "woke" enough, now they're too woke.
I actually think Get Out earned its accolades. It's rare to see a horror movie that is more than dumb jump scares. The movie is about something. It's funny; it's scary; it's philosophical; it's well-written and very well-acted. It was a real high-wire act. But Black Panther...yeah. We all know what that was about.
I honestly think that Black Panther is the best Marvel movie, though. Yes, the racial message may have been the reason it was nominated while other MCU films were not, but I really think that the acting, cinematography, and direction were on par with the other nominees. The story had some true plot twists that were better than what most movies of any kind usually give us. It was fun, powerful, entertaining, and artistic all at once. No, it is not the greatest movie of all time, but I think it deserved to be there.
And, if it matters much, know that I am a white male, and a movie being about Africa does not make it any better for me.
In my opinion Black Panther was one of the most boring and lazily-written movies in the entire MCU. And... actually part of the reason I disliked it was that the movie seems pretty racist to me. Which is ironic since most everyone else found it empowering or something. I mean... spears? animal skins? War rhinos? Government by absolute monarchy decided by ritualistic combat to the death? And everyone in Wakanda has a random mix of accents, clothing, hair styles, body scarification and other cultural traditions from various African tribes thousands of miles apart as if Africa is a single tiny country? This is supposed to represent African culture? If a "white" guy had written and directed the film they probably would have been criticizing it for being a collection of horribly offensive clichés.
My gender and the racial labels others ascribe to me are irrelevant to my opinion.
If any film in the MCU deserved to be nominated for Best Picture it would have been Infinity War or Endgame. Those were actually landmark achievements in filmmaking. Black Panther was just another pretty cookie-cutter superhero film. A badly written one, at that.
I think I should rephrase my earlier statement about Black Panther being nominated for Best Picture. I knew it was going to get nominated not because of the cast being majorly “non-white,” but because the Oscars are losing relevance and they were trying to avoid criticism for not giving enough appreciation to filmmakers of various ethnicities. That said, while I still don’t think it needed a Best Picture nomination, I still find it somewhat enjoyable, and is definitely not an awful movie by any means.
So now you include this in ANOTHER badge? That's so terribly unfair... Seriously, you should think of a set of clues for those movies, that would be a better way to learn than a stern list.
I don't think you understand what I meant. I would like to expand that knowledge and it would be more fun and more efficient with clues. And you don't need to be cutting either...
That may be because of my poor english, but I thought it was obvious that my first sentence was not serious (you know, the one before "seriously", right?). Anyway, I admit that 20 is not that much, and I got the welcome badge today (it would be much harder to get to 45...)
Well I apologize if I came off as kind of a jerk in my first response. Sometimes it’s much harder to tell if someone’s joking just based off of text alone. And in all honesty, adding clues isn’t a bad idea. Maybe this quiz will add some in the future, maybe not, but I wouldn’t mind either way.
This quiz would be a lot more interesting if you were given a picture from the film. Several of these have incredibly iconic shots that would work really well here.
It also deserved editing and production design too if we're being real. The fact that the house was a set built for the movie went really underappreciated and the design contributed a lot to the atmosphere and tension in many scenes.
Parasite defied all expectations of a Best Picture winner. Neither American nor set in America nor English-language, neither nostalgic and sentimental but rather sharply analytical, and it's actually the best movie of the year.
Your taste in films greatly confuses me. It was a pretty solid lineup but "most of the other films nominated" being better than Parasite is quite the take.
Like others, I strongly believe the quiz should be cued to year of release, not year of ceremony. AMPAS, which gives the awards, lists winners by release — that should be definitive. Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Brittanica do too. In my experience, people who keep track of what they see pretty much always remember year of release.
Only got 17 and missed a few movies that I really like: Birdman, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, On the Waterfront, Unforgiven, Casablanca, The Departed, The Silence of the Lambs.
Thanks for making the quiz! It's one of my favourites. Sorry, but I must argue that there is no reason to have the years line up the way they do. If you buy a DVD or Blu-Ray of a best-picture winner, it specifically says it's the "Best Picture Winner" of the year it came out. I collect DVDs and Blu-Rays of the best picture each year, and they use the year the movie came out as the year of the award. The Academy itself has standardized this format since it comes with a little picture of the Oscar and has a trademark symbol. Parasite won the 2019 Best Picture award. Look at a Blu-Ray of Parasite. It's labelled as the 2019 Best Picture winner. The way the quiz is set up now is definitely wrong and inaccurate for film buffs who are trying to remember what film won the best picture each year. I love the effort you put in, but it really should be changed back if you ever get the chance. :)
They pretty much are. People get so worked up over who won and who didn't, but five years after the fact, no one even remembers who won, but we know which movies were best. We all know Back to the Future is better than Out of Africa, and the fact that Goodfellas didn't win Best Picture has no bearing on its status as a classic. The criteria for winning an Oscar--especially Best Picture--are so strict that they discount the lion's share of movies. The English Patient and the French Connection, for example, each won on the strength of one technically challenging and remarkable scene, and were otherwise good-not-great movies. The category would more accurately be phrased "Best Somber Drama." Does anyone really think Spotlight was a better movie than Fury Road?
