Best of the Aughts

In the interest of satiating my compulsory need to make lists, here are some top tens of the past ten. Years.

Best Albums
1. Is This It - The Strokes
2. Kid A - Radiohead
3. Smile - Brian Wilson
4. Funeral - Arcade Fire
5. Songs for the Deaf - Queens of the Stone Age
6. White Blood Cells - The White Stripes
7. Madvillainy - Madvillain
8. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots - The Flaming Lips
9. Picaresque - The Decemberists
10. Return to Cookie Mountain - TV on the Radio

Best Songs
1. Hey Ya! - Outkast
2. Turnin' On the Screw - Queens of the Stone Age
3. Do You Realize?? - The Flaming Lips
4. The Mariner's Revenge Song - The Decemberists
5. Clint Eastwood - Gorillaz
6. I Wanna Make It Wit Chu - Desert Sessions
7. Takeover - Jay-Z
8. A Distorted Reality Is Now a Necessity to Be Free (Early Version) - Elliott Smith
9. Zero - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
10. Rebellion (Lies) - Arcade Fire

Best Movies
1. There Will Be Blood
2. Children of Men
3. The Dark Knight
4. Inland Empire
5. Knocked Up
6. Shaun of the Dead
7. Paranoid Park
8. I'm Not There
9. Idiocracy
10. Wet Hot American Summer

Best TV Shows
1. Arrested Development
2. Futurama
3. The Shield
4. Lost
5. 24
6. Spaced
7. The Office (UK)
8. 30 Rock
9. Scrubs
10. South Park

The New Academy Awards Philosophy: The More the Merrier

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently announced that they would be expanding the field of Best Picture nominees in 2010 from five movies to ten. Their reason was that it was a throwback to the the early years of the Academy Awards, allowing a greater amount of great movies to get the respect they deserve. Maybe the Oscars were about genuinely rewarding talent and hard work in the 30s, but nowadays, they're mostly about publicity.

The most recent Academy Awards are a fine example of how things work. Look at the interesting development of The Reader. It was released as The Weinstein Company's prestige picture for the year. It opened to mixed reviews and its status was generally reduced from contender to also-ran. But the company pushed it so heavily that ultimately, it not only got a Best Picture nomination, but it became one of the top contenders to upset Slumdog Millionaire. All this for a movie generally considered average-to-slightly above average. It just demonstrates how recognition around award time is often based not on how good a movie is, but on the PR skills of the distributor.

Another example of how the Academy Awards work: Fox Searchlight had two big end of the year movies - Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler. The Wrestler was gritty and different, Slumdog was flashy and safe. While The Wrestler's December release date positioned it as Fox's big prestige pic of the year, its success was eclipsed by the popularity (and hype) of Slumdog Millionaire. So Fox put most of its marketing money behind Slumdog, while spending a much smaller amount on The Wrestler, almost exclusively revolving around the performance of Mickey Rourke rather than on the film itself. The end result: Slumdog gets a bunch of nominations and ultimately wins Best Picture, while The Wrestler's only nominations were for the performances of Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei, neither of who won.

The expansion of the Best Picture category could potentially fix the problem of movies with smaller marketing budgets not getting proper recognition. However, the more likely scenario is that we would see more nominations for the more popular, fan-friendly movies like The Dark Knight. (Although I'm not bashing The Dark Knight. If you look a few posts down, you'll see that it was my favorite movie of 2008.) People seem to always make a big deal about the Oscar shows always getting low ratings, as if the only purpose of the show was to attract a huge audience. Well, if you throw The Dark Knight and Iron Man into the Best Picture race, more people will watch the show, even if those movies have no chance at actually winning. And in the months leading up to the show, just think of how much extra money and attention the studios can draw to these movies by pointing out that they're "Best Picture nominees!"

Increasing the size serves primarily to give free publicity to the studios and bring in more viewers and ad revenue for the show itself. The fact that a few additional deserving movies might get some additional recognition in the process is merely a side effect. And besides, the Academy rarely gives the award to the movies that really deserve it anyway, so it's not gonna make much of a difference in the long run.

Hey, there's always the Independent Spirit Awards...

