1/26/11

I've been doing this site for a little over four years now, and when it's come to the Academy Awards, you've always been able to count on me to do one thing:  bitch, bitch, bitch!  I've railed against the Academy for being out of touch, for having no taste, and for generally looking to settle some strange score with the American public for daring to support the Talkies and such.  But for one brief, shining moment, allow me to bury the hatchet somewhere other than in that asexual golden statue's back:  the 2011 Oscar nominees are as good a list as one could realistically expect, and indeed the Academy's best round since the 1998 awards in which the excellence of Titanic, LA Confidential, As Good as it Gets and Good Will Hunting dominated the evening.  A whole lot of things went right, for a change.  For instance:

1)The movies:  Oh, don't get me wrong, the Academy can always find plenty of quality flicks to miss the boat on, but filmmakers also used to make it easier on them to find good movies that were actually in their wheelhouse than they have the last few years.  This time, films like True Grit, The Fighter, The King's Speech and Winter's Bone delivered solid entertainment value and off-the-charts acting while staying firmly within the confines of what we traditionally think of an Oscar Movie as, thus minimizing the need for the voters to go looking for films to honor in unsavory places or take the absence of same as an excuse to send vague political messages instead of honor quality filmmaking.

2)The Academy:  Credit where credit is due for, with the help of that ten-film Best Picture field (which, for the second year in a row, actually included the year's top-grossing movie, in this case, Toy Story 3), going outside that comfort zone a little.  Nominations for that animated flick, a Sci-Fi extravaganza (Inception), an artsy horror movie (Black Swan) and even a drama about "the Internets" (The Social Network, which could actually even win Best Picture) are decidedly un-Academy.  Now it's their job to give those movies more genuine consideration than the likes of Star Wars, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and The Sixth Sense received after their nomination in major categories in the past.

3)Moviegoers:  Yes, take a moment to pat yourself on the back:  for the first time in years, nobody needed to be dynamited out of their homes to see quality fare like all but one of the movies mentioned above, helping to steer the voters toward these excellent films and heal any potential rift caused by last year's rather pointed "F you!" in selecting uber-flop The Hurt Locker as Best Picture in no small part because it hadn't had the poor taste to make money the way Avatar had.  And because we've all actually SEEN these movies, the 2011 Oscars can again be America's moviegoing lovefest the way they used to be rather than the stern lecture they've increasingly become.

4)Actors:  Can you recall a year when more movies featured more great performances?  Perhaps frightened by the proliferation of sequels, remakes, reboots and action figure adaptations into knowing how good they've got it, performers of all levels of esteem brought it pretty much every time they had the chance this holiday season, resulting in a round of acting nominations a person can get genuinely excited about.  The ten nominated movies alone contained a formidable selection of "snubbed" performers for whom there was no room (Mark Wahlberg for The Fighter, Leonardo DiCaprio for Inception, Mila Kunis for Black Swan, Andrew Garfield and Armie Hammer for The Social Network).

5)Filmmakers:  You could see this ship slowly turning last year when major filmmakers like Wes Anderson and Spike Jonze dabbled in kids movies, but the pressures mentioned above seem to have finally awakened a generation of writers and directors to the fact that the best and most enduring dramas always have a dash of genre to them, and getting your point about the human condition into a horror flick, an FX extravaganza, a heist movie or an inspirational sports tale is not just good for business, but also good for all the above constituencies.  The marriage of art and commerce is not to be feared, it is the very point of commercial filmmaking, and this year's nominees reflect the fact that major directors are making major movies that you don't need a degree in film to enjoy, which in turn helps to educate moviegoers to expect, and then demand, better when they pay for their ticket.  Can I get an 'Amen'?!?

6)Me:  Hell, yeah, I've got to give myself a little credit!  Seven of the movies on my Ten Best List received at least one nomination, and it would have been eight had The King's Speech opened nationwide before the first of the year.  Ordinarily, this would be my cue to bellyache about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World being denied at least a screenplay nomination, but since The Academy and I are buds this year, I'll let it pass.

Some other notes, without getting into the specifics I'll cover in my Oscar preview in a month or so:

-How about the John Hawkes nomination for Winter's Bone?  A truly amazing performance I thought had been thoroughly eclipsed by the march of Jennifer Lawrence's much-deserved Best Actress hype.  As I wrote back in September, "Hawkes won't get as much ink or awards season play (although he should), but his work is equally awesome.  I've known less lethal variations of Teardrop, the constantly high, emotionally inarticulate man who could go years without cracking a smile or thinking of anyone but himself.  And the veteran character actor NAILS it, seeming every bit like Graik found him running a meth lab and offered him a movie role."  Kudos to the Powers That Be for proving me wrong:  I don't think I was happier for any nominee.

-Frequent readers are familiar with my issues with The Kids Are All Right, this year's designated "Sundance Comedy" nominee that damn well better not spoil my evening by winning Best Picture.  Mark Ruffalo's Best Supporting Actor nomination is the film's most deserved, but also kinda ironic, since he's so good at generating empathy for the movie's villain that it only enhanced my feelings that the movie was telling me to go to hell and take my worthless Y chromosomes with me.

-OK, distributors, come through for me:  to be truly prepared to get the most out of the evening, I still need to see 127 Hours, Rabbit Hole, Blue Valentine and Animal Kingdom, none of which have yet reached the Harrisburg, PA area.  Chop chop, people!

So, for the next month, let's all join hands and enjoy a little happy Oscar hype.  Oscar Party at the Palace February 27!  Woo-hoo!