No less than eight films were nominated for Best Picture: “The Champ,” which won Best Actor for Wallace Beery and Original Story, “Grand Hotel,” which won the top award, “Bad Girl,” “Five Star Final,” “One Hour With You,” “Shanghai Express,” and “The Smiling Lieutenant.”

Each of the other 1976 Best Picture nominees was artistically more interesting than the winner, “Rocky.”. Hal Ashby's “Bound for Glory,” made with an eye for the Bicentennial, concerns the life and myth of Woodie Guthrie, the great folk singer and union organizer. Alan Pakula's “All the President's Men,” produced by Robert Redford, was a good political thriller about the Watergate scandal, based on the best seller by the Washington Post reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.

In 1995, the main competition in the Best Picture category was between Gibson's violent historical epic “Braveheart,” which received 10 nominations, and Ron Howard's fact-inspired adventure “Apollo 13,” with 9. The other nominees were the sleeper children's (and adult) fantasy “Babe,” the foreign-language film “Il Postino” (“The Postman”), and Ang Lee's literary adaptation “Sense and Sensibility.”

The most nominated (12) picture in 1993, “Schindler's List” competed for the top award with the action-adventure “The Fugitive (7 nominations), Jim Sheridan's socially-conscious drama “In the Name of the Father” (7), Campion's “The Piano” (8), and Merchant-Ivory production of “The Remains of the Day,” which, with 8 nods but o Oscars, became the biggest Oscar loser of the year.

The most nominated (12) picture in 1993, “Schindler's List” competed for the top award with the action-adventure “The Fugitive (7 nominations), Jim Sheridan's socially-conscious drama “In the Name of the Father” (7), Campion's “The Piano” (8), and Merchant-Ivory production of “The Remains of the Day,” which, with 8 nods but o Oscars, became the biggest Oscar loser of the year.