10 Reasons Why I Won't Be Watching The Oscars This Year

Some of my fondest television-related childhood memories involve lounging in front of the TV and watching the Academy Awards with my family in a spectacular four-and-a-half-hour long marathon. The glamour and the glitz of the red carpet; the overlong acceptance speeches; the unbearable suspense of who would win Best Picture. All of these things made the Oscars one of the world's most prominent and respected film awards ceremonies, and one of the most watched events in television every year, second only to the Super Bowl.

Those days are gone. Year by year, slowly but surely, the actual Oscar awards themselves have been descending into obscurity and irrelevance. This year, the awards have been subjected to a perfect storm of bad decisions, unfortunate technicalities, and heartbreaking snubs. Here's why I won't be watching the Oscars this year:

SNUBS GALORE

Zodiac got ripped off!

How such an incredible movie could get so little recognition from the Oscars is beyond me. Lets review the facts:

+ The only movies to appear on more top ten lists this year were No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. + It currently holds a 7.9 user rating on IMDB. + It received an 89% ranking on Rotten Tomatoes, with 190 positive reviews out of 213. + It's unquestionably David Fincher's most mature work to date, and establishes him as a serious and brilliant filmmaker with the technical skills to match.

And yet here Zodiac lies, with nary a single Academy Award nomination. Not for Best Picture. Not for Best Director. Not even for Best Adapted Screenplay. I guess this must be the Academy's discreet way of saying, "Go fuck yourselves, moviegoers."
You'll give an Oscar nomination to NORBIT, but not to 300? WTF!??

I never thought I'd be forced into the position of using the words "Academy Award" and "Norbit" in the same sentence, yet here I am in that very predicament. Norbit was nominated for an Academy Award. In other news, my world has been shattered. You could argue that it doesn't matter how Oscar-worthy the film itself is, as long as it is deserving in category in which it's being nominated (in this case, for Best Make-Up). And yes, I will admit, in terms of make-up, Norbit did a successful job in adequately grossing me out with its creation of the hideously obese and grotesque female Eddie Murphy. But if Norbit is good enough on a technical level to deserve an Oscar, than you better believe 300 should be acknowledged as well. It had some of the most breathtaking cool visuals in quite some time, and love or hate the movie, it's a damn impressive visual achievement. Show it some respect.
You know, there are other actresses out there besides Cate Blanchett... Cate Blanchett is undeniably talented, but I doubt anybody would've complained had her aggressively energetic performance in the campy and melodramatic Elizabeth: The Golden Age been overlooked. After all, the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There earned her a much more deserved spot for Best Supporting Actress, not to mention she has been nominated three times before that (one of which she won, for The Aviator). Meanwhile, other actresses like Keri Russell (Waitress), Amy Adams (Enchanted), and Angelina Jolie (A Mighty Heart) have all been forgotten. Where the hell's their recognition?
What's wrong? King of Kong not political enough for you? The Best Documentary nominations this year are nothing to sneeze at. No End in Sight is a damning look at the mismanagement of the Iraq war. Taxi to the Dark Side is a chilling chronicle of our country's descent into its current fuzzy moral stance with regards to torture and terrorism. Michael Moore's Sicko also makes an appearance, and while Moore is always thought-provoking, Sicko happens to be his most mature and measured work yet. But unfortunately, the Academy seemed to completely forget that there are great documentaries out there that don't comment on the American condition. The King of Kong was one of the best documentaries of this year and any year. It took an obscure and geeky topic (i.e. winning the highest score in "Donkey Kong") and deftly weaved it into a compelling narrative that ultimately became a brilliant David-and-Goliath-style battle. Oh, and also, it got just a couple good reviews, too. The Oscars would have been an amazing venue to recognize this film's accomplishment and transform it from a niche art house movie to a household name. Hopefully next year's post-Bush-era documentary nominations will show a little more diversity.

TECHNICALITIES, TECHNICALITIES, TECHNICALITIES

Foreign policy bullshit.

