It’s Oscar season. Last night I watched Martin Scorsese’s latest brilliant film The Departed and I thought, he should definitely win this year. I haven’t seen The Queen or Babel, but of the three best picture nominees I have seen (Letters From Iwo Jima and Little Miss Sunshine being the other two), The Departed is by far the most engrossing and consistently good film. Anyway, I thought, in my blog world, it’s time to set the Oscar world to rights. With no authority, I shall become a fanboy and tell you what I think are the great Oscar mistakes and how they should be corrected. It’s odd because lately, the Oscars and most awards have become less important to me. It’s not as if my tastes are validated simply because a film won awards. It’s become evident in recent years that winning Oscars is more about good campaigns than good films. You don’t have to care about these things, and probably shouldn’t, but these are the fun posts that we can debate without anything really mattering.

My first suggestion would be to get rid of the best director and best picture split. How can a film win or even be nominated for best picture without the best direction? For example, in 2001 Moulin Rouge! was nominated for best picture but its director Baz Lurman was not recognized for his part in the film. Who made the movie? Best picture should include the director with the producers. While we’re at it, let’s create best ensemble acting as well. That way films like The Lord of the Rings trilogy can be recognized for all the solid performances.

The second suggestion might be cliche and obvious, but it needs to be said. It’s a travesty that Citizen Kane only won one Oscar (best original screenplay). I say let’s give it the sweep it deserves and hand over the other seven Oscars for which it was nominated—especially best picture, director, and actor (the latter two were obviously Orson Wells). Gary Cooper was good in Sergent York, but Wells’ acting doesn’t feel a bit dated.

It’s time to go back and rip that best picture Oscar from Mirimax’s hands for Shakespeare in Love and give it to Saving Private Ryan, who deserves it. Seriously, which film left you speechless for the next week after seeing it, Shakespeare in Love or Saving Private Ryan? The one about D-Day, I imagine. That whole year is an Oscar mess. If Saving Private Ryan and The Truman Show were released in the winter instead of the summer, I think it is highly likely they would have received several more nominations, and would have likely won. Let’s take away Roberto Benigni’s best actor win and nomination and give the Oscar to Tom Hanks (we’ll talk about him more) and the nomination to Jim Carrey. Also let’s take away Judi Dench’s best supporting actress for Shakespeare in Love and give it to one of the other nominees. It’s not that she wasn’t good, but I think someone who is on the screen for more than eight minutes deserves the recognition. It’s not the performance, but the role that shouldn’t have been nominated.

I’m taking away Jack Nicholson’s Oscar for best actor in As Good as it Gets even though I love his performance a great deal and I’ll give it to Robert Duvall for his work in The Apostle. Nicholson was great, but Duvall gave the best performance I have ever seen. Ever. I’m not exaggerating.

I’m going back to 1965 and giving Dr. Stragelove some love. It deserves best picture, best actor (Peter Sellers gave probably the best three comic performances in film history), and best director for Stanley Kubrick. Did you know that Kubrick only won one Oscar and it was for the visual effects in 2001? A travesty.

For that matter, let’s give some gold to Alfred Hitchcock, who, worse than Kubrick, only won an honorary Oscar. My vote is to give it to him for Psycho.

This one is going to take some shifting. First, take away Art Carney’s best actor—one of those annoying legacy awards—and hand it over to Al Pacino for his brilliance in The Godfather, Part II. Next, take Al Pacino’s statue for Scent of a Woman and give it to Denzel Washington for Malcolm X. Finally, take away Denzel Washington’s award for Training Day in which all he did was play a character against type who doesn’t develop, but simply yells a lot, and give it to Russell Crowe for his great performance in A Beautiful Mind. Take away Russell Crowe’s statue for Gladiator (which we will discuss soon, too) and give it to Tom Hanks for Cast Away.

Okay, so far I’ve given Tom Hanks two more Oscars. Let’s take his back-to-back Oscars away, which is tough because both of the performances he gave were great. His first Oscar for Philadelphia should go to Liam Neeson for Schindler’s List. His second Oscar for Forrest Gump deserves to be in Morgan Freeman’s hands for The Shawshank Redemption. For those Tom Hanks lovers, he’s still got two Oscars in my recalculation, so chill.

Now let’s look at Gladiator. How was this film even nominated? It’s overblown with lame special effects. It tries to be Braveheart except it’s purely a revenge story. Braveheart worked because William Wallace, while spurred initially by revenge ended up fighting for something bigger than himself. Maximus never does. The larger changes in society are mostly accidental. Braveheart was genius in that the villain and the hero never meet and the movie doesn’t suffer. When Maximus and Commodus meet in Gladiator, it feels contrived. But who should get the Oscar? Two great films are in contention: Traffic and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Both of these films worked on levels Gladiator couldn’t even imagine. Steven Soderbergh won for his direction of Traffic, and Ang Lee won best foreign picture for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, so the Academy clearly recognized the value of these films.

Good lord, Francis Ford Coppola only won best director for The Godfather Part II and not for the original? He gets the best director Oscar for the first The Godfather, without hesitation.

I’m going to do it. I’m going to take away Annie Hall’s Oscars for best picture and Woody Allen’s for his direction of the film and give them to Star Wars and George Lucas, respectively. Say what you will of Lucas’ direction in the latter films, the original was like nothing ever seen in its day.

I’ll also take away Driving Miss Daisy’s Oscar for best picture and give it to Field of Dreams.

I could go on—The Royal Tennenbaums deserves nominations for at least Gene Hackman’s and Gwyneth Paltrow’s performances—but this is a long post already. So, what do you think?