BS I TELL YOU! ALL CAPS RAGE. The thing is Oliver Stone is not that great of a director. Even though he served in the Vietnam war he fantasized it way too heavily compared to Woody Allen's direction of a fantasized romance/love triangle/dramedy. I mean in Platoon William Dafoe gets shot like what 13 times until he actually lays down and dies. That makes no sense.
What do you call a bunch of crows?
-A murdeerrrrrr
I disagree. I love this movie no end, but I would have gone with Platoon for Picture (Director is a tossup). Yes, Stone does have some stylized bits but not too many by his standards - perhaps because it had such personal meaning for him he didn't use as many tricks. Both films are great and both would have been worthy winners.
A pity Allen didn't release this movie a few months earlier, as it could have easily beaten the weak 1985 lineup.
Much like Polanski´s Pirates, Platoon is funny, but not funny enough to win any honors.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
The worst Academy Award defeat for Woody was when Deconstructing Harrylost Best Original Screenplay to Damon-Affleck's Good Will Hunting.
"Thank God the French exist."
I think Hannah and Her Sisters deserved Best Bicture and Platoon deserved Best Director.
sharePlatoon was the better film.
Its that man again!!
Ditto. Platoon was pretty amazing and breathtaking. Hannah was good but barely original, it's one of any number (double digits) of the same film he made repeatedly. He treats the audience like it's his shrink, telling us the same stories until he can somehow progress toward a revelation beyond 1955 when his nightmares became fully formed and he in them, but he never wakes up, let alone progresses.
~ Native Angeleno
I disagree - certainly Allen has made many more good movies than Stone has but the Academy made the right call this year.
Stone often stylizes his movies too much - think of Natural Born Killers - but he was pretty well-disciplined here. A lot of people nowadays say the movie is heavily anti-war but that's more a reflection on his later films and public statements; there's not much speechifying here about whether the war was right or not, but rather a focus on the ordeal the men had and how it affected them. The lack of a political stance is why this is probably the best of all the Vietnam movies made in the 1970s and 1980s. Maybe the death of Dafoe does go on a little too long but that's a small flaw.
Having said all that, Hannah & Her Sisters is also probably the best movie of Allen's career: it's the best mixture he ever achieved of comedy & drama (though Manhattan comes pretty close), and he handles a very large number of characters and plotlines - though not so many that they're underdeveloped for lack of time. The characters are also relatively ordinary for one of his movies, but still exciting and interesting.
If Allen had made this movie in almost any other year in the 1980s and lost the Oscar I would agree with you that it would have been a travesty, but Stone was the right man this time.
You talk like you understand nothing of film,platoon is one of the only war films that actually shows war and in my opinion it handles the subject of war much better than films like saving private ryan which focused on heavy violence from the first scence while not paying too much attention on the emotional aspects of war,on the thing you said about oliver stone,,look buddy i don't know what your problem with oliver stone is but but i consider oliver one of the only great filmmakers alive with masterpieces like born on the fouth of july,JFK,platoon,natural born killers and salvador under his belt and to be honest i don't think you've seen any of them because if you had you wouldn't have thought oliver stone is not that great of a director.
shareI agree - I haven't watched the Oscars since but I do like to watch this film every year at this time.
shareI think Hollywood was probably blinded by Stone's forced-down-your-throat political rubbish and it overshadowed Allen's subtle, moving humanistic drama. People flock to action movies en masse and realism is often sidestepped. But I think Blue Velvet - David Lynch was probably the most deserving that year.
shareWhat? Your right it was that year. This is the worst decission I can think of right now. It really is a crime. Platoon isn't even a good movie. Hannah and her Sisters is genious.
This is all subjective and I've just watched the movie and loved it. I'm tired and I don't even want to think about Platoon. I thought it was a dumb and pretentious movie (but it had a good soundtrack).
---
You see things; and you say Why? But I dream things that never were and I say Why not?
If it's any consolation, the film picked up a slew of other awards, apart from a bunch of best supporting actor/actress awards, including:
- Oscar: Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen - Woody Allen
- Golden Globe: Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical
- BAFTA: Best Direction - Woody Allen; Best Screenplay - Original - Woody Allen
- American Comedy Awards: Funniest Actor in a Motion Picture (Leading Role) -
Woody Allen
- Artios (Casting Society of America, USA) Best Casting for Feature Film, Comedy - Juliet Taylor
Not to mention a huge number of nominations by various film societies/critics:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091167/awards
It is better to be kind than to be clever or good looking. -- Derek