You Must Give Back That Oscar! (Part 2)

Continuing our list of performers/directors/producers who, in the light of a new century, it is clearly revealed that they were presented with an Oscar in error and that they must give them back!  Our first false-recipient, Roberto Benigni, has still not contacted The Academy about returning his awards for Life Is Beautiful.  Roberto, it's not too late to resolve this issue before Oscar-time...    Our second one would be the producer/director/writer of the 2005 dogshow, Crash, which shockingly won the award that year for "Best Picture".  What in the hell happened that year?  For only the second time in the history of the Academy Awards, Crash was given the Best Picture award, even though it wasn't even nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Picture.  The front-runner for Best Picture that year was the critically-acclaimed gay-themed drama, Brokeback Mountain.  In a major upset victory, Crash was named the winner, leaving millions of jaws dropped and heads scratched.

Crash:  About as subtle as a "dirty" nuclear device...

Though it was an all-star (Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Brendan Fraser, etc.), multi-layered interweaving of several stories (sounds good so far, right?), Crash lives up to its title before the end of the first reel.  Written, directed and produced by Paul Haggis (at the time, one of the most prominent Hollywood Scientologists--he has since very publicly renounced his membership with the religion/cult), this film is painted with such a broad brush as to almost seem a cartoon, or at the very least, a parody.  He tries to intermesh several tales of racial prejudice and hatred in modern day Los Angeles into one cohesive whole, but it soon unravels into a muddled pile of stereotypes, highly implausible situations and near-miraculous coincidences.  Nearly all the characters in the film are loathesome and one is left wishing they'd all just shoot each other already and be done with it.  It'd be too easy to say it's a "Crash"-ing bore...because I certainly wasn't bored;  I was too angry to be bored, having just shelled out 10 bucks, only to be manipulated by a preachy, unbalanced, transparently false mess of a film.  
 

I saw the film before the Oscars and hated it then.  Then, after it swept the awards that year, I was completely dumbfounded that so many Americans could be fooled into believing that something this incompetent was worthy of being elected to a top prize--then I realized that George W. Bush had just been reelected for a 2nd term in office and it all became clear to me.  It seemed to me that the Conservative Right of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was not about to vote for "no homo movie" for "Best Picture," which greased the skids for Crash to win by default.

Crash is an amateurish, insincere and disingenuous film that is highly unworthy of "best" anything!  Paul Haggis:  YOU MUST GIVE BACK YOUR AWARDS! (he won for Best Screenplay, too!).  While you're at it, could you round up the jokers who won the "Best Song" Oscar that year and tell them to haul back their Oscars, too?  I'm not saying "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp" is a bad song, but.....

And the actual recipient of the Best Picture of 2005 is: