If your favorite movie of 2014 leaves Oscar Sunday a loser, have no fear. History suggests that the Academy Award losers have just as good a chance to become all-time classics as the winners. Granted, sometimes, the Academy gives the little golden statue to the right film. No one is going to argue The Godfather (1972), Casablanca (1942), or Schindler’s List (1993). But seriously, in 20 years is ANYONE gonna remember the overrated message movie of Crash (2005) or even the more recent 21st century silent film, The Artist? I sincerely doubt it. In fact, on 2007’s American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest Films (10-year edition), 14 out the top 20 were NOT Best Picture winners, some not even nominated.

So here’s a brief list of some of the greatest Academy Award Best Picture losers of all time.

Today marks the 70th birthday of Academy Award-winning actor Robert De Niro, best known for his roles in classic films like The Godfather Part II, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, and The Deer Hunter, and better known to today’s younger audiences for his comedic turns in the Meet The Parents movies.

There will likely be a wide array of tributes and celebratory revelry for the man all day today. One of the coolest ones so far has to be the collection of newly realized movie posters, which takes three of De Niro’s most popular pictures — The Godfather Part II, Raging Bull, and Meet the Parents — and presents them in a 1950’s style, utilizing a sort of stark, bold colorization on the backdrop of a key image from each respective film.

Check out all the posters here below.

A big milestone today in Hollywood for Robert De Niro, who, after nearly 50 years is one of Tinseltown’s most revered and vaunted cinematic heirlooms: the filmdom pioneer who remains of the slim few of his generation who bridges the gap of Old Hollywood and the New Hollywood, which he was hugely instrumental in helping shape, turns 70 years old.

Born on August 17, 1943 in New York City, Robert De Niro’s career spans an arc over many different eras and tastes in American history, film history, and world history. He has made an absolute and finite art of the character of the tough guy, who harbors an emotionally stilted, bottled-up rage inside the color of the darkest of spectrums, within his characters. His style is from an old school, yet a school which teaches the approach of its technique well into the perpetuity. The man’s resume is like a rundown of some of the all-time top American films. With influence that runs deep like an electrical current to all involved with cinema, be it his co-workers, craftsmen, artists, and fans, Robert De Niro sits high atop a mighty short shortlist of actors who have reached zeniths again and again and continue to stimulate, accentuate, gravitate, and mediate to all parties involved in the Tinseltown game.

Former Middleweight Champion and colorful and controversial pugilist Jake LaMotta, best known to film going audiences for the gritty, hard-nosed bio pic that showcased his life, Raging Bull, is now the subject of a full-length feature documentary.

LaMotta, 92, is collaborating with Greg Olliver, best known for co-directing and producing Lemmy, the much-lauded film about the Motorhead frontman Ace of Spades, Lemmy Kilmister. Oliver also has projects such as a documentary about a WWII Commando and blues stalwart Johnny Winter in the works.

The LaMotta project, which already started filming in Arizona back in January of this year, will feature interviews with fellow athletes such as Mike Tyson, as well as actors, family, and friends, all whom are sure to give a keen insight to the complex and emotional boxer.

Martin Scorsese, whose directorial style in the world of cinema has placed him in the absolute pantheon of some of the all-time greats past or present, celebrates his 70th birthday today!

The works of Scorsese are held in the highest regard, the running themes for the most part of his still on-going filmography have points mired in guilt and ultimate salvation through redemption, mostly by way of extreme violence or some sort of characterization which breaks down (lifts up as?) naked, exposed as shameless or triumphant, but in its uncomfortably organic foundations. Themes of alpha males in trouble, or self-abuse that manifests itself to the destruction of themselves and characters around them, usually done for the most part in an Italian-American milieu. Scorsese never makes things easy, he never makes watching his films easy, in fact quite the contrary, when one embarks on watching one of his works they have not seen before, there’s always a backburner with the reminder that a Scorsese production is going to get jarring, it’s going to get intense, it is going to be visual and with the upmost respect and passion for filmmaking as an art as well as taking care of its narratives. With a Scorsese film, with a Scorsese production, whether the end result is satisfying or not, and the entire Scorsese filmography for certain has peak high and valley low all over it, there’s still going to be an instant stamp on it, a branding that only this Italian-American pioneer has mastered in his own right.