One can hardly go wrong with a movie about a horse, right? Perhaps, but this year’s big horse movie, “Seabiscuit,” was definitely not one of the best movies of the year and should not have been nominated for an Oscar, especially when there were many other films that were far superior.
Now, “Seabiscuit” was not a bad movie by any means. Not at all. The acting was quite good and the story was touching, but even so, the film was too far-reaching and is not what the Guardian deems to be “Oscar material.” How can one filmmaker truly capture the spirit of a nation during a time of depression, a horse, its owner, its trainer and its jockey and still hope to be cohesive at the end?
How could “Seabiscuit” be nominated for an Oscar when films like “In America” or “Whale Rider,” which were infinitely more original and more sensitive in their emotional pleas, go unnoticed? And then how could others like “Big Fish,” which had extraordinary cinematography, be ignored in favor of the clichéd historical-info-pic filming techniques used in “Seabiscuit,” which can be seen on any History Channel special.
