The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
#1The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/10/07 at 9:28pm
I've been wondering for a while, maybe someone here with vast cineMUH knowldge can help me out here...
so:
What was the last real "comedy" to win the Academy Award for best picture?
"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed
#2re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/10/07 at 9:31pm
Shakespeare in Love. (1999)
Or, if you don't count that as a "real comedy," I think you'd have to go all the way back to Annie Hall (1978?).
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Updated On: 1/10/07 at 09:31 PM
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
Mr Roxy
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/17/03
#2re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/10/07 at 9:31pmBelieve it was Annie Hall
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#3re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/10/07 at 9:32pmOr would Driving Miss Daisy (1990) count?
"One no longer loves one's insight enough once one communicates it."
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
#4re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/10/07 at 9:36pmoscars.org has the database of nominees and winners. No need to ask for someone "with vast cineMUH knowldge."
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--Aristotle
#5re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/10/07 at 9:36pmI'd certainly consider "Shakespeare in Love" a romantic comedy.
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Mr Roxy
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/17/03
#6re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/10/07 at 9:37pmI still think it should be Annie Hall but to each his own
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#7re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/10/07 at 9:41pmthanks for the link, Capn. I had no idea that existed!
"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed
#8re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/10/07 at 10:20pm
Shakespeare in Love is correct.
And there have been VERY few comedies to win Best Picture.
*without cheating and looking at a list*
It Happened One Night
You Can't Take It With You
The Apartment (but I would argue that's a comedy/drama)
Tom Jones
The Sting (possibly?)
Annie Hall
Shakespeare In Love
In the "dramedy" department, I would put Driving Miss Daisy and Terms of Endearment.
"Jaws is the Citizen Kane of movies."
blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22
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#9re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/10/07 at 11:47pmDon't forget Schindler's List.
"If you are going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy."
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Cruel_Sandwich
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/30/05
#10re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:09amI would consider CHICAGO to be a musical comedy.
#11re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:11amTrue.
"If you are going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy."
-Charlie Manson
Cruel_Sandwich
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/30/05
#12re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:12amThe last comedy to be nominated for Best Director was, I believe, Robert Altman's THE PLAYER.
#13re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:16amANNIE HALL is one of the least funny movies I've ever seen. People say it is BRILLIANT. I've heard some people describe it as the best film ever made. I found it to be agonizingly boring. I know that Diane Keaton is the queen of overacting, but really, to give her an Oscar for THAT? Please.
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"I have also met him in person, and I find him to be quite funny actually. Arrogant and often misinformed, but still funny."
-bjh2114 (on Michael Riedel)
#14re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:26am
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE is a comedy? I didn't laugh once during the damn movie. However, I did chuckle in certain parts of DRIVING MISS DAISY and TERMS OF ENDEAREMENT, but I wouldn't go so far as to call them comedies.
That said, I would say FORREST GUMP. Then again, humor is relative, but I remember the entire theater cracking up throughout -- including me.
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#15re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:34am
Well, I think ANNIE HALL is excellent and that Keaton is one of the best living actresses. Perhaps I just enjoy her.
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE is, indeed, a comedy. I don't think it's best picture material, but it certainly was a comedy. So much a comedy that I don't think it can possibly be seen as a drama...but it's really not very good. It's charming.
TERMS OF ENDEARMENT is the opposite of a comedy! Crazy!
FORREST GUMP has its moments, but I don't think it can qualify for a comedy.
But then again, I would say CRASH. Just not in the standard sense of the word "comedy."
"If you are going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy."
-Charlie Manson
#16re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:50amHow about AMERICAN BEAUTY? Can satire be comedy? A dark comedy, perhaps?
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Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra
Salve, Salve Regina
Ad te clamamus exsules filii Eva
Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes
O clemens O pia
Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra
Salve, Salve Regina
Ad te clamamus exsules filii Eva
Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes
O clemens O pia
Cruel_Sandwich
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/30/05
#17re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:52amForrest Gump would be more of a satire than a comedy, although there is a LOT of subtle comedy that a lot of people seem to disregard. It's not really a movie that you should take at face value, as a lot of people seem to have done.
#18re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 12:58am
AMERICAN BEAUTY is largely funny, but the ending transforms the entire film to have an overall depressing tone. I don't think it can quality as a drama.
Now that I think about it, CHICAGO isn't really a drama or a comedy - it's floating somewhere on the border in between.
I still think the safest and most correct answer is SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE.
"If you are going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy."
-Charlie Manson
#19re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 5:25am
I wouldn't call Forrest Gump a comedy, it's largely aiming for tears, I think...as is American Beauty, IMO.
Shakespeare in Love would count as a romantic comedy, I think...I'm sure the fact that it's a period piece makes it easy to overlook it as a comedy.
I think Annie Hall is often hysterically funny...the scene in line where he brings out the writer is one of my favorite things on earth, and as a girl who's from LA but primarily now lives in NYC I LOVE this line:
"I don't want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light."
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#20re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 8:34amSHAKESPEARE IN LOVE won, in part, as a backlash to all of the "epic" films that had been winning in the immediately preceding years - TITANIC, THE ENGLISH PATIENT, etc...
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#21re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 9:02amTerms of Endearment is hilarious until...cough...cough...
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#22re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 9:03amActually, you have it backwards. It's not funny UNTIL...
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#23re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 9:04amShakespeare In Love is a brilliant film, with one of the best and "smartest" screenplays of the past 20 years. The movie gets better each time I watch it.
"Jaws is the Citizen Kane of movies."
blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22
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#24re: The Last Comedy to Win Best Picture?
Posted: 1/11/07 at 9:05amI found it to be an overhyped piece of boredom.
Have I ever shown you my Shattered Dreams box? It's in my Disappointment Closet. - Marge Simpson
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