2014 Oscar Preview: Best Picture

NOMINEES:
- 12 Years A Slave
- American Hustle
- Captain Phillips
- Dallas Buyers Club
- Gravity
- Her
- Nebraska
- Philomena
- The Wolf of Wall Street

SHOULD BE HERE: The Place Beyond The Pines

This was a decently small film that was released in April of 2013 by an Indie director. Granted, the names attached like Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, and Eva Mendez gave it some credibility to the outside world, but still, I get why it wasn't nominated. Being "good" doesn't cut it- you have to be able to promote and network as well. Despite that, The Place Beyond The Pines was excellent. In this year of mediocre films, The Place Beyond The Pines was one of the best of them. I don't want to give anything more away about the plot of the film, because it's best knowing as little as possible about it going in. I was initially off put by the 140 minute run time, but I promise you, it's worth it.

Now, out of the films that at least had somewhat of a chance to be nominated but was not, Friuitvale Station was the best of them.

Can Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto Both Win An Academy Award This Year?

The Academy Award nominations were recently announced, and both Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto were nominated for their work in Dallas Buyers Club. McConaughey for Best Actor and Leto for Best Supporting Actor. Both won the Golden Globes for their respected races, and both are probably the favorites to win the Oscars come March 2. However, I wanted to see how often it is for two males to win the Oscar from the same movie.

Since the Best Supporting Actor award was created in 1937 for the 9th Academy Awards, two male actors from the same movie winning Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor has happened only four times, and only once since 1960. Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald first did it in 1945 for Going My Way, and Fredric March and Harold Russell did it two years later for their work in The Best Years of Our Lives. The next time this phenomenon occurred was in 1960 when Charlton Heston and Hugh Griffith both won for Ben Hur. The next and last time this happened was 44 years later when Sean Penn and Tim Robbins won for their work in Mystic River.

The fact that an acting duo from the same film won only a decade ago bodes well for McConaughey and Leto, but the fact that it's only happened about as many times as a film won Best Movie without having its director even nominated isn't something to be thrilled about. Yet Argo won Best Picture last year, so maybe we're in a new era of Hollywood...

But the fact that this occurrence happens so infrequently isn't necessarily a bad sign for McConaughey and Leto. It could just be that the deserved winner from each category just so happens to star in different movie. It's very possible that the person who deserves to win does win, and it's irrelevant if they star in the same movie or different ones. So I went and looked back at recent history at the possible and realistic chances where an actor and his co-star should have both won, but did not.