Yeah, yeah. I know there are really important matters going on in the world and whining about an award show is like one step up from complaining about the weather...but whatever. I like to bitch and moan and you obviously are bored enough to keep reading...
BEST PICTURE:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
An absolute disgrace. First off, the Weinstein Brothers can go fuck themselves with buying off the Academy. It started the year Shakespeare In Love beat out Saving Private Ryan and continues to piss me off to this very day. The Reader was awful. Completely distant, a "twist" that would make even M. Night Shyamalan go, "Really?!" Just a lame movie that deals with the Holocaust and therefore is soooooo much more important than say Wall*E or The Dark Knight. Ricky Gervais wasn't far off when he told Kate Winslet that she'd win an Oscar for doing a WWII film.
Frost/Nixon was underwhelming as well. And listen, I LOVE politics, but this film was flat out boring at times. I expected to be on the edge of my seat, watching these two important figures battle to the end...but most of the movie was focused on the behind-the-scenes bullshit. They blow right through the first 3 tapings, and by the time the fourth and final one hits the screen, it just feels like they rushed to get us there.
Both of those films could have been knocked off the list and made way for Doubt, Wall*E, The Dark Knight, a whole bunch of better and riskier films. But my money is on MILK. Even though I loved Slumdog, MILK will stand a test of time. It was remarkable and would be a sign that the academy isn't full of old cronies afterall.
BEST ORIGINAL SONG:
WALL-E - "Down to Earth"
Slumdog Millionaire - "Jai Ho"
Slumdog Millionaire - "O Saya"
First off, why only three choices?! This has ALWAYS been five in the past. In fact THREE of them last year were from that piece of shit Enchanted. And secondly, screw whomever came up with the idea that if a song isn't simply on the soundtrack, it's not eligible. That's the bullshit reason why Springsteen got chopped off. He liked his "The Wrestler" song so much, he's going to put it on his new album. (which comes out next Tuesday) But it's not like it was a song that he had sitting around for a decade or anything. He wrote it as a personal favor for his friend, Mickey Rourke. It was a brand new, original song for The Wrestler. If his album came out months from now, this wouldn't even have been an issue. Which is why it's bullshit. Let's hope if any of these three win, they NEVER include that song on any sort of "Greatest Hits" package or anything...
2 comments:
I can't argue at all with your logic on any of this, but...
Much as I LOVED The Dark Knight, I don't think it's Best Picture material at all. It's a superhero adventure. It was great fun, and I thought well-written, well-directed and nicely acted, beautifully executed on every technical level. Ledger deserves the nod, but if he wins, it's because he's dead (and because of his performance in Brokeback) and we won't have any more interesting, moving performances from him in future.
Joker is scary in TDK to us comic book geeks because we were pre-disposed to believe that. For the average moviegoer, he's just a clown in a purple suit and the film is just another crime flick.
Perhaps I'm biased, but I reeeeeally wanted The Dark Knight to be awesome and it exceeded my expectations. I'm not saying that it should WIN Best Picture, but it easily could have been nominated.
(I mean, it's 1,000,000 times better than the Lord of the Rings shit)
But I think my real hatred wasn't that it didn't get nominated as much as it was that The Reader did.
And I respectfully disagree with Ledger's nomination simply being a nod to his earlier work or a result of people feeling bad that he died so young. People said the same thing about why the box office was so high the first couple of weeks that The Dark Knight was in theaters. ("It's just cause Heath died.")
His performance as The Joker was so powerful because, much like Sean Penn in Milk, the moment he steps on the screen and gives his first bit of dialogue, you forget he's a famous actor playing a role.
And it's not simply because he was hiding behind make-up. He just became someone else entirely. His mannerisms, his lil' pauses and placing his hair off to one side. It's the type of performance that will stand the test of time.
Post a Comment