You know, it's funny. I love movies, I could say that I've loved them ever since childhood. And yet, I hate Hollywood. I hate all the hype, the backstage politics, the preconceptions and stereotypes Hollywood often introduces into the media, and so much more about it.
But nevertheless, I look back on the fallout from Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony a couple days after I've cooled down, and I can't help but think about just how pointless it is at this point to even complain about them.
It baffles me how people can still be mad over certain movies or actors or directors or whatnot winning over the ones they liked. There are still people who are moaning about Marisa Tomei winning Best Supporting Actress. There are still people who whine about the most surprising upsets, like Shakespeare in Love winning out over Saving Private Ryan, or Forrest Gump beating out Shawshank Redemption. There are even still people complaining about Crash winning Best Picture a couple of years back, and Juno winning for Best Original Screenplay last year, and about Return of the King winning 11 awards. It's so tiring listening to these people come up with all these crazy theories and voicing their opinions on why this film should have won over that one. It's exhausting mostly because some of these people are truly crazy (check this out if you don't believe me), but also because all the wailing and gnashing of teeth is incredibly futile.
What happened Sunday with Slumdog seems to be an ongoing annual trend with the Academy. While I'm admittedly not all that well-informed about their voting process, it looks more than likely that they find one movie that they really love, and shower it with awards for the rest of the night, whether it is deserving or not. It's because of this that I'm not really sure if the long-standing notion throughout America that the Oscars are an accurate assessment of quality in filmmaking will hold steady for much longer. For many people, that notion has probably already flown out the window.
Don't get me wrong, though. It's not that I think Slumdog Millionaire wasn't deserving of some of the awards it got. When I saw it in theaters, I thought it was a great film, a fairy tale amidst a modern setting with a fantastic happy ending. But yeah, it was probably iffy of the Academy to think that it deserved two song nominations, or that it had a better score than WALL-E (No, I don't care that it's a "kiddy" picture, and honestly, if you let trivial stuff like that prevent you from enjoying a great film, then I just don't know what to say to you). They're both films, however, that stand out on their own merits, regardless of which one is percieved to be "better" than the other.
Mickey Rourke giving what some people are saying is the performance of his life in The Wrestler is wonderful and all. Also, I'm just as sick as everyone else is of Sean Penn and his political soapboxing (although I agree with him that Prop 8 is terrible). Does that necessarily mean that Penn is less deserving of the Best Actor nod than Rourke is? Chances are there are a lot of filmgoers out there that saw his performance in Milk and thought he was pretty much a shoe-in. To be honest, while I found it a little disappointing, it really wasn't a big surprise.
The point is, I have copies of WALL-E and The Dark Knight at home, and I can watch them anytime I want. And when The Wrestler comes out on DVD, I will most likely buy it. As far as I'm concerned, a movie doesn't need to have earned a bunch of expensive golden statuettes to be considered quality in my eyes.
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