The second and third were dreadful, but the first one was inventive and charming. It's still fun to watch. I was using it as an example to make the more general point that the Oscars treats brooding dramas as the only kind of great movie (plus Pixar movies, which they also shower with praise). But lots of "fun" movies are great movies, and are much better than many Best Picture winners. Out of Africa is a snore. Greatest Show on Earth is unwatchable. But movies like E.T.; the Princess Bride; L.A. Confidential; Planes, Trains, & Automobiles, etc. are all great, and I think time has proven that they are better pictures than the movies that won Best Picture in their years of release.
I mean there's several films on this list that, while not exactly riveting or "fun" are still phenomenal films. Amadeus, The Last Emperor and Lawrence of Arabia are all masterpieces and deserved all of their wins. In the same manner that not every movie that wins should be a somber drama, simply being a somber drama shouldn't be a strike against any movie. Being a film that doesn't make you feel good by the end doesn't make a film any worse than a film that makes you feel great.
Back to the Future is overrated imo. I think it was great for the time, but I also think people romanticize how great it was in their mind. I tried to watch it a couple years ago, and man, it was BORING and did not age well at all.
I am a big fan of the LOTR books and movies, but really, The Hobbit films just weren't that good. Barely nominated for the technical awards, and failed to win those.
If you like movies, you are missing out big time if you've never seen any of these. There's every genre; war, crime, biography, romance, musical, fantasy, comedy and tragedy.
Put each movie name from 1970 to 2022 in a hat and pick one out. The odds are high that you'll enjoy whatever you pick.
Since 2010 I would consider Parasite and Moonlight only must-sees, though 12 Years a Slave, like Schindler's List before it, is probably a movie everyone should see at least once.
100% with 6:44 left. I ignored the years altogether & created a list starting with 'Amercian Beauty' and then associated with the next - Amercian in Paris, French Connection, Gigi then movies with person names, Marty, Rebecca, Oliver>then musicals, etc. That left me with 3 movies I couldn't fit into the schema - CODA, Cimarron, Schindlers List. And my all-time favorite movie is 'The Black Stallion' simply for the beauty of the movie and Mickey Rooney. But if pushed to pick one from this list it would be Lawrence of Arabia.
Technically it won a different "best picture" prize that subsequently ceased to exist. The Academy doesn't refer to 'Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans' as a Best Picture winner.
The Oscar ceremonies always judge the movies of a particular year from January 1st through December 31st, and they then hold the ceremony in February or March of the following year.
If those who complained found the test unworkable, that should be on them and not you. This is a particularly glaring weakness with all-time great years like 1994 and 1997 , as people do NOT mean 'Schindler's List' when they speak of '94's Best Picture, just as they do NOT mean 'The English Patient' for '97. What they REALLY mean is Forrest Gump and Titanic, respectively. Changing it to what it now is in order to kowtow to a vocal minority weakens the quiz.
Agreed on The King's Speech (and I say this as a stutterer).
By the way, there should be books written about 1994 for movies. If you spread out 3 of the 5 nominees amongst the following years (1994-1996) they might have won all 3 years, and Forrest Gump was - in my opinion, the weakest of the 3. If I had to rank the top 5 of 1994 - the best year ever for nominees - I'd go:
1.) The Shawshank Redemption - Best movie ever...imdb #1
2.) Pulp Fiction - imdb top 10
3.) Forrest Gump - All-time great film but today we wonder how it beat out the two I listed above it.
4.) Quiz Show - Excellent film...could have won in a year like 96, 02, 05, or 08
5.) Four Weddings and Funeral - Good but not worthy to be listed w/ these 4 classics.
1.) Shawshank
2.) Pulp Fiction (and I think they are also the 1st and 2nd best of the year)
3.) Hudsucker Proxy
4.) Quiz Show
5.) The Paper
6.) Forrest Gump
7.) The Professional
8.) The Lion King
9.) Four Weddings and a Funeral
10.) Clerks
The only way to really gauge which group makes up the minority is to compare the outrage (and content of the arguments) that you received when you used the release year with what you're getting now that you're using the award year.
It's a bit of a temptest in a teapot either way, though, as I mentioned above. If you remember that Unforgiven won Best Picture, that fact that it gets displayed in an unexpected box doesn't negate that you just typed an acceptable answer. But FWIW, I've never associated the award year with the movie. Like someone else pointed out, that's like associating 1986 with the Chicago Bears Super Bowl championship. It's "the '85 Bears".
The Best Picture of 1939 is Gone With The Wind.
This shouldn't surprise greatly - AMPAS haven't voted with the public since ... hmm ... Lord of the Rings?
For example, the inscription on this screenplay award for Citizen Kane, given February 26, 1942, is inscribed 1941. It is the 1941 Oscar, not 1942. http://natedsanders.com/UserFiles/Image/36926.jpg
http://www.followtheoscar.blogspot.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_on_the_River_Kwai
Ops where is La La Land? :-o
Although I will give Jordan Peele credit in that the Screenplay Oscar was pretty well-deserved.
Also, I thought Us was better. And I'm surprised it got ZERO nominations.
And, if it matters much, know that I am a white male, and a movie being about Africa does not make it any better for me.
My gender and the racial labels others ascribe to me are irrelevant to my opinion.
Gone with the Wind was a 1939 film. Not 1940. Ridiculous way of thinking! And who even watches the awards anymore??
Nowhere near enough time really though.
Just about missed "The Great Ziegfield", whew!
Put each movie name from 1970 to 2022 in a hat and pick one out. The odds are high that you'll enjoy whatever you pick.
Only those. I’m ashamed.
i got nothing