My God, America. How is it that this country can have the best entertainment industry in the world, yet when a ceremony honoring that industry is held it always manages to be one of the most incredibly painful things to watch? It defies logic.
I’m not going to address whether or not I feel the winners deserved their statuettes, since the movie that should have won every award wasn’t nominated for anything. No, what I take issue with is the fact that for whatever reason the Academy Awards always wind up taking about three and a half hours longer than they should. Am I interested in who did a good job of editing? No. Do I give a God damn about any movie that wasn’t made by an American? Lord no. Does a montage of famous people who died in the last year interest me? Yes, but only for its inherent comedic value. The point is this: It’s time for the Oscars to trim the fat, both literally and figuratively.
Here’s a list of all current awards that Americans spend time listening to thank-you speeches for:
* Best Picture
* Best Director
* Best Actor
* Best Actress
* Best Supporting Actor
* Best Supporting Actress
* Best Original Screenplay
* Best Adapted Screenplay
* Best Animated Feature
* Best Art Direction
* Best Cinematography
* Best Costume Design
* Best Documentary Feature
* Best Documentary Short Subject
* Best Film Editing
* Best Foreign Language Film
* Best Makeup
* Best Original Song
* Best Original Score
* Best Animated Short Film
* Best Live Action Short Film
* Best Sound Mixing
* Best Sound Editing
* Best Visual Effects
As you can see, there are too many awards. I'll concede that some of them are actually important, namely the top four. The rest, however, are just filler trash. Best art direction? What is that, giving an award to the guy who hung pictures on a set? No thanks. Best sound mixing? Does anyone care about some guy who sat around adjusting sliders and nobs on a mixing board? Best sound mixing (along with best original song and best original scor
e) can go the hell back to the Grammys where they belong - and good God don't get me started on the Grammys. Animated movies are for children, and therefore should not win Oscars (we really shouldn’t encourage grown-ups to waste time in such a useless medium). As for best foreign language film, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think we can consider a piece of work that isn’t fit for the English language to contain any real sort of artistic merit. Think about it.
Another problem the Academy Awards suffers from is its disgusting presentation of obesity. You really wouldn’t expect a room full of movie stars and other Accomplished Peoples to include so many fatties, but there they are. Most of the heaviness comes from older, more accomplished stars (like the cue-balled Jack Nicholson, or the always bile-riling George Lucas), but this evening’s best actor (Forest Whitaker), as well as last year’s (Philip Seymour Hoffman) could both stand to lose some pounds. What kind of message are we sending to today’s youth if we show them overweight people who’ve somehow managed to make something of themselves? The wrong kind of message, that’s what. The least these actors could do would be to follow the Welles and Brando honored traditions of starting out at a reasonable weight before ballooning into terrifying human/zeppelin hybrids. Honestly.
Here’s a list of all current awards that Americans spend time listening to thank-you speeches for:
* Best Picture
* Best Director
* Best Actor
* Best Actress
* Best Supporting Actor
* Best Supporting Actress
* Best Original Screenplay
* Best Adapted Screenplay
* Best Animated Feature
* Best Art Direction
* Best Cinematography
* Best Costume Design
* Best Documentary Feature
* Best Documentary Short Subject
* Best Film Editing
* Best Foreign Language Film
* Best Makeup
* Best Original Song
* Best Original Score
* Best Animated Short Film
* Best Live Action Short Film
* Best Sound Mixing
* Best Sound Editing
* Best Visual Effects
As you can see, there are too many awards. I'll concede that some of them are actually important, namely the top four. The rest, however, are just filler trash. Best art direction? What is that, giving an award to the guy who hung pictures on a set? No thanks. Best sound mixing? Does anyone care about some guy who sat around adjusting sliders and nobs on a mixing board? Best sound mixing (along with best original song and best original scor
e) can go the hell back to the Grammys where they belong - and good God don't get me started on the Grammys. Animated movies are for children, and therefore should not win Oscars (we really shouldn’t encourage grown-ups to waste time in such a useless medium). As for best foreign language film, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think we can consider a piece of work that isn’t fit for the English language to contain any real sort of artistic merit. Think about it.Another problem the Academy Awards suffers from is its disgusting presentation of obesity. You really wouldn’t expect a room full of movie stars and other Accomplished Peoples to include so many fatties, but there they are. Most of the heaviness comes from older, more accomplished stars (like the cue-balled Jack Nicholson, or the always bile-riling George Lucas), but this evening’s best actor (Forest Whitaker), as well as last year’s (Philip Seymour Hoffman) could both stand to lose some pounds. What kind of message are we sending to today’s youth if we show them overweight people who’ve somehow managed to make something of themselves? The wrong kind of message, that’s what. The least these actors could do would be to follow the Welles and Brando honored traditions of starting out at a reasonable weight before ballooning into terrifying human/zeppelin hybrids. Honestly.
5 comments:
Finally someone says it like it is. I'm pretty sure Mr. Gonoughan, that you have written what everyone was thinking. I applaud you for such a remarkable achievement.
I, myself, am a cinema purist in the only way that one should be. I have always been telling all of my hollywood in-crowd friends about how superfluous most aspects of moviemaking are. The cinema was a good deal better before sound managed to steal a place in it. As far as I'm concerned, the only real movies are SILENT movies.
Even then, I thought that the only thing one should have to make a movie is one actor, one actress, a camera and a big warehouse. I suppose you could have a director just to operate the camera, but a camera can run on its own! Why not have one of the actors turn the camera on?
With these ingredients, one could make an exquisite and uncut film. I hope that there are some young filmmakers out there who can learn from this discourse (the Gource).
I, too, am extremely outraged that Brick received no nominations. Blasphemy.
Serpico,
While your enthusiasm for the army of reason is admirable, you can see in the November 29th post that The Grimary Gource has already taken a strong stand against silent movies, so your notion that they are somehow more real than "talkies" is positively absurd. Better luck next time.
I personally believe that Snakes on a Plane deserved to take it all. It should also have gotten the big oscar on the stage. Finest thing ever put to film.
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