Every single year, I usually end up in a huff about awards shows equivalent to a die-hard sports fan getting pissed off when their team loses prematurely in the playoffs (think of the entire New England region last night, probably minus a lot of inebriation because I was watching the show with my parents; otherwise, it would've been like looking into a much more effeminate mirror). This year was obviously no exception. It's a damn vicious cycle.
To be fair, this year there were tons of things that I liked. For one, I liked that the girl who played Mattie Ross in True Grit appeared several inches taller than Justin Bieber (probably heels, but I didn't see them, so the visual gag was great to me), which is a really petty thing for me to laugh at, but Bieber has a lot of money, so I guess me making fun of a teenager in that context is alright.
I also thought it great that Paul Giammati finally won a Golden Globe for a movie that I'm fairly sure no one has actually seen outside of those who received screeners of it (I think Rotten Tomatoes advertised its theatrical release this last Friday). Here's a facebook comment I made about that award, which I feel is pretty fitting:
"What's important is that Paul Giammati won for that one movie he was in. Seriously, I don't know what movie he was in; if they had said "And the winner is Paul Giammati for 'Sorry We All Kinda Ignored You Re: Sideways'" it would have made a lot more sense. By the by it took me three times to post this with the proper usages of 'won' and 'one'"
I'll point out again I wasn't drunk during this broadcast or afterward; me not being able to use the proper usages of "won" and "one" is just a sign of my post-collegiate mental decline, I guess.
And finally, in non-snarky positive commentary, I really enjoyed that The Fighter got some performance recognition, as it damn well should have. Bale was an obvious choice for supporting, and my heart was torn like a parent who had two children up for the same award when it came to Melissa Leo and Amy Adams being nominated, so I was happy that at least one of them took the award. Plus, Melissa Leo's acceptance speech was one of the more exuberant of the night, which is always nice to see.
I was also happy that Toy Story 3 won, but it's become obvious that you never ever fuck with Pixar on awards night. So I kinda expected that my heart wouldn't be broken on that one.
You know what I didn't like about the show, though?
...No, it's not that they nominated really stupid movies like The Tourist, Burlesque, and Alice in Wonderland.
...No, it wasn't Ricky Gervais being overly acerbic. Celebs should learn how to handle that shit better; Steve Carrell did, and it was funny.
What it was that got my goat was the fucking Social Network.
I get it, I get it, it's a good movie. I won't dispute that; it's smart and makes a possibly uninteresting subject much more interesting. But for gosh sakes, it's so transparent that people are voting for it because they want to pick the most vanilla pseudo-entertaining, smartish and profitable movie on the ballot, as if their friends in the foreign press would make fun of them for voting for something like Inception.
Here's how I see it: The Social Network will prove to be the All of the President's Men of the 21st century, certainly at least 2010. A historical document-type film about an important event in American history that has reverberated and changed the way we think for a long while.
More importantly, it won't be watched by anyone who is not seeing it in their AP US History classes or by mega-film nerds who wanna be Fincher completists (not that that's a bad thing, he's pretty good).
To be fair though, while President's Men got nominated for a buncha Oscars, it only won a couple, screenplay being the biggest honor. You know what won most of the Oscars that year?
Rocky. You know, that movie that's really similar to The Fighter.
You know what movie won almost nothing? Taxi Driver.
I won't say that Taxi Driver is at all similar to Inception story wise, but I can make two bold-ish statements concerning their connection in an awards context. One is that both of the films are fairly challenging in terms of presenting a new set of ideas, be they in terms of cinematic language (Taxi Driver) or just somewhat complex story (Inception). Second, and more important is that Inception, like Taxi Driver, will be the one far more recognized by posterity.
And if I may be so bold, I believe The Fighter will be too, in comparison to The Social Network. Shit, Black Swan, even, while we're at it.
What I'm getting at is it gets annoying that awards are far less about the most deserving or interesting movies, nowadays, it's about people making the choice that they think they should to look good in front of their cohorts. There's a hype machine that seems to randomly pick one film out as the "smart pick" and dictates that Social Network's weird 80's horror film synthy bits of score should be ignored for the pretty piano noise that peppers the film as best score and that Inception's soon-to-be-iconic BRHAAAMMMM type score should go unnoticed.
Anyways, I'm rambling. I'll stop talking and wait for about twenty years to say "I told you so."
...Also, where the fuck was True Grit?
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