Revisiting and Revoting for the 2002 Oscars

Ten years ago the Academy moved the Academy Awards back to Hollywood after more than forty years away as the show moved into the brand new Kodak Theater. Ironically enough, here we are, ten years later and Kodak is now bankrupt and will terminate its sponsorship agreement with the home of the Oscars, which means this year the Oscars will either be held at a nameless venue or someone else will move in and slather the building with their logo. You know, probably something like the Arby’s Theater, home of the Oscars.

2002 also saw Halle Berry become the first black actress to win for Best Actress and she was joined by Denzel Washington who won for Best Actor for his part in Training Day. Obviously there had never been a time when both top acting awards went to black actors and with Sidney Poitier, the first ever black actor to win for Best Actor, being honored that night with the Lifetime Achievement award it was a milestone year.

The year also marked the very first Oscar handed out for Best Animated Feature, which went to Shrek, winning over Monsters, Inc., which meant it would be another two years before Pixar won its first Best Animated Feature Oscar for Finding Nemo in 2004.

Best Picture in 2002 went to A Beautiful Mind, winning over Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Moulin Rouge!, which brings me to my point.

Lowen Liu at Slate has suggested one way to “fix” the Oscars. His solution… hold a re-vote each year of the awards from ten years prior and the part I absolutely love about the whole suggestion is when he adds, “And not just a token re-vote, but a re-vote with consequences, in which golden statues are repossessed and redistributed, the previous owners relegated to mere placeholders in history.”

Silly, sure, but Liu hits it on the nose when he says, “There is no final judgment in the arts, only hash marks on the calendar for when we choose to look in again and reassess.”

I think we all realize many of Oscar’s Best Picture winners are hardly the films we remember and revisit over the course of our lives. They are excellent starting points when you begin to explore the world of film, but they are hardly the cinematic gems studio marketing campaigns would like you to believe.

That said, let’s have our own vote, and I think this is something I am going to do every year going forward.

Below I have included six different polls looking at Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and both Supporting categories. The nominees are right there and it’s time to place your votes.

I have also included a seventh poll at the bottom offering a list of 30 films from 2011 for you to reassess that include many of the year’s biggest films at the box-office and best reviewed films of the year.

I figured I’d leave the re-vote to only the films and individuals that were actually nominated, but also figured it wouldn’t hurt to offer the chance to take a look at some of the films that didn’t make the cut the first time around and see how things shake out.

So while you may not be able to vote for Black Hawk Down, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Memento, The Royal Tenenbaums or even The Devil’s Backbone in the re-vote poll, you can definitely take a shot in the other.