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Seno's Soapbox
#1: Echoes in Eternity
So the Academy Awards nominations are
in, and I couldn't be more pleased. Gladiator, one hell of
a movie if I do say so myself, tops off the list with twelve nominations,
including Best Picture. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon follows
closely with ten, also with a Best Picture nod. Bravo, Oscar; for
once, the Academy didn't bow to the wishes of the self-indulgent, overly-pretentious
crowd of critics who inevitably attempt to ram would-be-art films like
Chocolat
or Billy Elliot down my throat. Instead, these bastards our
forced to whine incessantly about the "weakness" of this year's movie selection.
The main knocks I hear against Gladiator
are one) that it made too much money (does that strike anyone else as counter
intuitive?) and two, that it doesn't star Tom Hanks (these days, a movie
can win an Oscar six months in advance just for having Hanks read the fucking
script). I'm not exactly sure why there's this strange stigma against
crowd pleasers in the Academy; it's not like anyone is suggesting that
Coyote
Ugly be nominated for Movie of the Year. But just because
Gladiator
made a boat-load of money and was enjoyed by nearly everyone who saw it,
it's automatically less palatable to the fucks who are in charge of handing
out those shiny gold thingys. To hold popular appeal against a well-written,
well-directed (and no, I don't think Scott should get the Oscar), and well-acted
movie is simply ludicrous. Going by that logic,
Titanic wouldn't
have won by a landslide back in '97.
Not that it deserved to. Good
Will Hunting was better. So was L.A. Confidential.
But at least Titanic winning wasn't a travesty, like Shakespeare
in Love (good, but not great) defeating Saving Private Ryan
in 1998. Or American Beauty kicking the hell out of everything
last year.
American fucking Beauty. . .<sigh>
God, how I hate movies that talk down to me. But I digress.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon:
certainly worthy of a nomination, but not a trophy. But don't buy
this whole martial arts flick label. There's precious little fighting,
but there is a considerable amount of over-the-top wirework. It was
so graceful and masterfully done, however, that it really didn't bother
me. Definitely worth a look if you haven't seen it yet.
I do have to say that I don't see
this whole weak field of film, either. I enjoyed High Fidelity
immensely, and I'm looking forward to seeing Almost Famous as well.
And this coming year has got some dandies in the works, including Final
Fantasy: The Spirits Within (which will feature some absolutely amazing
computer animation), The Mummy Returns (should be a lot of fun),
The Fellowship of the Ring (it's about fucking time!), and Pearl
Harbor (sporting an impressive cast and a production team responsible
for some of the greatest movies of all time).
But you know what? Come next
year, at about this same time, not a one of them will be seriously considered
for an Oscar. And not because they weren't ground-breaking, or weren't
well-adapted, or didn't strike an emotional chord with the audience.
They'll be denied because you enjoyed
them.
Seno
2/15/01