Best Picture, 2000

Awards presented March 25, 2001

The nominees were ...
... when they should have been ... 
And the Oscar went to ...
Gladiator. A throwback to the sin, sex, swords, and sandals epics of Cecil B. DeMille, and to such '50s blockbusters as Quo Vadis and Ben-Hur, but without their overlay of Christian piety. Gladiator, like the TV series it inspired, "Rome" and "Spartacus: Blood and Sand" (and its three sequels), tries to replace religiosity with humanistic values like brotherhood and liberty. But we really came for the sin, sex, and swords (some of us perhaps for the sandals) and the over-the-top violence. It won Russell Crowe the Oscar he deserved for better movies, and also received awards for sound, costumes, and special effects.

... when it should have gone to ... 
Wonder Boys 
It netted only one Oscar, for Bob Dylan's song, "Things Have Changed," and only two nominations, for Dede Allen's editing and for Steve Kloves's screenplay, adapted from the Michael Chabon novel. Many thought Michael Douglas would be nominated for best actor, as he should have been. While they were at it, they might have given acting nominations to Robert Downey Jr. and Frances McDormand, too. Worst of all, director Curtis Hanson was overlooked after keeping on track this terrifically off-beat comic look at academia, a subject too easy for satire.
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