Oscars and Razzies

It's Big Award Season in Hollywood, and although we're in the time of year where some of the absolute worst movies are being slapped up on theater screens, Tinsel Town is all about self-congratulation and ego-stroking.

Okay, I won't try to be too cynical, but it comes naturally when this topic arises. Now, I'm all for the celebration of movies as art and storytelling, but you cannot look me in the eye and tell me that the Academy Awards was purely about movies -- it's always about the people, the preening actors and directors who couldn't let their work stand on their own recognition, and craved a greater award by their peers.

I'm sure many fine films got the awards they deserved this year, but what always burns me are the many other movies, just as deserving, that didn't get so much as a peep. The Oscars limit themselves with their awkward categories and designations: why can their only be ONE best picture? What makes an actor a "supporting" actor, versus a "main" one or a "cameo"? And is it remotely fair that pretty much any animated movie released in the past year gets nominated for an award due to a lack of entries, whereas dozens of other deserving films go unmentioned? And why are comedies, fantasies and science fiction flicks eschewed as "mere" entertainment?

Happy Feet sucked. Really. Oscar my Italian posterior.

So I pretty much don't watch the Academy Awards any more. I was very much hurt that two of the most incredible films of last year -- The Prestige and Children of Men -- were given the brush off. The Departed won, but of course. It's an ensemble, it's a drama, and Hollywood is giving Scorsese his award out of seniority. BEST picture? No more than Shakespeare In Love, or Kramer vs. Kramer or The English Patient.

I also found myself grumbling a bit when I read The Razzies this year. The Razzies are a sort of anti-Oscar award show, "awarding" the worst of movies in the past year. I'm all for that, but having been a voting member of this group in the past, I know that the award ballot is largely stacked in favor of the award show runners' wishes. They outright ignore films or actors, even hideously attrocious ones, and then try to set up one movie for a landside sweep, by posting it in pretty much every category they list. I think they love it when they can claim a movie won like, 8 or 20 Razzies, versus 2. The ballot also mocks the movies by deliberately misspelling the titles and names, just to draw attention to those entries in hopes you'll vote for them. So, Razzies? Enjoy your piddly attention. You've become just as much of a joke as the movies you lambast.

At least it's all over, and when the dust settles what does an award really do for my -- or your -- enjoyment of a movie? It doesn't magically make a movie better or worse, and we'll go on enjoying what we like, whether it be mainstream or high concept drama or trashy comfort movies, and Hollywood will go hibernate until the Golden Globes rev back up.