The Oscars revealed their nominations in the last day or so. I have sat here trying to ponder ways to be witty, snide, sarcastic, and intellectual about the list. I have failed. It is so devoid of content I just gave up. I did however, make a list:
| The Visitor | 1 | N | N |
Frost/Nixon |
5 | N | N |
| MILK | 8 | N | N |
Benjamin Button |
13 | N | N |
| The Wrestler | 2 | N | N |
Tropic Thunder |
1 | Y | Y |
| Doubt | 5 | N | N |
The Dark Knight |
8 | Y | Y |
Revolutionary Road |
3 | N | N |
Rachel Getting Married |
1 | N | N |
Changeling |
3 | N | N |
Frozen River |
2 | N | N |
| The Reader | 5 | N | N |
| Vicky Christina Barcelona | 1 | N | N |
| Bolt | 1 | Y | N |
| Kung Fu Panda | 1 | Y | N |
Wall-E |
6 | Y | Y |
| The Duchess | 2 | N | N |
| Slumdog Millionaire | 10 | N | N |
| Australia | 1 | N | N |
| The Betrayel | 1 | N | N |
| Hellboy | 1 | N | Y |
| Defiance | 1 | N | N |
| Iron Man | 2 | Y | Y |
| Wanted | 2 | N | N |
| happy go lucky | 1 | N | N |
| In bruges | 1 | N | N |
This lists the movie, it’s nominations count, whether I saw it or not, and most importantly, whether I’d like to see it again. Some notes I gathered while amassing this work of celluloid waste:
- Apparently the committee only saw 27 movies this year.
- Why do they feel a motion picture about an interview was worthy of any merit at all? I mean, it was the interview that was a classic. Why not just show it with commentaries?
- The only category I have seen every movie listed in is “Animated Feature Film”.
- I have not even heard of most of the movies on this list.
- Why do they feel “Bolt” is a better animated feature than, say, Igor? The animation in Igor was profoundly more interesting than that of Bolt or Kung Fu Panda. For that matter, any animation is more interesting than Bolt or Kung Fu Panda. Wall-E should get this one by default.
- Do they REALLY think a movie about an otherwise dull personality that ages backwards is worthy of every single category they can put it in outside of Animated Feature Film? Or, does the face on the movie poster mean that much to them? I mean, give me a freakin break here. Acting out a dull person does not merit an Oscar nomination to me ( do I hear echoes of Robert Downey Jr? ). Every single one of the leads in Tropic Thunder put more into their acting than Brad Pitt does in this movie. If they feel they absolutely have to adorn Brad Pitt with some award, give it to him for Burn After Reading. He didn’t totally suck in that one.
- Five Years from now, the only two movies that will be watched to any degree will be The Dark Knight and especially Tropic Thunder. I really think Tropic Thunder has what it takes to become a cult classic.
- Along the same lines, I really think most all of the other 25 will be completely forgotten and when the commercials for movies in 2014 state “Oscar award winning actor _________”, it won’t mean much of anything because people like me already know that if they have to rely on a tag like that to sell the movie, the movie’s as bad as the movie the person won the Oscar for in the first place.
To me the Oscars are all about celebs stroking each other. That’s it. Nowhere else on this planet would movies like “The Wrestler”, “The Reader”, “The Betrayal” or “The Visitor”, even get watched because the names were so bland. And, for me, there already is a better indicator of what were the best movies of 2008:
| The Dark Knight | 73,750,219 |
| Iron Man | 44,223,903 |
| Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull | 44,041,822 |
| Hancock | 31,659,205 |
| WALL-E | 31,084,290 |
| Kung Fu Panda | 29,921,471 |
| Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa | 24,585,668 |
| Twilight | 24,572,618 |
| Quantum of Solace | 23,169,502 |
| Horton Hears a Who | 21,462,422 |
| Sex and the City | 21,201,008 |
| Mamma Mia! | 20,018,064 |
| Juno | 19,929,898 |
| The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian | 19,669,651 |
| The Incredible Hulk | 18,723,182 |
| Wanted | 18,681,743 |
| Get Smart | 18,099,890 |
| Four Christmases | 16,415,255 |
| Tropic Thunder | 15,349,349 |
| Bolt | 15,266,270 |
Pick whatever award you want to give them and just dole out 20. That number to the right to me is the greatest indicator from as broad a spectrum as you can find. That’s the number of tickets sold. There is nothing subjective about it. Now, for chucks and giggles, I’ll let you all do the List A to List B comparison of what Hollywood thinks is good versus what the rest of the world thinks is good. I think it’s fairly obvious what the connection to the rest of the world Hollywood has right now is.
