Thursday, February 2, 2012

Yep, the Oscars actually picked some of the best

Dexter Eyes the Big Prize

     The Oscar nominations came out last week and we didn’t write about them because the nominations were pretty good in the major categories.  As far as I’m concerned, Hugo, Viola Davis, Brad Pitt, Melissa McCarthy, Martin Scorsese, and Bridesmaids’ script were the best of the year in their categories.  I wish Armie Hammer had been nominated for J. Edgar because I thought he was elegant and heartfelt even
under that Godawful plasti-wrap make-up.  He could have been nominated last year for The Social Network.  However, we haven’t yet seen Beginners and Christopher Plummer is slated to win (usually grand old male titans that have been overlooked for decades win in this category, such as Melvyn Douglas and Alan Arkin).  
In the Foreign Language category, I thought La Doppia Hora was the best thriller of the year and I would have liked to have seen it nominated, but we haven’t yet seen A Separation and it's always good to shower some positive attention on Iran when, most of the time, it seems like the American powers that be are hoping to blow it out of the Middle East.

The Cast of Bridesmaids
      What really ticks most movie fans off is who/what doesn’t get nominated and who/what is perceived as being nominated in place of personal favorites.  Okay, that’s the issue:  it’s a subjective personal favorite because quantifying excellence and recognizing it with a fake gold statuette is sort of an exercise in complete futility or artistic blind faith – take your pick.  Neil’s top movie of the year was Melancholia and it is an outstanding work of cinematic art, but it’s perceived as a complete downer since it portrays the end of the world and Lars von Trier is perceived as anti-American, which is even worse than Jean Luc-Goddard being a Marxist in the ‘60s.  Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg were both terrific and overlooked.  My other favorite movie of the year was Bridesmaids, which is a classic, and also deserving of film and actress nominations.   

      Whatever our choices, we’ll be watching and guffawing the Oscars on February 26.  You can read more about them at:

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