As some of you know (and the others will discover by reading this entry), I really enjoy movies. Even if I don't get to see all of the ones nominated each year, I still revel in the Oscars.
Last year, Joanna and I were fortunate enough to see the five nominated films in one day during AMC's Best Picture Movie Marathon. Unfortunately, because of the expansion of the Best Picture category this year to ten movies, it would be quite impossible. It would be a matter of taking up two days that would be very long, especially since Avatar is a three hour movie. The only good thing if we had done that this year, we would not have had to watch Avatar, since we had seen it once already.
In fact, we had seen one of the other nominees as well - Up. Not Up in the Air. Up - the cartoon with Ed Asner as the main voice. Not the George Clooney flying across the country firing people movie.
Where was I?
Oh yeah. So, I didn't get to see eight of the ten nominated films, but I don't think that matters in order to offer this opinion: I think that The Hurt Locker deserved to win the Best Picture Oscar and that Kathryn Bigelow deserved to win Best Director.
Now for the explanation:
Really, it's more of a bias. I would have been happy with eight of those movies winning. However, if Avatar had won, I would have been disappointed in the Academy.
A long time ago, in a movie industry far, far, away - 1978 - Star Wars was nominated for both Best Picture and Best Director, just as Avatar was. Unfortunately, Star Wars did not win that year. Annie Hall won. And Woody Allen (director of that film) won Best Director.
What I'm saying is that the biggest blockbuster at the time - Star Wars - wasn't deemed worthy enough to win Best Picture/Director. The same can be said of Avatar. I'm not saying that Avatar was a bad movie. Not at all. If you read the blog from a few months ago, you'll see that I offer a fairly positive review. However, it is the whole Star Wars thing with the Academy. I would have been disappointed in the Academy had they gone with the "highest grossing movie of all time" as a Best Picture and James Cameron as Best Director because they had not recognized Star Wars - a movie that was a special effects blockbuster that was the highest grossing movie of 1977 and, until Titanic, the highest grossing movie of all time.
This is not to say that I am against James Cameron. With Avatar, Terminator and even Titanic, James Cameron has shown that he has a tremendous vision. George Lucas had the same vision with Star Wars and had the Academy recognized Star Wars in 1978, then it would be fine with me if Avatar won at this year's Oscars. But since it did not, I wanted that same kind of fairness - which was granted me by the voters in the Academy.
Congratulations to all of the winners. Eventually I will see most of the nominated movies. Probably not The Hurt Locker, though, because I'm not really into that kind of movie.