Top Ten Movies of 2008 / Oscar Picks

The Oscars are this Sunday, informally bringing an end to the 2008 movie season. There are still plenty of movies from 2008 that I haven't gotten to see yet, like Ballast, Let the Right One In, and several others. But at this point, I feel like I've finally seen enough to put together a top ten of 2008 list:

1. The Dark Knight
2. The Wrestler
3. Wall*E
4. Waltz With Bashir
5. Paranoid Park
6. Milk
7. Rachel Getting Married
8. The Class
9. Gran Torino
10. Man on Wire

Honorable Mentions: Happy-Go-Lucky, Iron Man, 4 Months 3 Weeks & 2 Days, Wendy & Lucy, The Wackness

And without further ado, my Oscar picks & predictions:

Best Picture
SHOULD WIN: Milk. Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire were only decent. And I still haven't felt the need to see Frost/Nixon or The Reader. So that just leaves Milk, which wasn't the best movie of the year, but is definitely the best out of the five that are nominated.
WILL WIN: Slumdog Millionaire. It's inevitable. Slumdog is going to win. Yawn.

Best Director
SHOULD WIN: Darren Aronofsky, Jonathan Demme, Mike Leigh, and Cristian Mungiu are all better than most of the people nominated. Gus Van Sant is the only name in this category that jumps out as having put together some totally solid work.
WILL WIN: Danny Boyle will win, thus setting a dangerous precedent for giving Oscars to directors who make movies that look like feature-length music videos. I'm predicting McG to be an early front-runner for this category next year.

Best Actor
SHOULD WIN: Mickey Rourke. Sean Penn was also great, but Rourke just works his ass off here.
WILL WIN: Rourke, although Penn still has a great shot at it

Best Actress
SHOULD WIN: Anne Hathaway
WILL WIN: Kate Winslet - She's been nominated a bunch of times and hasn't won yet. And at the ripe old age of 33, it's obviously unlikely that she'll ever be nominated for anything ever again. The Academy will probably give her the award here not necessarily because she gave the best performance, but because they feel she deserves to win one, which is usually how the Academy does things. However, Meryl Streep is also nominated, so she has to be considered an automatic front-runner as usual.

Best Supporting Actor
SHOULD WIN: Heath Ledger, not only for sentimental reasons, but because he deserves it
WILL WIN: Ledger

Best Supporting Actress
SHOULD WIN: Taraji P. Henson - in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, she was essentially the opposite of Brad Pitt. Pitt stands around while stuff happens around him, giving a completely wooden performance that adds nothing to the movie. Henson, on the other hand, gave a warm, enjoyable performance that brought life to the movie. I'd be fine if she won, although I haven't seen Doubt or Vicky Cristina Barcelona yet.
WILL WIN: Viola Davis - Total guess here.

Best Original Screenplay
SHOULD WIN: Milk - a totally solid script that never gets too melodramatic and tells an interesting story that largely sticks to the facts
WILL WIN: Milk - this category normally serves as a consolation prize for the movies that aren't going to win Best Picture. Thank God Juno's not nominated this year.

Best Adapted Screenplay
SHOULD WIN: Only seen two of the movies here, neither of which deserves to win. Of the remaining three, Doubt probably sounds like the one that might be the best written, but that's just a guess. I'd rather see the award go to The Dark Knight, a crazy, unrelenting story about chaos and vigilantism, but it wasn't nominated.
WILL WIN: What else? Slumdog Millionaire

Best Animated Feature
SHOULD WIN: Wall*E
WILL WIN: Wall*E - Would've been a lot more interesting if Waltz With Bashir had been nominated too. But as it stands, Wall*E is the front-runner by a mile, and deservedly so.

