In Contention

By Josh Spiegel

December 7, 2010

Should I break her heart and tell her she's not on the Tron: Legacy set?

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I can’t believe I’m even thinking it, but I am getting too old for this. There was once a time where I was as excited to watch the Oscars as I was to watch the Super Bowl, the World Series, or an episode of The Simpsons. This was, mind you, back in 1997, back when the Oscars excited and inflamed me, back when I still held out hope that the Buffalo Bills could one day return to the big show and tell the haters to stuff it, back when baseball didn’t infuriate me, and back when The Simpsons was good. Now, the Oscars can be as frustrating as the political scene to me, the Buffalo Bills are scrounging for a win - ANY win - they can get, the New York Mets (my favorite - and yeah, I know, I love to root for the best teams, right?) are populated with walking jokes, and…jeez, The Simpsons is still on?

So what is it about the Oscars that angers me? I was not disappointed with last year’s results, all the more so now. I was glad to see The Hurt Locker win, partly to change history a bit. The Hurt Locker’s going to go down as one of the lowest-grossing Best Picture winners ever, and seeing the online writers who bled Pandora blue see Avatar fall to the tight, tense, and brilliant Iraq War action film made me smile just a bit. No, what annoys me most about the Oscars is the chatter surrounding it. Even if you don’t know it, there is chatter about the Oscars every year. Of course, you likely do know that because - and I hate to break it to you - this article qualifies as chatter. What credentials do I have to provide to you about my opinion? Though I’m being glib here, the biggest difference between me and at least a handful of Oscar-season bloggers is that they live in Los Angeles and I do not.




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Some of them see the movies earlier than I do, because of screeners, premieres, and the like. The irony is that very few control the message. For example, one of the biggest Best Picture frontrunners this year is The King’s Speech, a supposedly rousing British drama about the friendship between the future King of England (Colin Firth) and his speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush). With Firth, Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter as the main cast members, the true-story hook, and the positive reviews from pretty much every critic who’s seen it, it seems likely that The King’s Speech is going to be a strong contender. And unless you live in New York or Los Angeles (or have screeners and such), you won’t be seeing this movie for at least two weeks, perhaps more. More and more, movies are preordained as Oscar hopefuls before you see them. It’s just automatically assumed that the movie’s gonna get awards.

Add to that the almost daily sniping between this or that Oscar writer, and the entire process becomes boring. What disillusions me most is not the sniping or navel-gazing every Oscar writer engages in (quick rant, and this goes for any film writer: unless you are Roger Ebert, A.O. Scott, or a handful of others, I do not need to know, via video response, what your least favorite genre is. This is the height of misplaced narcissism.), but the realization that the Oscars is not about the movies. Even if 2010 culminates in a Best Picture winner that you or I thinks is most deserving, or is best, or whatever, it won’t be because that movie was most deserving or was the best. It will be because the film had a great campaign. Or it will be because the voters wanted to send a message one way or the other.


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