2/3/09

Two weeks jam-packed with computer viruses and the flu have kept me from blogging my thoughts on the Oscar nominations, but they haven't dulled their passion one bit.  Let's start by settling one thing:  the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences isn't just "out of touch", with "different taste" or whatever apology you want to make for the Oscar nominations' systematic bias against any kind of commercially viable movie that wouldn't have felt at home in 1969.  No, in the last decade or two the Academy and popular audiences have declared war on each other:  we've increasingly refused to take Oscar's cue to buy tickets to whatever grim, self-"important" films they choose to acknowledge, while the Academy returns the favor by freezing out any box office hit that, well, I already mentioned the 60's.  Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy got a pass because of its' old-school literary pedigree, but an Academy that was once willing to bestow Best Picture, Director and Screenplay nominations on Star Wars, Screenplay nods to Back to the Future and Star Trek IV and Acting nominations to the stars of movies like Starman and Aliens is now the Enemy of Blockbusters.  Want proof?  How else to account for the fact that not one but two Summer genre blockbusters received lavish, "masterpiece"-level reviews and then were roundly honored by critics' groups, but now neither The Dark Knight nor Wall*E is among their 5 Best Picture nominees.  A movie about superheroes?  Not in their house.  Some cartoon about a cutsy robot?  Hey, they set aside seats in the back of their bus for Animated Features specifically so that whole Beauty and the Beast thing would never happen again.

So, what does that leave us with?  Three movies I liked but didn't love, a morbid-looking remake of Forrest Gump even my love of David Fincher couldn't persuade me to see and an almost comical nod for The Reader.  Extras cross-reference aside, it's Harvey Weinstein's first successful campaigning of a movie with mixed reviews and "proper" subject matter (the Holocaust, for crying out loud) into a best picture nomination since Disney stole his parents' names in their messy Miramax divorce.  Scariest of all, I'd give it the second-best shot at winning behind the seemingly inevitable Slumdog Millionaire just because of that old Harvey magic and the Academy's worship of flicks about Nazi attrocities that has fueled many a recent upset (these people once told us that Roberto Benigni had given the best performance of an entire year, remember).

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button may have gotten the most nominations, but don't kid yourself, this is Slumdog's Oscar to lose.  Don't get me wrong, I liked it on balance and I could certainly see how a person could get so swept up in its' rousing finish to love it to pieces.  But I do have to wonder if we're not yet again looking at a movie no one's seeing for what it is, instead caught up in the idea that it symbolizes other things.  It's a brilliant Oscar marketing campaign that's persuaded voters that a Hollywood movie set in India is somehow a triumph of multiculturalism (as though this was the first movie ever to be set in a foreign country).  I've heard the phrase "the first movie of the Obama era" tossed around.  Shortly before throwing up (and that wasn't the flu).  Only fair then that the whispers should start now that the homeless, impoverished real-life residents of those Indian slums haven't rallied around the movie, that these homeless people aren't even going to spend their entire week's wages to buy a ticket to go!  Wow, it must really suck then, mustn't it?  Did I see a Weinstein sneaking around India someplace planting that story?  Nah, of course not.  After all, this is a contest to determine the pure, uninfluenced opinion of the nation's most learned film scholars as to the year's best films, not some half-senile popularity contest.  Right?

Perhaps my biggest single ax is ground in the Original Song category, where the criminally undernominated The Wrestler (my glowing review is coming in a few days) and the criminally unnominated Gran Torino featured the Award Season front-runners.  But not only did the Academy pass on both (in fact, they found a way to pass on a whopping five potential nominations for Clint Eastwood for Best Picture, Actor, Director, Song and Score, all of which he'd been nominated for elsewhere) but they did so by cutting the number of Original Song nominees from the usual 5 to just 3, 2 of which came from Slumdog Millionaire.  Figures.

So, what's left to cheer for?  The very good chance that Mickey Rourke and Meryl Streep will pick up much-deserved Best Actor and Actress awards for The Wrestler and Doubt, respectively.  The near-certainty of a bittersweet posthumous win for Heath Ledger.  Much-deserved nominations for a few performers (Richard Jenkins, Robert Downey Jr. and Amy Adams) who were far from locks.  The chance to gnash my teeth while The Dark Knight racks up technical awards before being sent home so the real movies can get their trophies now.

I don't know why I let the Academy piss me off like this every year, but I really do get my hopes up each time only to have them dashed.  Shame on me, I suppose.