Best Foreign Language Feature
SHOULD WIN: Waltz With Bashir
WILL WIN: The logical pick here would be The Class, but something in my gut is telling me that Waltz With Bashir might actually have a chance at winning this one, so maybe I'll go with Waltz

Best Documentary Feature
SHOULD WIN: Waltz With Bashir should've been nominated, since it involves such a creative blend of documentary and narrative reenactment. But apparently it's against the law for a foreign language nominee to be nominated in any other categories. I can't really have much of a preference since the only film out of the five that I've seen is Man on Wire. But that movie was really good, so I wouldn't mind seeing it win.
WILL WIN: Man on Wire, although this category is chosen by people who actually went to screenings of all five films, so familiarity and word of mouth aren't always a factor

Best Cinematography
SHOULD WIN: Rachel Getting Married - the handheld camerawork did an amazing job of throwing you in the middle of all the family turmoil, resulting in a powerful exper... oh, it wasn't nominated. Well then...The Wrestler's cinematography really stood out this year. Both basic and effective, it truly centers the film around the main character and his life and really drives home... oh, that wasn't nominated either. Okay, then I guess we'll go with The Dark Knight and all of it's amazingly beautiful aerial shots.
WILL WIN: Slumdog Millionaire, because everyone loves flashy movies with lots of filters and quick cuts

Best Editing
SHOULD WIN: Milk - a very effectively assembled combination of the main story and archival footage
WILL WIN: Slumdog Millionaire. Notice a pattern?

Best Art Direction
SHOULD WIN: Benjamin Button
WILL WIN: Benjamin Button

Best Costume Design
SHOULD WIN: The Duchess - never saw it, but it's a costume drama, so it should probably win, right?
WILL WIN: The Duchess

Best Makeup
SHOULD WIN: Hellboy II
WILL WIN: Benjamin Button

Best Original Score
SHOULD WIN: The Dark Knight, hands down, which of course is why it wasn't nominated. So I dunno, let's go with Slumdog here, since this is one of the few categories that I wouldn't mind seeing it win.
WILL WIN: Slumdog Millionaire

Best Original Song
SHOULD WIN: Down to Earth (Wall*E). I don't remember either of the nominated songs from Slumdog, so the one from Wall*E must've been marginally better.
WILL WIN: Down to Earth, because the two Slumdog songs will cancel each other out

Best Sound
SHOULD WIN: The Dark Knight - great sound + great soundtrack = effectively dark, chilling atmosphre
WILL WIN: The Dark Knight

Best Sound Editing
SHOULD WIN: Wall*E - Sound effects play a much bigger role in this movie that most, and everything's done really well, so it deserves to win.
WILL WIN: Wall*E

Best Visual Effects
SHOULD WIN: Iron Man
WILL WIN: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - it's an Oscar Movie, and it has good special effects, therefore it will win (see: Forrest Gump)

Haven't seen any of the shorts (except Presto), so I have no preferences or predictions in those three categories.

For everyone's sake, I hope the Oscars are less predictable than this. This has to be one of the most unanticipated Oscar shows in recent memory, thanks to the neverending over-hype and impending dominance of Slumdog Millionaire, along with the overabundance of nominations for Benjamin Button and the lameness of the major category nods for The Reader and Frost/Nixon. Luckily, once you sift through all the traditional Oscar bait, there are a few good movies that got a healthy number of nominations, so hopefully it'll be an interesting show worth watching. And if not, then at least Jerry Lewis will be there.

Kneejerk Reactions to This Year's Oscar Nominations

I was hoping that this year's Academy Award nominations would have a few pleasant surprises scattered throughout the boring, predictable nomniations. But instead, I just find myself needing to vent. So let's go through this category by category:

The full list of nominations can be found here.

Best Picture
Ugh. For the past few weeks, the expected nominations for this category were Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, and The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight always seemed like the wild card in the bunch: a summer blockbuster in the midst of "serious" movies with fall/winter release dates. But it still had enough widespread critical acclaim and excitement generated among the general public to earn it a Best Picture nomination. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, as it was left it out in favor of The Reader, a paint-by-number prestige picture that's only managed to get mixed reviews. Limited release wonders like Rachel Getting Married, Happy-Go-Lucky, and The Wrestler were predictably ignored, because the Academy only pays attention to studio-financed pictures with buzz and huge PR campaigns surrounding them. As a result, the only surprise nomination that we're left with is one that nobody wanted. Slumdog Millionaire and Benjamin Button are both highly overrated. Slumdog Millionaire, a conventional, predictable fable with nothing you haven't seen before, has positioned itself as this year's front runner, somewhat expectedly racking up ten total nominations. And Benjamin Button, a fairly enjoyable Forrest Gump rehash, somehow picked up THIRTEEN nominations, for which I have to comment, "Really?" I haven't seen Frost/Nixon or The Reader yet, because they just look like standard Oscar bait and I don't have much interest in watching either of them. And that just leaves Milk, the only film in the bunch that might actually deserve to be called great, so hopefully that'll win.

