Well, it happened, that.

Reader, sometimes I wonder what you must think of us. The team behind this blog so often comes across as being of 2-3 different minds on almost every topic that comes up on the radar screen. I'm grateful that you take the time to read, whoever you are. The culture in which we find ourselves puts somewhat of an unfair premium on time and efficiency, and a web page that isn't interesting tends to be ignored or, even worse, skimmed.

I'm guilty of doing that myself all too often, but I wish that I didn't. It's almost as though I'm denying myself the opportunity to gain as much knowledge as I could just because something isn't eye-grabbing at first, or because it's long. Oooooh. Isn't that horrible? Something's LONG. Wow, I might just learn something if I read it. Billy Shakespeare probably said it best, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

-------

How about them Oscars? To be honest, I am/was disappointed in the show. The opening musical number was out of place, although Neil Patrick Harris has a good set of pipes. I must admit that I felt some of its "appeal" was misplaced. Is it supposed to be incredibly ironic that a gay man is dancing between a couple of showgirls? Come on, it's not like no one's ever tried that kind of subtext before! I'd rather that we stop treating people like novelty acts over stuff like that. He's a talented actor and entertainer. Period. Let's stop treating folks any different. Why not take a page from Ellen's book when she hosted the show? Oh, wait, she was forced to cut a significant portion of her material because she was ticked off at the way she'd been treated after her coming-out episode and planned to come out of the gate guns blazing. Maybe we better not follow her example if we're going for "moving past the past."

As far as the opening dialogue went, Martin and Baldwin had some good material (loved Steve's bit about Christoph Waltz having hit the motherlode of Jews), but the way that they pitched to various things was incredibly stilted. Set-up, joke . . . "and here's so-and-so over here from such-and-such-a-film." (campy grin + forced applause = LAME) I heard someone say that the material would have worked better if it'd been performed as a monologue, and I have to agree. When one person is throwing the spotlight around the room at various people, you go with it. When two guys are trying to go back and forth and come across as strangely under-rehearsed, it's just too bad.

The awards themselves were a mixed bag. The major awards were incredibly anticlimatic. Every single one of the acting awards went the way I predicted. The Hurt Locker picked up Best Director and Best Picture. Yawn. This didn't exactly make for an incredibly exciting show. I'm not terribly upset about THL's victory, although I still think that Avatar was a more significant achievement. As for Bigelow being the first woman to win Best Director? Good for her. I would have voted for Cameron, but she did a fine job and it's a step up from recognizing Danny Boyle last year. I almost still can't believe that actually happened! I did feel sorry for her standing up there. She looked so nervous that she seemed like she might faint before it was all said and done.

I did find Mo'Nique's comments a bit strange in which she said she didn't want to make her speech a political one, and then promptly thanked Hattie McDaniels. I'm all for her thanking those that came before her and paved the way for her to stand there, but to say she wasn't going to do something and then do it anyway seemed strange. Personally, I'm a bit tired of all the talk of race at the Oscars. A few years ago, when Denzel and Halle won, it was a big deal. 2 years later, Jaime Foxx and Morgan Freeman dominated their respective races from top to bottom, and was their ethnicity mentioned once? Nope. It seems that we've moved past certain things now. Why must we keep bringing it up?

That said, there were a number of upsets in other categories that I wasn't prepared for. Both writing awards went to films I wasn't expecting, although I had started to get an inkling that THL might use its momentum to snag that one too. I was pretty ticked off that The Hurt Locker won in the Original category, instead of Inglourious Basterds. COME ON! Tarantino's script was virtuosic in its ability to accomplish so many different goals, sometimes at once, that it's a crying shame that he didn't pick up little gold man #2. As for the winner in the other Screenplay category, while I haven't seen the movie, having to hear "Precious . . . . . . Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" forty-five thousand times proved tiresome. Please, next time, find a better title! (or at least one that doesn't sound like a drag queen's lamaze class play)

Another BIG surprise was The Secret In Their Eyes beating out both Un Prophete AND The White Ribbon for Best Foreign Language film. Does the Palme d'Or mean nothing in America, people? Forget that. Did the Academy voters not realize that Michael Haneke is the guy who directed The White Ribbon? Have they never seen one of his films before? Did they not know about the crazy/twisted/sick stuff he thinks up for characters to do to each other in his movies? Have they installed new security systems and hired armed guards to stand watch outside their homes to protect themselves? Let's hope so.

Finally, I can't let the direction of the actual telecast off the hook. It was HORRIBLE with a capital AWFUL. If I was made to count each questionable choice . . . man, I'd run out of fingers real quick. Worst gaffe (besides all of the times the viewer saw stuff that we were never supposed to see): cutting to a super wide angle shot right after Bigelow won. Come on, she was sitting right in front of Cameron. Everyone wanted to see the two of them. Would he shake her hand? Would they hug? Would they speak at all? Instead, I was left to yell at the screen, calling out instructions to the guy at the switchboard who, sadly, couldn't hear me from so many miles away.

For my second and last finally, I have to point out the sheer strangeness of the so-called "tribute" to the nominated scores. Who on earth thought it would be a good idea to have a bunch of performers do an interpretive dance to the music? Oh yeah, whenever I hear the music from Up, I immediately think "Hey! Let's get a guy to do the robot!" Oh no. What is this? Are we back to the tap dance tribute to Saving Private Ryan? Some things are better left alone.

