Sure, there was that awkward moment when Kim Novak likened The Artist's use of Vertigo's score to "rape", and Sean Penn himself came right out and said he had no idea what he was doing in The Tree of Life. But overall, it was a pretty mild-mannered year.
Zero Dark Thirty
The movie in a nutshell: Kathryn Bigelow chronicles the CIA's decade-long search for Osama bin Laden, led by obsessively driven agent Maya (Jessica Chastain).
The controversy in a nutshell: Some commentators have claimed that Bigelow's spectacularly smart, uneasy thriller endorses torture, by implying that its use uncovered vital information, while CIA director Michael Morell slammed the "significant artistic license" taken with the facts. The pro-torture claims have been vigorously denied by Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal and the film's stars, not to mention several critics who took a more ambiguous message from the film's depiction.
The movie in a nutshell: Kathryn Bigelow chronicles the CIA's decade-long search for Osama bin Laden, led by obsessively driven agent Maya (Jessica Chastain).
The controversy in a nutshell: Some commentators have claimed that Bigelow's spectacularly smart, uneasy thriller endorses torture, by implying that its use uncovered vital information, while CIA director Michael Morell slammed the "significant artistic license" taken with the facts. The pro-torture claims have been vigorously denied by Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal and the film's stars, not to mention several critics who took a more ambiguous message from the film's depiction.
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Copyright: Columbia Pictures
Jump-cut to 2013, and just about every film on the list has managed to stir up some serious debate, to the unfortunate point where it's started to take attention away from the films themselves.Few film fans will have missed the brouhaha around Kathryn Bigelow's portrayal of torture in Zero Dark Thirty, and Quentin Tarantino pretty much ensured that nobody will ever forget the debate around violence in Django Unchained. But this is just the tip of the controversy iceberg, and what fun are the Oscars if you can't take part in arguments?
Take a look through the gallery above for Digital Spy's condensed take on the hot-button issues this awards season.
