Not exactly the Oscars

OVERLOOKED AND OVERRATED, NASTY AND SEXY: Borat

Every year, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences rewards the movie industry’s finest and noblest efforts, its most transcendent artistic achievements and feats of creative and technical brilliance. And, every year, the Mirror rewards the movie industry’s less-celebrated achievements: its most bodacious bods and trashiest turkeys. This, of course, is the Alternative Academy Awards, and your choices, dear readers, are as follows...

Movie most over-looked by the Academy

Alfonso Cuarón’s brilliantly harrowing futuristic thriller rightfully takes the top spot here, with the faux-Kazakhstani hijinks of Borat close behind. Not much love for Dave Chappelle or the sudsy romp Beerfest, however.

FUTURISTIC FAVE: Children of Men

Most overlooked performance

Another couple nods for Borat and Children of Men here, with readers also repping for Matt Damon’s under-recognized turn in The Departed, and practically nobody voting for Jodie Foster’s entertaining turn in Inisde Man (which deserves its own spinoff movie).

33% Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat
25% Clive Owen, Children of Men
23% Matt Damon, The Departed
11% Kirsten Dunst, Marie Antoinette
8% Jodie Foster, Inside Man

Best Soundtrack

Sofia Coppola’s totally ’80s period piece totally rules here, with Dave Chappelle’s totally ’90s hip hop hoedown coming in second.

31% Marie Antoinette
26% Dave Chappelle’s Block Party
22% The Last King of Scotland
15% Shortbus
6% ATL

Best male bod

The bulked-out Bond bod of Brit Daniel Craig was your favourite swimsuit-filler this year, while man in tights Routh didn’t stand a shot.

BOND BOD: Daniel Craig

Best female bod

Penélope Cruz’s prosthetically enhanced bum makes her the bod to beat this year.

BOUNTIFUL BUM: Penélope Cruz

Worst performance

Amazing that enough people saw Basic Instinct 2 to give Sharon Stone the overwhelming win here.

38% Sharon Stone, Basic Instinct 2
22%Tom Hanks, The Da Vinci Code
17% Nicolas Cage, The Wicker Man
15% Hilary Swank, The Black Dahlia
8% Kate Bosworth, Superman Returns

Most overrated

Borat love turns sour here, leading to an incredible three-way tie for second and a record-breaking no votes for the perhaps poorly chosen Letters From Iwo Jima!

50% Borat
17% Little Miss Sunshine
17% Babel
17% Dreamgirls
0% Letters From Iwo Jima

Turkey of the year

Quite a crop of crap to choose from this year! Ron Howard’s murky conspiracy thriller takes the “top” prize, while M. Night Shyamalan’s highly publicized flameout, surprisingly, gets the fewest votes.

33% The Da Vinci Code
25% The Wicker Man
17% The Fountain
17% Art School Confidential
8% Lady in the Water

Comeback of the year

Philadelphia’s proudest pugilist punches his way into the top spot, with erstwhile veep Gore riding his enviro-conscious showbiz rebirth to the second-place slot.

Nastiest scene of the year

Obese, hairy, nude man-on-man grappling—no, it’s not the Mirror office on a Monday morning, but our unsettling winning scene.

36% Nude wrestling, Borat
27% Optic nerve slicing, Hostel
18% Iced testicles, Jackass Number Two
10% Kay’s corpse, The Last King of Scotland
9% Human sacrifice, Apocalypto

Best sex scene

Well, how can you really beat a movie that shows... like... everything? Shortbus, with its sweetly explicit polymorphous perversity, takes it in a landslide.

67% Shortbus
17% Black Dahlia
8% Basic Instinct 2
8% Destricted
0% Bangkok Loco

And now for the real Oscars...

Congratulations to our Grand Prize winner Mabel Davis, who performed the truly prescient feat of naming all of the winners in the top six categories (Best Picture, Best Director and the four acting awards). Mabel takes home 16 double passes to the Cinéma du Parc and six individual passes to Ex-Centris. Two contestants got one answer wrong; from those, we randomly selected Tom Hansen. He’ll enjoy eight double passes to the C du P and four individual Ex-Centris tickets.

Ballots compiled by Hanako Hoshimi-Caines, pithy commentary provided by Mark Slutsky

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