No, it was not the dental prosthetic that explains why few of Caan’s later screen roles matched Sonny’s boorish machismo. What explains that is Caan was a great actor who played different characters with different traits in his later screen roles.

“Make-up” Oscars given to stars who didn’t receive an Academy Award for earlier work that should’ve been recognized is not uncommon. A good example would be Pacino’s Oscar for the not-so-great “Scent of a Woman” after his legendary work in Godfathers I and II — and ironically, he beat out another Oscar-worthy Washington performance in Malcom X

The moral: the Oscars are about promoting the movie business more than they are about rewarding deserving talent.

After yammering semi-coherently for way too many sentences, you finally it that you just don’t like X and Washington’s performance because they present a positive portrait of someone who practiced a religion other than your own. In other words, while there is lots of debate about the role racism played in X not getting an Oscar, there’s no debate whatsoever about what role bigotry played in your comment.