Oscar Hoopla
Every year, I inadvertently set a goal to watch the major Oscar nominees by the time the awards come out. Every year, I fail. Somehow, I thought maybe this year would be different. I mean, there were twice as many Best Picture nominees, but there were also two extra weeks before the ceremony. Unfortunately, I spent those two weeks in awe at the awfulness of those figure skating costumes.
So when last night rolled around, I still hadn’t seen a lot of movies. The most notable haven’t seen would probably be Avatar, but that’s partly because my very aggressive friend tried to con me into seeing it so many times, I’m just going to avoid the movie to spite him.
Now, one movie I had seen was The Hurt Locker (review forthcoming), which won a bunch of stuff including Best Picture. And it was a fine movie, but not really the one I would consider the Best Picture of 2009. And when the Academy likes a movie, they really like it. They start voting for it in random categories that are really not where the film shows its merits. Really guys? Best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing?
I suppose it could have been worse. At least it didn’t win for best movie title (probably because that isn’t actually a real category). I noticed locks and a lot of people getting hurt, but I still have no idea why it’s named The Hurt Locker.




















