Posts Tagged ‘Awards’

Things that make me happy

Monday, March 8th, 2010

#136

Avatar DIDN’T win the Oscar for Best Picture.

Because of a self-imposed boycott of the 82nd Annual Academy Awards,  I didn’t watch tonight’s ceremony, but I was online when the news broke that The Hurt Locker swept Best Director and Best Picture, leaving the polarizing Avatar in the dust.

My faith in the film industry has now been restored… a little bit, anyway.

The people who have seen Avatar fall into one of two opposing teams. Team Avatar insists the film was the best thing to ever happen to cinema and will defend their masterpiece and Director James Cameron to the death, while Team Dances With Smurfs acknowledges that the visual effects are stunning but the story is nothing more than cliched, poorly written tripe, undeserving of a $500 million budget and a $2.5 billion worldwide gross.

I haven’t seen The Hurt Locker yet so I can’t say whether or not I think the film deserved to win.  Of the 10 nominees, I’ve seen four: Avatar, District 9, Up, and Up in the Air, and of those films, Up in the Air would have been my pick for Best Picture.  The first fifteen minutes of Up were brilliant, but the last hour fell short of Pixar’s earlier Oscar-winning films Wall-E and The Incredibles.

I am curious to see if the Avatar controversy and the Academy’s gimmicky nomination of ten films for Best Picture were enough to entice millions of new viewers to the 3+ hours of awkward, unfunny presenters and pompous ceremony.  From the hundreds of angry rants on the Avatar and Hurt Locker IMDB message boards, one would think that an entire nation had tuned in for the battle between the blue smurfs and the bomb squad.  Well, everyone but me.

Of course the night’s real winner is director Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman in 82 years of Academy history to walk away with the Oscar for Best Director.  In the years to come, may the award always go to the most deserving auteur, regardless of gender.

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Things I’d Rather Watch than the Oscars

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

The 82nd Annual Academy Awards is on tonight… you know, that awards show where glamorous celebs get guzzied up in dazzling fashions, smile for the cameras, and then congratulate each other on a job well done in an industry where $75 million is spent on Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel which grosses almost a half-billion worldwide and ends up on the Academy’s short-list for Oscar nominee consideration.

The last time I cared (remotely/at all) about the Oscar stakes was in 2004 when The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King swept all awards in the 11 categories in which it was nominated.  Then I got a little older and a little wiser, and I realized that like most self-important ceremonies in which the overpaid are celebrated for doing their f*cking jobs, it’s all about the politics and the hype.  There are dozens of great films overlooked every year because the filmmakers can’t afford to spend millions in advertising and awards campaigns, so already the decks are stacked to favor the mega-blockbusters and the indie darlings that were lucky enough to get noticed in the first place.

When Avatar wins the Golden Globe for Best Drama and is in position to sweep the Oscars too, you know the system is broken.  The Academy can nominate as many films as it wants for best picture (deserving or no), and I still won’t watch their show.

Things I’d rather watch tonight (which may be terrible but are still less soul-sucking):

Channel
Time
Program
NBC
8:30 to 11:00 PM/EST
Bad Boys II
FX
5:30 to 9:00 PM/EST
Spider-Man III
CW
8:00 to 10:00 PM/EST
Hoodlum
SyFy
7:00 to 9:00 PM/EST
The Midnight Meat Train
Bravo
8:00 to 12:00 AM/EST
Law & Order: Criminal Intent
E!
9:00 to 11:00 PM/EST
Keeping Up with the Kardashians

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Golden Globes of Crapola

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Does that title seem bitter to you? Maybe just a tad?

Sunday night I made the regrettable decision to watch the Golden Globes for the first time since… I dunno, 2003? Ever? It’s hard to remember the Globes (aka: the Academy’s poor, country mouse cousin). It’s an awards show that tries to be classier than The MTV Movie Awards (not hard), but it still falls short of the prestige of the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) awards.

I turned on the TV just as John Lithgow was walking to the stage to accept the best supporting actor award for Dexter, and I was like heck yeah, he totally deserved it! The fourth season’s Trinity Killer (as portrayed by Lithgow) chilled me to the core, as few TV villains ever have. Mere minutes later it was Michael C. Hall himself climbing the stairs to accept the best actor award for Dexter, and I was hooked.  The Hollywood Foreign Press had smartened up and was finally giving a great show its due, and I couldn’t wait to see what deserving films would be recognized and celebrated.

Which is when the awards show went to hell.

For one thing, the announcements before every commercial break hyped up Avatar so much that by the end of the night I wasn’t sure if I wanted to puke or kill James Cameron… or puke while killing James Cameron.

“Everyone’s eagerly waiting to find out…will Avatar win big tonight?”

Not if there’s justice in the world.

“Find out after these messages!”

I’ll die first!

What was even more offensive than excessive brown nosing to Avatar fans during the breaks was the fact that the damn movie actually won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Drama.  Because apparently mediocre storytelling is deserving of the night’s highest honor as long as $300 million+ is spent on kick-ass visual effects.

But Avatar wasn’t the only blockbuster winner for the night… also awarded was The Hangover for Best Motion Picture – Comedy, Sandra Bullock as best actress for The Blind Side, Robert Downey, Jr. as best actor for Sherlock Holmes, and the list goes on.  No film that made less than $100 million at the box office was a big winner for the night, which means the smaller, indie films were all but shut out (with the exception of Mo’Nique’s best supporting actress win for Precious and Jeff Daniel’s best actor win for Crazy Heart).

It’s true that most of the night’s winners were big crowd-pleasers (otherwise their box office tallies wouldn’t be so high), but since when has mass appeal dictated which films are worth celebrating for their contributions to cinema?  If you’re going to award films based on mass appeal, you might as well do away with all the high-brow, hoity-toity showmanship and make the Golden Globes an Internet poll.

The Globes have soured me for the Oscars in March.  The Academy is already desperate to appeal to a larger viewership which is why the Best Picture category now includes ten films instead of the usual five to make room not only for Avatar’s nomination but other blockbuster favorites like District 9 (very good, actually) and Star Trek.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Academy follows in the Globes’ footsteps this year, awarding Avatar top honors, and thereby ensuring the masses will tune in this year and beyond to see what fan favorite will win next.

The Golden Globe Winners:
Worldwide Box Office Tallies (as of 1/19/10)

Best Motion Picture – Drama
Avatar, $1,620,293,100

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
The Hangover, $459,422,869

Best Animated Film
Up, $683,004,164

Best Director – Motion Picture
James Cameron for Avatar, $1,620,293,100

Best Performance by an Actor – Drama
Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart, $2,285,965

Best Performance by an Actress – Drama
Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side, $228,181,615

Best Performance by an Actor – Musical or Comedy
Robert Downey Jr. for Sherlock Holmes, $313,526,907

Best Performance by an Actress – Musical or Comedy
Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia, $118,552,598

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds, $312,635,374

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Mo’Nique for Precious: Based on the Novel Push, $44,833,760

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