For many years, I had enjoyed watching the Academy Awards. I liked the spectacle of it. The glamour of it. The grandeur. Then as I got older I realized how strange it seemed that movies I thought were better than others were losing. How actors that I thought were spectacular, lost to someone more popular. So more and more I disliked the Academy Awards. Not to mention most awards shows. I whine and whine about it, but most of the time I end up watching anyway.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to watch the whole awards show, but I did see the end where Katheryn Bigelow won Best Director AND Best Movie. I just about lost it. I gladly admit that I did not see ALL the movies nominated this year. But I have read a lot of reviews on the films. I did see Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Precious, Up, Inglorious Basterds and District 9. That’s 6 out of the 10. From those I saw, I thought the 5 were better movies than The Hurt Locker. And I had read RAVE reviews about Up In The Air. Now, for some strange reason, I love war movies. If it’s a mafia movie or war movie I will watch it. And I usually like them. But The Hurt Locker was NOT a great movie. I enjoyed it. And I’d gladly watch it again. But it was NOT an Academy Award winning movie. The Hurt Locker was slightly better than Jarhead, and there’s no way that Jarhead would ever win or even be nominated for an Oscar.
I finally read about how the Academy selects movies. Especially since I had heard and read for a while that there was a lot politics involved. And it turns out that money plays a HUGE role in which nominees win. And that was especially interesting to me since the company that put out The Hurt Locker, Summit, is the same company that put out those Twilight things. Now if you think of how much money that Twilight crap has made Summit, imagine how much of that went towards promoting The Hurt Locker for an Oscar.
I am not sexist or racist in any way. Before anyone starts with the political crap. I don’t care if a chimp ends making the best movie I’ve ever seen, I say give him an Oscar and a banana for all I care. But this Academy Awards thing and having seen Alice In Wonderland the day before has clouded my love of movies. Luckily the summer movies extravaganza is ramping up and I should be able to salvage some of my movie love.
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AC