Best Director
Usually, the Best Director category follows a pattern: the directors from four or five of the Best Picture nominees get nominated, and usually one of the directors gets left out of the directing category in favor of a widely-respected director from another movie. This year, the director nominees simply mirror the Best Picture category, which again means that Christopher Nolan gets shafted in favor of The Reader. Danny Boyle gets nominated for making a feature length music video. David Fincher gets nominated for making an Oscar movie that looks and feels about as unspectacular as you can get. And again, I haven't seen Frost/Nixon yet, but Ron Howard? Come on, that guy directed THE DA VINCI CODE for crying out loud. He just throws stuff on the screen without giving any life or depth to any of it. You guys are really considering giving him another Oscar? So again, that just leaves Gus Van Sant, who didn't do an amazing job with Milk, but at least managed to make a totally solid picture. And of course, Jonathan Demme, Mike Leigh, and Darren Aronofsky are forgotten, along plenty of others who produced more interesting work than most of the Best Picture nominees. C'est la vie.

Best Actor
The only omission that immediately comes to my mind is Josh Brolin's awesome performance in W. He totally immersed himself in the character and turned an obvious, mediocre script into a pretty interesting movie. I would've much rather seen him get a nomination than Brad Pitt, whose wooden performance in Benjamin Button can be best described as "a cardboard cutout standing around while everything happens around him." However, it wouldn't be first time that an actor won an award for a dull, hollow, lifeless performance (see: Kevin Spacey, American Beauty). That aside, Mickey Rourke deserves to win, and it's looking like he has a good shot at doing so.

Best Actress
Okay. What the FUCK. I finally saw Happy-Go-Lucky last weekend, and I don't know how it's possible for Sally Hawkins to not get nominated. Like Brolin in W., she gives a memorable performance that serves as the driving force of the entire movie. Oh well, her baffling exclusion means that now I can wholeheartedly root for the lovely Anne Hathaway, who was outstanding in Rachel Getting Married.

Best Supporting Actor
Heath Ledger. He should win. He will win. End of story.

Best Supporting Actress
Rosemarie Dewitt should've been nominated. Other than that, I don't have much of an opinion in this category.

Looking through the other categories, there isn't really that much that stands out, partly because I haven't seen a lot of the movies that are nominated, but also because most of the nonimations just aren't that interesting. There are the usual glaring omissions in technical categories. Two years ago, it was Children of Men losing Best Cinematography to Pan's Labyrinth. This year, it's the fact that The Wrestler's great cinematography wasn't even given a nomination. Stuff like just furthers the impression that Academy voters don't actually WATCH most of these movies before they choose these nominations or vote for the winners. (Fun fact: the movie Wanted got just as many nominations as The Wrestler.) The only other thing that stands out is Bolt getting nominated for Best Animated Feature instead of Waltz With Bashir. Apparently it's illegal for a movie to get nominated in both the Animated and Foreign categories. Oh well, those categories have always been screwy.

I guess writing is therapeutic, because the inital sense of frustration that I felt went I started writing this has now subsided into apathy. In the end, this year's Oscars just follow in the tradition of the previous years. Run of the mill Oscar bait gets recognized, while universally-acclaimed action movies don't. Movies are judged less on skill and talent than they are on media-fueled hype and momentum. Actors and directors are judged less on performance than they are on repsect within the industry, and the all-important "buzz". And most of the genuinely fresh and unique films get passed over in favor of glossy multi-million dollar pictures with a famous cast, or a reputable director, or the backing of a major studio. Same as it ever was.

I'll still probably end up watching though. But I also feel more motivated to find someone with IFC so I can watch the Independent Spirit Awards, which look a lot more interesting than the Oscars this year.