Movie Matters: 2010 Oscars: And the Nominees are Leaving Something to be Desired

Watch live streaming video from academyawards at livestream.com

As a loyal EM reader you know that this blog has a general respect for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. Their annual awards, commonly known as the Oscars, give the movies the requisite heft to be considered high art. But the announcement of the 2010 nominees irritated me.

First problem, ten best picture nominees. Of course this is not a new phenomenon, but its desperate. Back in the 30's nominating this many films was standard, but back then the Oscars where a more blatant attempt to sell movie tickets. As the awards evolved over the decades it appeared that they were more concerned with honoring a worthy few and were content to let extremely talented artists languish Oscar-free for an entire career (See, Peter O'Toole). They didn't seem to care if they honored movies that no one saw or will ever see (The English Patient). Raising the number of best picture nominees is a shameless attempt to raise Oscar night ratings at the expense of diminishing the prestige of the award. Also, with such a large field the picture that wins theoretically only needs 11% of the vote. Should a picture with that little support be etched in the pages of history forever?

Second problem, Avatar. With nine nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, the Academy is making a bold statement that 2009 was the year of Avatar. I concede that the film grossed over $2 billion, which is good for the industry, and the visual effects rose to level of OMG, but those facts don't make up for the stale plot and stilted dialog. The beauty of film is that it's a collaborative art form but the draw back of that is if there is one weak link the entire production suffers. A best picture nominee should shine from every aspect of the movie making process and Avatar falls short in too many places. Just because people went to see the movie, doesn't mean it's great (See, Spider-Man 3).


Third problem, Star Trek. Science fiction is usually woefully snubbed at the Oscars, but this year the Academy had two science fiction blockbusters that it could honor, and as the knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade said they, "choose poorly." Save for visual affects (and that's debatable) Star Trek outshines Avatar in every metric. The story is more compelling, the characters are more fully developed, the stakes of the story are much higher and the movie is just plain fun. If the Academy insists on nominating ten pictures they can't miss the one movie that brought nerds and jocks together in 2009.


Final problem, repeat nominees. I get it. Meryl Streep is the greatest ever and the Coen Brothers are clever. But do we need to be reminded of these facts every year? I look to the Oscar nominations as a chance to see what great performances I might have missed over the last year because there were too many ads for Night at the Museum 2. Of course I'm going to go see Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, and George Clooney. Academy, please, tell me something I don't know.


This is the first of many posts about the 2010 Oscars. Stay tuned. And don't forget to follow @EnterMatter on Twitter for the latest updates.

Oscar Matters - Was "Gone Baby Gone" Snubbed?

"I really feel, as far as talent is concerned, this is the most talented team that I've been part of as a whole, but the most unproven, inexperienced team that I've ever played on" ~ Brett Farve about the 4-12 2006 Packers (In 2007 that team made it to the NFC Championship game)

Ben Affleck is one of the most underrated artists in Hollywood. I guess that's because he's appeared in such gems as Gigli, Forces of Nature, and Daredevil. But for every throw away performance there's a knockout performance in a movie like Dogma, Shakespeare in Love or Hollywoodland. On top of that, he's an Oscar winning screenwriter. With Gone Baby Gone he's added director to his resume and at this point I'm drawing a line in sand; Ben Affleck is one of the most important artist working in Hollywood.

Gone Baby Gone is one of those rare movies that is satisfying on every level. The cast is incredible. At the helm is Ben's little brother Casey who picked up his first Oscar (Best Supporting Actor) nod this year for his performance in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, but he could have easily snagged a Best Actor nod for his turn as Patrick Kenzie in Gone Baby Gone. The younger Affleck more than holds his own against acting giants Morgan Freeman (who plays police Captain Jack Doyle), and Ed Harris (as Detective Remy Bressant). Amy Ryan (who I fell in love with as Beadie on the The Wire) puts in an Oscar nominated performance as Helene McCready the drug-addicted mother of a little girl who's gone missing.

The movie's characters are brilliantly drawn. Patrick Kenzie is a young recently minted Private Detective who's spent his entire life in the same South Boston neighborhood. Family and community are the most important drivers of his life. He's a good guy but he comes from the streets, so he looks like a push over, but if you try him he'll lay you out flat. Patrick's girlfriend, Angie Gennaro (played by the beautiful and talented Michelle Monaghan), is his high school sweetheart and perfect foil. She loves Patrick deeply, but is firmly her own person.

We meet the rest of the characters when a little girl, Amanda McCready, has gone missing from Patrick's and Amanda's neighborhood. The girl's aunt, Bea McCready, who has basically raised Amanda, hires Patrick and Angie to work the neighborhood angle of the case. Her husband, Lionel (played by Titus Welliver) also loves Amanda as his own child and his sister Helene is Amanda's negligent mother. The police detective assigned to the case, Ramy Bressant is a harden officer who sees Patrick as an inexperienced hack who will muddle the investigation and his superior Captain Jack Doyle feels the same way. In each character's arc we see how their innate belief structure causes them to make decisions that push the story in interesting and unforeseeable ways.

The plot is chocked full of twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat. The witty, biting south Boston inflected dialogue is always crisp and relevant. The move hums with a urgent intensity that consistently highlights the gravity of the moral dilemmas the movie grapples with. There are no easy answers at the end of this film and the choices the characters make expose the complex inter-workings of family and community.

A movie that gets it right on so many levels should have been honored much more that it has been. The script is phenomenal and Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard should be up for best adapted screenplay. They aren't. Casey Affleck anchors this film and he should be up for best Actor. He isn't (but his best supporting nod could partially be for this role). And finally, the movie should be up for Best Picture. It isn't.

The Academy has been ignoring Ben Affleck because he's decided to make a lot of money by appearing in marginal movies, but it's time for them to stop underestimating him. They sort of saw his potential when they gave him and his friend Matt Damon Oscars for writing Good Will Hunting but (not so) secretly believed that Matt just put Ben's name on the script because they were pals. Now, Ben Affleck has made one of the best movies of the year, a movie about what happens when you underestimate a person of true talent and substance, and its his statement that no matter what Hollywood thinks, he's an artist of great power who will shape the movies for a long time to come.