Wednesday Oscar Retrospective: The Real Best Pictures of 2006

Welcome back to a weekly feature here at Movies with Abe, Wednesday Oscar Retrospective. The Real Best Pictures is the seventh in a series of projects looking back at the past eight years of the Oscars, dating back to the first ceremony I watched and closely followed.

For this feature, imagine that an Oscar nomination for Best Picture was cumulative rather than based on votes in just that category. That means taking into account how well a film performed in other categories, and how many Oscars it eventually took home. Like the other series before it, this one is highly speculative, but the point is just to have fun, so chime in with your thoughts in the comments!

And the nominees were… Babel, The Departed, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen

The keepers, no questions: Best Picture winner The Departed was the clear favorite, and Babel was also lauded with a number of nominations, as was The Queen.

The question marks: It won two awards, but Little Miss Sunshine only earned two other nominations. Two acting mentions and a screenplay nod aren’t enough to suggest true love outside of the Best Picture category.

The losers: Clint Eastwood’s Japanese language Letters from Iwo Jima netted just four nominations, none of which were in the acting categories, and won just one award, for Best Sound Editing.

The new inclusions: That would be surprise snubee Dreamgirls, which, after winning the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Comedy/Musical, found itself nominated for eight Oscars, but not for Best Picture, Best Director, or Best Adapted Screenplay.

The new nominees: Babel, The Departed, Dreamgirls, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen

Come back next week for a look at the Real Best Pictures of 2005!