Monday, January 26, 2009

To The Academy: I Need More Time!

How can any worth-his-salt blogger write about the Academy Award nominations without having seen hardly any of the movies nominated?

LIKE THIS! Read on, faithful followers!

Haven't seen THE WRESTLER, but that is the one film that I want to see this year more than any other. It isn't up for best picture, although Rourke is nominated for Best Lead Actor. I would see WRESTLER over any film in the Best Picture category (and I haven't seen any of those either). Of the nominess for Best Picture, I would most likely take the time to see MILK or SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. BUTTON sounds like a bore-fest on wheels.

And no love for THE DARK KNIGHT, which I HAVE seen? Surely it is better than at least one of those films on this list. That is my biggest complaint with the Academy - an aversion to fantasy and sci-fi films. I still feel for Guillermo, who I'm convinced lost out for Best Foreign Film with PAN'S LABYRINTH because some old geezer voters didn't understand why their was a goat man in the film.

I only saw Ledger and Downey, Jr.'s performances in the Supporting Role category. Of the two, Ledger gets my vote - it was one of my favorite performances ever in fact. Downey Jr. was cool in TROPIC THUNDER, but THUNDER doesn't have the writing to deliver a win.

I didn't see Angelina's performance in THE CHANGELING, but I read about the real story on Wikipedia and it was fascinating. Comic book scribe J. Michael Straczynski wrote the screenplay.

Marisa Tomei deserves to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress just so the jokes will stop.

I didn't see BOLT, but regardless: GO WALL-E!!!

I can't wait to see MAN ON WIRE and ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD. They are in my Netflix queue as we speak.

I found a bad omen for HELLBOY 2 in the makeup category - if you go to the nominations section at this link, they don't even have a little HELLBOY icon next to the name like all the other movies. Just a generic "Oscars" icon. That's ok - I expect HELLBOY 2 to rake in the awards like Teddy KGB at the SATURN Awards this year.

Speaking of the SATURN awards - they need a "Best Fansite" category, don't you think?

And now, just so you'll take all my opinions with a grain of salt - here is the list of films I've seen this year that are nominated for an award:

TROPIC THUNDER
THE DARK KNIGHT
HELLBOY 2: THE GOLDEN ARMY
KUNG FU PANDA
WALL-E

Wow - I should come up with my own end-of-year awards (The Parkers?). The winning films would most likely be the ones that are freshest in my memory.

And I'm warning you, given those parameters -THE HEARTBREAK KID might be a shoo-in for Best Picture. I'm STILL quoting that movie and I saw it a month ago.

2 comments:

Jorge I. Figueroa F. said...

What can I say?
I live in Mexico, most of the films are yet to be shown down here if ever.

The changeling is bound to open, and Button (or Forrest Gump redux) is already here, but no hopes for slumdog millionaire or the reader,

I feel that Guillermo doesn't need the Oscar, as he said when he was down in Mexico promoting hellboy 2 (hey I got to meet him) there always be the germans

Erin Kubinek said...

Actually Button is worth the ticket price.
And it ISN'T "Forrest Gump redux"! It is really a great story and film making at its finest.

The academy does seem to have a historical bias against sci-fi and fantasy (save in the tech departments). In any category - if there is a historical film vs sci-fi, Historical will always win out. ( it seems - I have no 3's to back this up with)
Costumes seem especially prone to this rule.