It's Finally Over: A Post Oscar Reaction

By Sean Knight

The King's Speech Winners: Colin Firth, Tom Hooper

We can all breathe a sigh of relief.  It's finally fucking over.  No more campaigning, no more speeches, no more debates, no more hypothesis, and no more being stuck perpetually in the 2010 Awards Season.  The Academy had their say last night and, as predicted, it went to The King's Speech.  We all knew this was going to happen, but when the Academy started spreading the wealth last night I really thought that The Social Network had a shot, but it was not to be.  My opinion is known on this matter.  I can't change history and now The King's Speech will forever be known as the Best Picture Oscar Winner of 2010.  And that distinction is important because though it is the Oscar winner it is not my best picture.  It may not be your best picture.  It may be.  Greatness is in the eye of the beholder.  People tell me I'm a snob and I take this stuff way too seriously.  I admit I take the Oscars more seriously than any person I know.  They mean a lot to me and they always have.  The Oscars are important.  They are the shining light in a dark and continuously depressing world of filmmaking.  The Oscars celebrate the achievements of the industry and the possibilities of film can be.  The Academy nominated quite a few daring pieces of filmmaking this year.  They ultimately chose a safe familiar picture to them.  That's okay.  The Academy is never going to be what we want them to be.  In the end it's all bullshit anyway.  Awards have no worth except what we place upon them.  But I'm sure it's damn nice to get one.  Steven Spielberg put it best last night when he began naming classic films that have both won and lost the Oscar for Best Picture.  In the end he concluded "either way you are in very good company".  Some think this was a tacky and snide remark against The King's Speech.  I don't think so at all.  He was simply pointing out that in the end we all have a horse in this race and many of them go on to become classics of their genre.  Winning or losing doesn't necessarily matter.  It's all about getting there.  It was also a comment on the Awards Season as whole and how ridiculous it has become with each passing year.  He's probably right.  But I eat this shit up. I live and breathe Oscar season and for me it starts all over again today.  I begin looking ahead at the films that I am anticipating this year and begin predicting which ones may ultimately make a trip to the Oscar podium.  The movies are arguably our most majestic art form.  Cinema has the power to change lives.  It is an emotional and visceral visual experience like none other in life.  I may be a stage actor, but my passion has always been film and will always continue to be.  I may not be an active participant anymore, but I can still cheer the advancement of the medium on from the sidelines.  I could go on in this post and talk about how much I hated the telecast, what winners I thought were bullshit, what I loved etc.  But this awards season has been exhausting and ultimately what's the point?  It's over.  It's time to look ahead to the gifts that the movies will bring us this year.  Because in the end that's what its all about - The movies themselves and our love for them.  No awards voting body can ever change that.  

2010 Knight Awards Winners: The End is Nigh

Another year another Oscar Ceremony upon us.  Another year another Knight Award Winners announcement.  My enthusiasm has waned considerably in the past few weeks when it comes to the 2010 film year.  This Awards season has been exhausting in many ways, but mostly for its predictability.  I've also grown tired because my horse in this race has almost zero chance of finishing first even though it has the entire critical community behind it.  You think I would be used to this by now.  The Academy and I seldom agree with what should even be nominated let alone what should actually win.  I'm looking forward to Sunday night where I can get drunk, yell at the TV screen during the ceremony, and pass out and forget all about it the next day.  It is two months into 2011 after all and I really need to start obsessing about the films coming out this year. It will be a nice palette cleanser. I'm not even having an Oscar party this year due to rehearsal situations.  2010 will never be remembered as a great film year, but I must admit there are at least five films that had a profound effect on me that I may well never forget.  They are, in no particular order, The Social Network, Inception, Black Swan, True Grit, and Shutter Island.  Each one is an amazing vision from accomplished directors working at the top of their form.  It was worth wadding through all the trash just to get to those five beautiful pieces of work. In the next couple of days expect a reaction post to the Oscar Ceremony as well as a post on my most anticipated films of 2011.  Without further ado here are the 2010 Knight Award Winners. Read after the jump.

Jamie J's Oscar Thoughts.

