One would expect me to write a big food-based message today, it being Fat Tuesday. But in fact I did not buy any semi-traditional pączki today and, since this is the Movies page (I mean, category), I’m more interested in this morning’s Oscar nominations than in Mardi Gras.A casual viewer to the site could guess the movie I’m rooting for is The Fellowship of the Ring. It seems a natural, since the movie is about short fat guys trying to save the world. But I’ve been in love with Tolkien’s book since junior high school and Peter Jackson’s movie is an impressive piece of epic filmmaking. Sadly, I strongly feel that my favorite movie will not win. Instead, the Academy will play it safe and give all the big awards to A Beautiful Mind.
I really shouldn’t say anything bad about A Beautiful Mind, since I have not seen it. But it strikes me as the kind of movie that the is tailor-made for the Oscars: a big name actor, effecting a false accent, in an inspiring tale of his struggle with a debilitating disease. How many times have we seen that? How many times has the Academy congratulated itself for making that? How many copies of that sit on dusty video store shelves while we continue to rent the movies that are popular favorites? Movies like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark; movies that should’ve won big but weren’t deemed “important” enough.
So wouldn’t it be cool if the Academy threw away the playbook and voted for the popular favorite? They’ve done it before on occasion, so I think it would be great to see it again now.
But, like I said, I really shouldn’t criticize a movie I haven’t seen. And I might force myself to see it, maybe this weekend, so I can check out the competition.
Update: I discovered a cool little comments tool.
This is to check out if it works.
If it works great. If it doesn’t, then feel free to send me a complaint.
No wait. That won’t work out.
(By the way the weblog that gave me this [comments] idea is run by the Internet’s youngest webmaster, Robbie Grace Cripps.) [6:39 PM]
