Thoughts on the Academy Awards
28 February 2007 | cinema | 1 Comment
It was with great delight that I sat down to watch the Academy Awards this year. Not so much because of the awards ceremony, but the mere fact that this was my first major television event within my new found high definition experience! That’s right, I’ve got HD baby! And a DVR!
I am a certified movie nut. Not the US weekly type of movie nut. But an actual, historical and technical cinemaphile (if that’s such a word). I see things that most people don’t see when watching movies. I love the artistic nature of movies including the technical aspects of how they display the stories that they tell. Without further ado here are my thoughts regarding the Oscars:
1) Can somebody please inform the media that Al Gore did NOT win an Oscar for Best Documentary. Especially, E! News. What a joke! It was Davis Guggenheim, the director of An Inconvenient Truth that received the Academy Award for putting together this presentation. Um, yes I did say presentation. Al Gore stood in front of presentation slides (hopefully they used Front Row), and gave a presentation. Mr. Guggenheim and a crew filmed this presentation. In no way was this an actual documentary and those who are in the field of making documentaries should be appalled. An infomercial won an Oscar for Best Documentary. How sad, but wait till you get to number 3.
2) Hip, Hip, Hooray for Martin (can I call him Marty too?) Scorsese. The man finally has an Oscar for Best Director. The Departed was a fabulously directed film and I am very happy that such a master of his craft has finally been publicly appreciated by the Academy. Has anybody really noticed his producing partners on some of these films? One of the producers of The Departed was Brad Pitt. A producer of The Aviator was Michael Mann. Wow, this just illuminates the idea in my mind that Mr. Scorsese is a genius auteur.
3) In the same light of Mr. Scorsese getting looked over for so many years as Best Director, we can see that the Academy can’t get everything right. They could get Best Picture for 2006 wrong. And they did. Half of the Academy members are not really in the industry anymore and it’s a travesty! I’ve got a friend whose father is a member of the Academy for the mere fact that his grandfather owned a studio that put out one movie. Yes, one movie. Is he really in a position to vote on the Best Picture of the year? And not the most popular, or the biggest money-maker, but the best picture that the movie industry put out in a given year. But hey, the winner each year is dependent upon what movies have been nominated in the Best Picture category that given year. However, there are few continuity errors in The Departed that would rule this out for me as Best Picture.
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What should have been Best Picture, oh wise cinemaphilic master?