It’s taken me a long time to write this post for a couple reasons. 1) I have been really busy and 2) I still have a couple movies left to watch (Animal Kingdom, Winter’s Bone). I, like Sean, was convinced that The Social Network was going to sweep award season and The King’s Speech was gonna walk away with a Best Actor Nod, and maybe one other, but after it swept the PGAs, DGAs, and SAG awards it has shaken up the Oscar Race. I don’t hate The King’s Speech as much as Sean does. I actually really, really liked the movie. I think both Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush gave two of the best performances of the year and I believe that Colin Firth deserves the Oscar over Jesse Eisenberg (and Sean before you flip out wait a few and I’ll present my case in a bit.) 

So below are my Oscar predictions and thoughts on the nominations!

ps. I totes missed y’all.

A Plea to the Academy: Why The Social Network is the Best Film of the Year

By Sean Knight

The other night the BAFTAs proved that this has become a one horse race.  The King's Speech won both best British film and best overall film, which hardly ever happens with that awards body, not to mention a whole ton of acting awards.  But there is one little ripple in the water that is keeping hope alive for my horse in this race - even the British thought that David Fincher was the best director of the year for The Social Network.  The Academy may well follow suite, but with Tom Hooper winning the DGA all bets are still off.  But one has to ask themselves, if David Fincher is in fact the best director of the year than shouldn't his film be considered the best of the year?  Film is, after all, a director’s medium and Fincher in particular is a stickler for complete control over his projects.  He is a perfectionist in the vein of Stanley Kubrick often demanding up to 99 takes out of his actors and hundreds of feet of footage to wade through with his editors to find the perfect take and consequently the perfect edit. There have been splits between Best Picture and Best Director before.  The most recent and notable was when Ang Lee won Best Director for Brokeback Mountain but lost Best Picture to Crash.  It was one of the most shocking, upsetting, and unforgettable moments in Academy Award History.  Crash was the safer film that everyone could get behind.  Its message was simple - racism is bad.  Brokeback Mountain was a complex and emotional drama about Homosexuality, homophobia, societies perception of homosexuality, and, at its center, it was the doomed love story of two men.  It sent Academy members running for the hills because they were confronted with a controversial and timely piece of cinema that demanded their attention.  It was punished because of that and denied the award it so richly deserved. Brokeback Mountain was and still is a landmark in American Cinema.  I believe that The Social Network will face a similar fate come the 27th.  And yes, I do believe that The Social Network IS a landmark in American filmmaking.  Read on after the jump.

The Writing on the Wall: Sean's Oscar Predictions, who deserves to win, and who got screwed

By Sean Knight

The Inevitable...

After The King's Speech sweep of the PGA, DGA, and SAG all signs point towards victory for Weinstein and company come Oscar night.  I can't say that I didn't see it coming.  For months many had been saying that The King's Speech was the film to beat.  It is a damn near perfect Oscar bait film on the surface.  But I truly thought that the brilliance and relevance of The Social Network would carry it through, despite it not being a traditional Oscar piece.  I have to admit now that I was wrong.  The Academy hasn't changed and it never will.  This should have been clear to me when Brokeback Mountain lost to Crash back in the 2005 race.  But with challenging pictures such as No Country for Old Men, The Departed, and even The Hurt Locker winning it blinded me.  Plus bloggers for years have been stressing that The Academy is getting younger that they have a broader sense of awareness blah blah blah... BULLSHIT.  Nothing has changed; we just got lucky for a couple of years.  In many ways this years race reminds me of 2001 when Ron Howard's revisionist tame audience friendly psychological character study A Beautiful Mind won best picture over better, bolder, and revolutionary films such as Lord of the Rings the Fellowship of the Ring, Moulin Rouge, Gosford Park, and In The Bedroom. Like The King's Speech, A Beautiful Mind was a beautifully acted and well-constructed Hollywood Oscar bait piece.  But also like The King's Speech it watered down it's subject matter to construct a more audience friendly film, it had a mediocre director with no clear vision for his film, and had a huge campaign behind it to convince everyone that it was the film that SHOULD win for being so damn uplifting.  This year The King's Speech faces off against often unconventional and visionary pieces such as Inception, Black Swan, The Social Network, and True Grit.  It is a crime that any of these films would lose to a picture such as The King's Speech, but the advertising doesn't lie - The King's Speech is one likeable fucking movie and at the end of the day voters vote on who they like they best, not who might actually deserve it.  Read on for my predictions in the "Top 6 Categories" after the jump.