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.