Friday, January 23, 2009
The Academy Awards Blew It
If you blinked, you may have missed it.
The Academy Award nominations were announced yesterday. And let me just say this: They blew it.
Check out the five Academy Award nominations for Best Picture: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, The Reader, and Slumdog Millionaire.
Three of the five pictures have a box office gross of less than $10 million each. No wonder nobody is talking about who might win: No one cares.
Now box office sales, of course, cannot be the guiding light for deciding who will win Best Picture, otherwise we'd have Independence Day and The Transformers to discuss as "art". But the movie the Academy passed on that would have generated enormous buzz and interest in the awards presentation is going to have to take consolation in having eight other nominations, including one for supporting actor. Of course, I'm talking about The Dark Knight.
Yes, it's about Batman. Yes, it's a comic-book movie. Yes, it's also an action film. But so what? IT'S GOOD! Few films can generate cross-appeal to both the mass audiences and critics alike; just head over to rottentomatoes.com to see the 94% critic approval rating combined with almost $1 BILLION in ticket sales worldwide. This film connected with a huge audience and it's one of those movies that will be talked about for years, and not just because of the likely post-mortem Oscar that Heath Ledger will win for his memorable role as The Joker.
The Academy had a chance to show it's not set in its ways and won't be constrained by what's considered an "ideal" best picture winner by giving The Dark Knight its day in court. Sadly, and I guess without surprise, they snubbed it.
Screwjob!
(But I will take the time to say I was very happy to see Mickey Rourke get his best actor nomination for The Wrestler. If he and Ledger win, that might make it memorable enough for me).
# posted by SBP : 3:48 PM
Comments:
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I do agree it was a good movie, but it certainly wasn't a GREAT movie....
And I think a film has to have that tag to be worthy of a nomination.
Get ripped
And I think a film has to have that tag to be worthy of a nomination.
Get ripped
# posted by 
: 6:15 PM, January 23, 2009
: 6:15 PM, January 23, 2009
I gotta agree with Freeze somewhat. I LOVED the Dark Knight, but I can see why it wasn't honoured with a best picture nomination. Hopefully it'll encourage Nolan to do even more with the next one!
...and that'll get snubbed to.
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...and that'll get snubbed to.
# posted by : 3:03 PM, January 24, 2009
: 3:03 PM, January 24, 2009Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
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