The Fellowship of the Ring was a really good movie, but it was
not a Best Picture. I have very high standards for best pictures, and AMPAS has rarely met them in the last 20 years. A Beautiful Mind comes closer to best picture status than LOTR, but only a little bit. The reason why The Fellowship of the Ring was not a best picture is because it\'s only 1/3 of the story. If Peter Jackson had released the entire LOTR in one 9 hour movie, that could have been a best picture, but The Fellowship of the Ring does not qualify by itself in my opinion. Objectively, The Two Towers and Return of the King both contain more interesting portions of the story, so how could you proclaim The Fellowship of the Ring as the best picture? You\'d have to give it to each film for three years running.
To be honest, The Royal Tenenbaums was much more a Best Picture than any of the others that were nominated.
