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ESPECIALLY Coaster -- the ONLY Oscar Russell Crowe deserved to win was for "The Insider" -- quite possibly one of the best performances in modern day history. He seriously got gypped by Spacey and would have been just as gypped by Pacino (who, interestingly, was the co-star he upstaged in "The Insider"). That's not to say I don't think Crowe did a great job in "A Beautiful Mind" or a good job in "Gladiator" (easily the weakest of the 3 performances, even weaker than "LA Confidential," for which he got nada), but "The Insider" was miles ahead of all the other contenders in 1999 and most any year.
And although I thought absolutely nothing of "Any Given Sunday" (other than it was too damn long) or Pacino's performance one way or the other, if anybody deserved to be kicked off for Pacino, it was probably Farnsworth, simply because I'm quite sure he was just playing himself: a crotchety silly old man. Still, though, a good performance. (I'm not even going to get into my constant argument about Spacey also playing himself, but his movie was so damn good that I'm not going to whine too much about the fact that he was nominated over people who deserved it more, like especially his "arch-nemesis," Ray Winstone in "The War Zone.")
Cameron Diaz did indeed deserve an Oscar nomination in 1999 -- Best Supporting Actress for "Being John Malkovich"! That performance was far superior to her cartoon character in "Any Given Sunday."
And I don't know that I would exactly call "Boys Don't Cry" a "chick flick." If you know anything about Brandon Teena/Teena Brandon, you know exactly what I'm talking about... (the others all are chick flicks, and boring, annoying chick flicks in two cases, while "Tumbleweeds" was a movie-of-the-week that somehow made it to the bigscreen -- and did have OUTSTANDING performances from the lead actresses -- less we forget, Janet McTeer is British, and was playing abused American white trash like nobody's business. But I think Heather Donahue deserved that nomination more than her or any of the others besides maybe Swank.)
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