------

As for our scatterbrainededness and hornswaggling over everything that we write about . . . well, we like it that way. Besides that, we've done pretty well up to this point. That's just how it goes. Besides, every so often, it just so happens that we all think the same way, and that always ends up feeling so good.

This year, I think I'm going to read more thoroughly when I'm online. How about it? I think I'll watch Redacted before the year is up, and then read Zanzie's blog. ALL of it.

FOTM: Megan's Vote Is For...

Let me tell you I am a fan of having ten nominees for best picture. Instead of devaluing the award, I think it almost means more – your film had to fight it’s way past nine other great films to pull out the top honor. In fact, this blog has been really hard for me to write because I am so excited about the films that received nominations this year that as underwhelmed as I was by last year’s nominees, I seem to be making up for it this year by being beyond excited to see who will win and what surprises are in store.

When I sat down to finally write this post I actually surprised myself. Instead of going with my immediate gut instinct I decided to take the list of the ten nominees and come up with reasons why each one of them would deserve my vote (if I had one) for best picture; my factors were qualities like acting, technique, craftsmanship, enjoyment, aesthetics, and even my own drive to see the film in the theatre – basically I wanted the film that I thought had the greatest artistic merit and compelling draw to it. I thought for sure when I put it all on paper that my initial gut reaction would be correct and I would be writing about Up In The Air which is the film that probably moved me the most out of any film I saw this year. While Up In The Air did score higher on my criteria than The Hurt Locker & Inglorious Basterds there was one film that I scored high above all of them…one I didn’t think I’d vote for despite my love of the film.

So I sat. I thought about all of my qualities as a director, as a lover of films and as a critic and what I think the best picture Oscar is for. It’s then I realized if I truly wanted to award the film that I think will do the most for the craft of filmmaking, the art of storytelling and last with audiences for years to come I would have to cast my vote for Avatar.

Why Avatar? I’m going to start with the obvious – technology & innovation. I have a quote on my wall from James Cameron which he received from Stan Winston before his death: “…once you’ve shown something is possible everybody can do it.” James Cameron likes to try the impossible and for some reason he usually succeeds. For Avatar he ignored the naysayers and decided he wanted to create an entire alien planet and nine foot tall blue aliens that would actually be played by real actors and he did it – he even re-imagined how 3-D works for the film. Because Cameron was able to accomplish this we are now seeing an even larger influx of 3-D films and I guarantee you people will be using and pushing the technology Cameron used for Pandora & the Nav’ii for years to come. He made something new.

However, technology isn’t enough. They have the sci-tech awards for that. This leads me to another quote on my desk, this one from Spielberg that reads “We try to understand as filmmakers through empathy…because you can’t understand the human motivation without empathy.” Arguably the most powerful & well respected filmmaker of our time, the point Spielberg is making is that if you can’t feel your characters motivations & emotions and effectively put those on screen then the audience has no hope of connecting with your characters or your story. Think about it carefully – it’s hard enough for us to find some humans in films as empathetic, likable characters, but somehow in Avatar we are caught in the emotional journey of Jake Sully, Neytiri and an entire race of giant blue aliens. That is commendable and brilliant, a sign of true talent and a great story.

I’m also not one that tends to put a lot of stock in box office numbers, but with Avatar you can’t ignore the fact that the film smashed records worldwide and was in the top spot on the box office charts for almost two months. That tells me that Avatar is a film that managed to draw in an audience and do the most important thing – keep them. Unlike most of the best picture nominees almost everyone I’ve spoken to has seen Avatar and out of those the majority of them adored it. I have myself seen Avatar in the theatre three times – I haven’t seen any of the other films more than once. That tells me the film has a massive draw and appeal, and the sheer span of its reign in the box office tells me it’s not just because it had a budget behind it, an advantage the smaller films didn’t have to reach their audience. It is much more typical for a large budget film to have a huge opening week and then have a 40-70% drop for every week thereafter, but Avatar broke that model. In the U.S. alone box office actually went up after the first weekend.

There are even more things I could pull out about Avatar but I’ll wrap it up with something personal. Up In The Air may have been the film that connected with me on an emotional level I didn’t expect, but Avatar connected with me emotionally too. Avatar reminded me why making films is my passion. It reminded me about the powers of imagination, the exhilaration a great film can provide and what it looks like to produce something that no one has ever seen before. It reminded me that no matter what story you are telling there is always a unique and fresh way to tell it and if you have a passion for the story you are telling that passion will show up on screen. James Cameron is a master of his craft and with Avatar he managed to reinvigorate the cinema lover inside me again, which is quite the feat as I am already an enthusiastic lover of cinema. Cameron proved that he has a supreme talent to work with actors, artists and transfer a story to the screen.

Even with all the support and adoration I’ve laid out for Avatar (and I could keep going) I still think that awarding one film over another is as futile as choosing your favorite shade of blue, but what I do believe in is supporting good work. All of the nominated films this year were great works and each deserved the best picture award for very different reasons – I will enjoy it no matter who wins and have reasons to think each deserved it. However, I think if I ever do get a vote in the Academy I might just have to pull out this technique again and cast my vote that way.