Amph Nominated for...Nothing? The Thing (1982)

It was out of its element!

 

I think Lebowski suffered because it came after Fargo and main stream people didn't get it. It was a better movie when it was a cult movie.

 

The Shining (1980)

"Why It Wasn't Nominated: You think comedies have it hard? Only three horror movies have ever been nominated for Best Picture, and that's if you count Rebecca and The Silence of the Lambs, which we don't. So actually, only one horror movie: The Exorcist.

Why It Should've Been Nominated: The movie has become an iconic freakout, between the elevator blood and the freaky little girls and why is this man in a bear suit? It's also become a favorite among film theorists, who are still debating whether the movie is about the breakdown of the modern family or the history of Native Americans in post-colonization America."

It's not about the breakdown of the modern family, it's about how odious the modern family is to the modern man. IMO.

 

Local satire show Pasila had a man who was irritated how classic horror movies didn't explain anything, and took The Shining as an example. "The audience will have to think whether the movie actually said anything about anything. If living on an Indian grave makes man mad, then how come the entire America isn't?"

It also had this quote:
"Hitchcock's The Birds is clearly a metaphor of how the relationship between humans and animals has gone completely wrong in today's society"
"Yes, but if it was just a movie about birds gone mad, how would it look different?"

I've been planning to watch The Shining, if just to get the jokes in popular culture.

 

The Shining, and horror films in general, simply aren't the kinds of films that get nominated for Oscars. I love the film and have seen it dozens of times, but apart from some technical awards such as cinematography and production design (both of which are stunning), I don't think it merits any nominations, let alone wins.

The Oscars are about zeitgeist and favoritism (not necessarily a bad thing; it's just the way it works), and The Shining is a movie that improves as years pass and appreciation deepens. It's not a feel-good celebration of life, it's not an examination of some earth-shattering tragedy, and it isn't really about anything (IMO) but what you see on the screen, which is a man becoming unhinged by isolation and a gnawing resentment of being tied to a family he doesn't like or understand.

That is not Oscar material, regardless of how well it's made.

 

The Thing (1982)

"Why It Wasn't Nominated: Another victim of the Academy's general disinterest in the horror genre, The Thing was never in the running for a major award. But it's remarkable to think that the movie was snubbed for a Visual Effects award. The Academy chose to honor E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, proving that sentimentality will trump cynicism even in the technical Oscars.

Why It Should've Been Nominated: Rob Bottin and a young Stan Winston made the film's body-morphing invader into a monstrously fluid creature that still impresses in the digital age."

Not to malign Kurt Russell, whom I like, it might have fared better with a different (bigger) star and perhaps bigger director; but that didn't help "The Shining" did it? It didn't. It's the horror element. No uplift.

 

I don't know, I think a bigger star (along with bigger star ego) might have killed it. Say what you will about how it performed at the time (I have no idea what a $20 million domestic gross meant 30 years ago), or whether it deserved any awards, but now it's regularly cited as one of the best horror movies of all time. Having watched it again recently, (and Donald Moffat's hair aside,) this movie has not aged poorly at all and remains safely among the greatest films of its genre ever made.

 

Oh yeah, one of THE greats of the genre. But keep in mind it was utterly despised by critics on release. Audiences didn't like it much better. It has some pretty disgusting scenes in it; with the creature autopsies it went quite beyond what Alien had done 3 years prior. On a $15 million budget its $20 million take probably didn't even recoup the marketing. So with its critical drubbing the Academy just wasn't interested in rewarding this much maligned "re-make". Its status grew over time.