In theory, it sounds cool - take the best movies of the fiscal year, give them awards for things such as Best Editing, Best Original Song, Best Actor, etc. and the Best Picture Oscar goes to the best movie of the year. Throw in performances of movie soundtracks and A Lifetime Achievement Award and how could it NOT be cool? I can tell you. I'm a movie lover, call me movie buff, call me movie geek. Call me what you want, there a very few things I like more than watching a good movie; and like Leonard Maltin, famed movie critic, I have a varying tastes. I love action movies, but I'll watch a drama if Mom says it's good (she a really good judge of what I'll like) and I also am quite fond of a good comedy (and those are hard to find). The point is, I have a varied repertoire of films that I like. Enter The Academy Awards 80: This Time It's Stupid. Well, I tuned in Sunday to see who's winning and the award for best special effects was up. Now this past year some amazing effects were in the Movie Biz: TMNT, Transformers, Spider-Man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Beowulf, etc. Fewer than half of those were nominated and of the nominees, I thought Transformers was the sure winner. Unfortunately, the God-hating, Narnia rip-off The Golden Compass won. The brilliant 3:10 to Yuma was only nominated for Best Sound Editing, no Best Actor for Christan Bale, or Best Picture. Live Free or Die Hard, the latest entry in the popular Die Hard series was nominated for nothing,same with Spider-man 3. I keep seeing the Academy looking like the snooty food critic from Ratatouille saying to themselves, "you plebeians don't understand true art." Well, personally I don't understand Picasso, but I know a cool movie when I see one. Enchanted, which was a wonderful movie (I think Mom already said that on a previous post, but I'm clarifying) got nominations for three of its songs, including the very theatrical "How Does She Know" and lost to a movie called Once (don't fret, I've never heard of it either). All in all, I'm losing respect for the Academy, as it is to focused on artsy movies instead of the summer blockbusters we've all come to love. But hey, at least Super Smash Brothers comes out soon for Wii. In the mean time I could try to figure out how to build a hover board...or I could just eat some candy.
Candy is nice.
(From Laura: We're going to occasionally allow Caleb to guest blog from time to time. It's good for him and we can buy cool stuff with the money we charge him. :D )
1 comment:
interesting post there Caleb... I have a thought (in the spirit of a lively debate). Should the academy cow-tao to the mass commercialism that permeates our society in order to "make people happy?" What i mean is, "Alvin and the Chipmunks" was a sleeper-hit, it did better than anyone thought, why? Who knows, maybe a bunch of generation Y and Xer's reminiscing about their lost youth while making there new entitlement-driving offspring happy at the latest Hollywood remake, was the right formula. No awards for it?(at least not yet.)Doesn't the Academy have to be careful about what influence it takes from "the masses?" In order to further the general "art" of the craft? Movie's are about story-telling, sometimes that story turns out to be a massive hit! Other times, the "art" is not understood, (or can't be viewed) because of cultural, societal or even age restrictions, but should that exclude it from the recognition it so richly deserves? I will admit that sometimes (more often than not) the academy seems to be "up in the night" about their choices for some of these movies, but no system is perfect.
For a up-and-coming movie aficionado, such as yourself, i would recommend signing-up for a free account at AFI.com (American Film Institute) and downloading one or all of the "Top 100" lists and start working your way through them. I've found that these lists are actually a pretty good blending between the opinions of masses and the academy.
KEEP BLOGGING!!
~Love ya man!
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