Great Acceptance Speeches: Dustin Hoffman, "Kramer vs. Kramer"

We asked Team Experience to share their favourite Oscar acceptance speeches as we countdown to Hollywood's High Holy Night. Here's Ben Miller...

Dustin Hoffman had an incredible run of films at the start of his career.  After breaking through with The Graduate in 1967, he followed that with the legendary Midnight Cowboy, and steadily continued on with Little Big Man, Straw Dogs, Papillion, Lenny, All the President’s Men and Marathon Man.  When 1979 rolled around, he was 42 years old and already had three Best Actor nominations under his belt.

Hoffman was no fan of the Academy at the time.  In the midst of his 70’s run, Hoffman called the Oscars a garish and embarrassing evening.  He even drew the ire of Frank Sinatra during the 1975 ceremony.  Despite that, the Academy didn’t mind all that much as they nominated him again in 79 for Kramer vs. Kramer, and this time they gave him the award...

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Oscar Presenters and a 'Whoopi Goldberg as surprise host' conspiracy theory!

02/20/19 4:35 PM: THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED WITH NEW NAMES AND NOTES

Remember when Oscar was threatening to dump Frances McDormand, Gary Oldman, Allison Janney and Sam Rockwell as presenters because they weren't "famous" enough even though they've all been popular actors in multiple hit movies and TV shows for at least two decades? Somehow the past two weeks of announcements in regards to who will prsent on Oscar night make that inane earlier compulsion even more ridiculous a significant percentage of the forthcoming presenters are NOT as famous than those four.

Nevertheless, trying to make sense of the current leadership of their Academy and their perpetually boneheaded decisions is obviously a fool's errand. That way lies madness as they simply do NOT know what they're doing. We're beginning to question whether they even understand simple concepts like "entertainment" and "fame" and maybe even "movies" at this point. The complete lists of performers and presenters announced (thus far) plus a wonderful if short-lived conspiracy theory that we wanted to believe in after the jump...

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Another Academy Reversal. But We're Still Feeling Battered

We were offline last night (a break for computer strained eyeballs) so we're hours late delivering the news but good news is still good the next morning. Deadline scooped that the Academy has decided to reverse the decision to not present all categories live. This is a very happy turn of events but it's also left us feeling bruised and battered. Deadline's scoop reminds us that a large part of the problem -- a problem that's not going away any time soon -- is the way the media frames these issues. The media is essentially complicit in ABC's tactics at undermining the Oscars. For those who are looking closely at the situation it's become blindingly obvious that ABC is a toxic and abusive partner to The Academy, more concerned with pushing their own stars (like Jimmy Kimmel) and movies (more awards for Disney blockbusters plz -- hey how about a "popular Oscar"?) than perpetuating the brand of the Oscars themselves. And that brand, the Oscars, is the reason people tune in each year, not for any particular host or any particular movie.

ABC has strategically kept the Academy in panic mode with 'the sky is falling' style messaging about their lack of popularity (which is bollocks but facts are hard to see when you're in an abusive relationship). But the problem  becomes larger because the media continually helps them do it! Consider the way Mike Fleming Jr frames the piece (and he's hardly the first) in his article...

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10 Days til Oscar... The Past 10 Years of Stats

Happy Valentine's Day y'all ❤️. It's officially 10 days until the Oscars so it's a perfect time to go list crazy and look at the past 10 years of Oscar honors (2008-2017) for multiple top tens, don't you think? Not that we need excuses to go list-crazy. We make them up when they don't present themselves!  How have the past ten years been for you? We hope you'll share in the listing fun. In addition to ranking the Oscar winners we've notated whether the same achievements medalled in our own annual film bitch awards that year.

PAST TEN BEST PICTURE WINNERS RANKED 

1. Moonlight (2017) *silver medal
2. The Hurt Locker (2009) *gold medal
3. Birdman (2014) *silver medal...

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#PresentAll24

This just in. The Academy has announced their plans for which awards aren't going to be shown live this year and it's not actually as bad as we thought it would be in that it is not as MANY as we though it would be. They're leaving four off the air: cinematography, editing, makeup, and live action short. Not being as bad as we thought, though, is NOT to say that it is any less horrific. The decision remains as tone deaf in its disrespectful, self-destructive, and against-the-point way as it always was. It's easily in the top two or three most terrible decisions that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has made in its entire 91 years.

Once you start demoting categories to "less important" you're sending a message to the world that the craft of filmmaking doesn't really matter; just look at the gowns and sit through the commercials which make us money...

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