Although if I'm being honest, I never really found Oscars day to be all that happy an occasion (though I'm sure my opinion on that will change when I collect my first Academy Award) if I'm being honest and the reasons for that are plentiful. When I was a wee nipper I heard people talk incessantly about the oscars and how it was pretty much the benchmark which all "great films" were measured by. Naturally I presumed that movies like Home Alone and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles must have swept the boards the year that they were released, and naturally I was wrong.
There's a number of things that go hand in hand with growing up, not least of which is the development of "taste". It is this "taste", often accompanied by a little thing called "sensibility" that allows us to decide why we like or do not like something based on a number of factors. Along with this development of taste and sensibility comes a crushing obliteration of innocence, and the first thing that suffers is your opinion of things that you used to admire as a sprog. As Chris Rock said in his Oscars opening monologue in 2009~
"You watch movies as a kid and you think every one of them is wonderful...and then you watch back those same movies again as an adult and you're like DAMN...ROCKY 5 SUCKED!"
He was right...Rocky 5 DID suck....and upon realising that, it forces you to think back to any other films that you watched as a kid that may fall into the same category and believe me...there's lots of them. The Turtles films for example. Great craic altogether when you're six years old, but they don't really pass muster with anyone above the age of about 15. I can only imagine what my parents must have thought as they sat through each one of those movies with me year after year. They always seemed to be coincidentally released around my birthday (which just so happens to fall in the middle of summer blockbuster season) and as such, part of my present would be that we'd go to the cinema to see the eerily real looking mutants kick some serious ass all the while spouting ridiculous puns and quotes from other popular movies. I don't doubt for a second that at some point they must have thought "What the fuck is this shit...and what kind of a kid are we raising?". I'm sure they took solace in the fact that the packed auditorium meant that at least they weren't alone in thinking that.
And then when you get a little bit older you start paying a little more attention to what exactly goes on at the oscars...and when the nominees for best picture are announced you're both shocked and appalled to discover that you've never heard of a single one of them. "The fuck is Pulp Fiction?" you think to yourself. These nominees as chosen by the Academy inform you that you need to address they way in which you rate films. You need to steer yourself away from the "Short Circuit's" and start enjoying the "Titanic's" etc, right?
Wrong!
For those of you who may not know, Titanic walked away from the 1997 Oscars with 11 awards...eleven fucking awards. That's beyond perposterous. I watched Titanic when it came out, and watched it again on television over the Christmas season numerous times since. It's a good movie. It's not "eleven academy awards" good but there's no denying it is good. This was the same year that films like "Good Will Hunting" and "L.A Confidential" were nominated, and somehow, some ludicrous way, Titanic stole eleven of those awards right from under their noses.
Another thing that never ceases to piss me off about this most prtentious of ceremonies is the idea that the candidates for best picture must tick a number of cultural and social boxes in order to be victorious. It seemingly just isn't enough for the film to simply be "great", and it's for reasons like this that movies like "Crash"(2006) win best picture. Crash is a good example to use because with the exception of a few good performances from consistantly solid actors such as Matt Dillon and Sandra Bullock, the movie is largely forgettable. Yet it preaches the message that racism exists, and it manages to preach it in a very ironic way and as such was an ideal candidate for best picture.
Over the years there seems to have been some hiccups from the Academy in the "Best Picture" dpeartment. For example, in 1977 the underdog of the ceremony "Rocky" walked away with the best picture gong...seemingly life immitating art, what with the movie itself being one of the greatest underdog stories of all time. Now, altough I love Rocky, it does tick those social and cultural boxes that I mentioned earlier...and I don't doubt for even a moment that not a year goes by that the Academy don't wish they could take that decision back. It's no secret that they generally don't reward sequels well, and as such I'm sure they were disgusted at the notion that Stallone would go on to make five more in the franchise.
Likewise, the way they snubbed Mickey Rourke in the 2009 Oscar's leaves a lot to be desired. Sean Penn is a magnificent actor, but his role in Milk certainly wasn't his finest hour. Hhmmm, perhaps it was the social and cultural element of the film that lead to him winning for "best actor" (are we beginning to see the pattern yet?) Obviously it was beneath them to reward a film about professional wrestling with an oscar because it's more of a sideshow act than anything else. Give me a break. Mickey Rourke gave the best performance of his career in that movie and that's what should count.
So, it is with a heavy heart that I say best of luck to all of those nominated, but I would also suggest that should anyone "lose out", fuck it...It's nothing more than a ceremony for industry heads to pat each other on the back, and as such should be held in no higher esteem than a passing compliment from a friend. Hold out for a people's choice award, or even one of those MTV award popcorn buckets...They look nice.
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