This was on MSN.com; regarding bad Oscar nominations, which cited Halle Berry winning in Monster's Ball a bad call. I love me some Halle, truuuuust me, but I couldn't agree more.
Worst Picture
In 1989, Spike Lee made his masterpiece "Do the Right Thing," a volatile, edgy ensemble piece about deteriorating race relations in a Brooklyn neighborhood on the hottest day of the year. The film was a much-needed cinematic slap in the face: unblinking social commentary masked as entertainment. It was angry and funny and shocking, fueled by real humanity, yet never yielding to cheap sentimentality. Oh, yeah, and it wasn't even nominated by the Academy for Best Picture! Instead, films like the conformity-embracing "Dead Poets Society," the hyperbolic "Born on the Fourth of July," the schmaltzy "Field of Dreams," the biopic "My Left Foot" and, sigh, "Driving Miss Daisy" instead earned nominations. The same year that Spike Lee opened audience's eyes to the dangerously explosive nature of race relations in America, the Academy looked away, and instead retreated 30 or 40 years. They awarded "Driving Miss Daisy" the Best Picture trophy. That cozy, unthreatening exploration of a relationship between an aging Southern matriarch and her African-American driver was just the type of movie that critic David Thomson calls "feel-good liberalism" that the Academy eats up. It was nice and safe and told you exactly how to feel. The fact that Lee's film was snubbed when the nominations were announced was bad enough; that "Daisy" drove off with the Oscar for Best Picture just showed how out of touch the Academy was -- not only with cinema, but society. Oscar irony has never been more bitter.