Despite The Diving Bell and the Butterfly being one of the most lauded films of the past year, it was strangely ignored in the Best Foreign Film category. How the Oscars could overlook such a wonderful movie is embarrassing, or at least that's how things initially appeared. In reality, it was something far more idiotic. As it turns out, each country is only allowed to submit one film for consideration in the Best Foreign Film nominee, meaning that because even though France had two excellent movies that deserved recognition (the other being Persepolis), they were only allowed to submit one. What a crock of shit. And to make matters worse, Persepolis didn't even the Foreign Film nod! This charade continues with the rejection of Lust, Caution, which was actually declared ineligible by the Oscars as a contender for the Best Foreign Film category on the grounds that - I swear to god - it wasn't foreign enough. Whether or not it would've gotten nominated is up to debate, but because of the Academy Awards' moronic and arcane rules, it wasn't even given the chance to compete. Apparently when it comes to honoring the excellence of film, the Academy cares more about adhering to inconsequential policies than it does about paying attention to talent and creativity. As unfortunately as it may be though, these incidents are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Best Foreign Film category. So with that, I must ask...
Why not pick some foreign films people have actually seen? Here are the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film of 2007: 12, Beaufort, The Counterfeiters, Katyń, and Mongol. Seen any of them? Of course you haven't, because they were never released in 2007! Not in America, anyway. I seriously have to wonder, what's the point of having every nomination of an annual US-based awards show be films that only people outside of the country are given the opportunity to see? Take last year for example. There was a huge upset in this category when the outstanding Pan's Labyrinth (which was released in 2006) lost to the relatively unknown The Lives of Others. Two months later, The Lives of Others was released in US theaters, and it became clear why it won; it was phenomenal. But fuck, instead of having to endure all that confusion and frustration, they should've just saved the movie for this year's Oscar race. At least then people would actually have a chance to see the damn thing instead of sitting there during the show thinking, "Oh, the Foreign Film category is being announced; what a great time to leave and take a piss." I guess all of this is my really long round-a-bout way of saying, even though I can't necessarily say the nominees for this category don't deserve their nominations (that whole "not being released in my country" thing makes it kind of hard to judge, after all), they were plenty of other equally deserving foreign films that were released this year that ended up getting unfairly excluded. Examples of these include: Persepolis, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (as mentioned earlier), Black Book, The Orphanage, The Host, Triad Election, Paris Je T'aime, Ten Canoes, The Violin, and many more. And on a side note, since the Oscars don't (and will never) operate the way I'm proposing, what's with the snub for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days? I might've actually been angry about it had I ever been afforded the opportunity to see the damn film. There Will Be Bullshit Never before this year have I been excited to see the nominations for the Oscar's two musical categories, and after this year's fiasco, I doubt I'll ever be again. Anybody who's seen There Will Be Blood will tell you, it has one of the most harrowing, startlingly effective musical scores ever put on film. This is the type of music that makes your skin crawl, with the eerie atmosphere-drenched atonal chords reverberating through your very soul; and it's all thanks to Radiohead member Jonny Greenwood. The Academy would have to be insane not to honor him with the award, right? Well, they didn't even let the guy make it to nomination stage, immediately cutting off the film's score for eligibility and leaving all its fans in the dust. The reason? It wasn't 100% original, mixing occasional elements from his composition 'Popcorn Superhet Receiver' and works from Arvo Pärt and Johannes Brahms. In other words, because Greenwood made it his primary goal to make There Will Be Blood's music as haunting and appropriate for the film as possible, the Academy has to abide by its asinine rulebook and disqualify it. Considering that even half of Jonny Greenwood's score is better than every other film's on the Oscar ballot, it feels like yet another needless snub in a year already ripe with them. To top it off, Eddie Vedder's impressive soundtrack for Into the Wild didn't make the cut either, apparently due to an overabundance of songs. Yes, you read that correctly; his much-lauded original music score had too many songs to qualify for the Original Music Score category. To top it off even further, the spectacularly heartwarming musical Once only got a single nomination for Best Song, while Enchanted got three. And as if the Academy didn't already do enough by kicking this category in the groin and knocking it to the ground, the final kick in the teeth is that the Academy held a huge debate discussing whether or not to disqualify that single nomination. Just when you thought the Oscars couldn't possibly fail any harder, they manage to prove you wrong.

STUPID NOMINATIONS

We get it, Academy. You enjoy fellating Johnny Depp.

When Johnny Depp got nominated for his performance as a goofy eye-shadow-wearing pirate who prances around and gets wasted, I was psyched. For me, it was a sign that the Academy Awards were willing to recognize talent even if it was buried within teen-geared entertainment as gloriously trashy as Pirates of the Caribbean. But now with his nomination for Sweeney Todd, I realize I was wrong. The only thing they care about is gushing forth their unabashed infatuation with him with all the fury of a porn star during a money shot. This year he played a murderous barber with wacky hair and an inability to carry a tune. Maybe next year he'll play a scheming French chef with a secret love for break dancing. Or perhaps a crazy time traveling monk who thinks he's a dog. Either way, he'll probably still get nominated for it.
Surf's Up...? Seriously? It's obvious when looking at the Best Animated Picture category that they had two slots immediately filled and had no idea what to do with the third. There's Ratatouille, Persepolis, and then... Surf's Up. Talk about an absolute waste. Every year, it's becoming appallingly more and more obvious that the Best Animated Picture category is simply the Academy's way of making sure all these "cartoons" don't interfere with the "real" categories. What they should've done was scrapped the category altogether and put Persepolis as a nominee for Best Foreign Film, and Ratatouille as Best Picture (Yes, dammit, Ratatouille deserved a nomination for Best Picture!).

It's hip to love the underdog, homeskillet. As sweet and funny a movie as Juno is, it's also ridiculously undeserving of some of the praise it's received, due in large part to its constant hip lingo, incessant obscure pop culture references, and excruciating indie soundtrack. It's not a bad movie by any means, with Ellen Page fully deserving her Best Actress nomination, but Best Picture? Not a chance, especially not with so many other worthwhile candidates being left out to dry (e.g. Zodiac, The Savages, Into the Wild, Gone Baby Gone, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Eastern Promises, Lars and the Real Girl, I'm Not There...)

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If you want to read more, check out Adam's reviews of Jumper and In Bruges. You can also hear Adam on the latest episode of The Watchers Podcast.