Tuesday, February 26, 2008

The 2008 Academy Awards


Alright, so my pompous little Oscar rant from December turned out to be off the mark predictions-wise, but gimme a break-- I tried to call the winners before any films were even nominated. I still got four of the major categories right, and Diablo Cody did indeed win for Juno, which was the point of my diatribe to begin with. Best Original Screenplay is officially a joke category that only rewards offbeat quirk (Juno, which actually isn’t that bad, and Little Miss Sunshine, which is) or stories that work entirely on a gimmick (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Somewhere along the line, people got confused and started thinking the “original” meant “unique” rather than “not based on previous material.” If I were to crank out a script over next weekend about a vacuum cleaner salesman that starts a mariachi band, I’d probably be nominated next year. And if I got Philip Seymour Hoffman to star in it, I’d be a lock for the win.

Complaints aside, I suppose I’m glad that No Country For Old Men won, if only to get the surprise of seeing that the famously reclusive Cormac McCarthy was actually present at the ceremony. Regardless, It's sort of unfortunate that all the attention getting showered on No Country will only lead to it being considered overrated, which is strangely what happens with the Academy Awards. The industry and the media spend three months kissing the nominees' asses, but as soon as the award is actually given, they start talkin' shit.

3 comments:

DTG said...

oh please write that script.

DTG said...

oh and you were basically dead on.

however as a monday morning quarterback we should have known that the coens deserved an oscar at this point. and the academy deemed so via the novel by the recluse cormac mccarthy, that has since the films release drummed up a ton of attention on his original work. and holy wood sees there need for original work believe you me.

what you need to take into account next time is the theme of the oscars.

the black oscars, the poor oscars, the insane oscars. this year was the foreign oscars. it all comes back to the state of the nation at the time and what the smug bunch wants the public to believe they care about.

i'm glad the girl, tilda swinton, from young adam, won and called out george clooney in the process in a funny chummy way.

aShyCarnalKid said...

Xavier got the Oscar, but I think it Phillips Syemour Hoffman was also a good contender . I guess it must not have been an easy choice . What say you ?