Amph 2014 Awards Season

I would have preferred Bullock and Ejiofor over Blanchett and McConaughey, but otherwise tonight left me pretty satisfied.

 

Blanchett totally deserved it. She was brilliant.

 

I'm just glad Captain Phillips didn't win. Phew.

 

i got 16 out of 24 right. i think i got 17 last year. not really the skill i would have chosen but we work with what we've got.

i thought ellen was good. the ceremony was pretty ho-hum but i had fun. i ate so much candy.

 

That was awful.

 

The pizza bit was good if only to see which celeb would stain their outfit. There were some close calls.

 

I was sad Harrison Ford only helped himself to one piece. If I were him I'd have dove into that pie as if there were no tomorrow.

'Cuz y'know...that would have been hilarious.

 

harrison ford looked like he snorted a mountain of cocaine before he went on stage.

 

He was giving less of a **** as his speech went on.

 

U2 Bomber.

 

The most awkward photobomb I've ever seen.

 

I also dislike U2 acting all serious.

 

So, that's always then.

 

And another person not named Philip Michael Thomas achieves the EGOT.

 

Gravity walked away with 7 total wins. Happy!

 

I was thrilled 12YAS won Best Picture and Gravity for Director.
Those are the two I was really pulling for.
Ellen was alright, not exactly note worthy but solid.

 

Ellen was certainly better than she was in '07 when she mumbled for a bit, and then hid in her car for the rest of the time. I shamelessly loved Seth's hosting duties last year.

 

I am pissed the **** off. I want to talk about four categories. The three short film categories and the foreign language category.

Why am I so pissed about these four? Because the worst nominee won in all four categories. Herewith a rant.

I ranked the animated features thusly:

1. Get a Horse - ****
2. Feral - *** 1/2
3. Room on the Broom - *** 1/2
4. Possession - ***
5. Mr. Hublot - **

How you don't give the award to Get a Horse is beyond me. It was hugely acclaimed by audiences and critics alike. Everyone I heard talk about Frozen talked about Get a Horse and how great it was. It was a wonderful blending of old and new and the first film I've seen since the 3D boom began that I thought actually used that space in a creative, witty and ground-breaking way. Mr. Hublot, on the other hand, was way too cluttered and screwed up its admittedly cute story with a lot of extraneous nonsense. Idiots.

I ranked the short films thusly:

1. Just Before Losing Everything - ****
2. The Voorman Problem - ****
3. Do I Have to Take Care of Everything? - ****
4. That Wasn't Me? - *** 1/2
5. Helium - **

So, they had three four star films and one three & and a half star film. And they picked goddamn Helium, a sappy, predictable, manipulative story with pretty bad acting from the central character, a small boy dying of some disease or other. I gave Helium two stars and I was being generous. It damn near got one & a half. Meanwhile, Just Before Losing Everything was a taut, almost unbearably suspenseful thriller about spouse abuse, The Voorman Problem was a wickedly smart and funny horror-comedy and Do I Have to Take Care of Everything was seven minutes of pure hilarity. IDIOTS!

I ranked the short docs thusly:

1. Prison Terminal - ****
2. Cavedigger - ****
3. Facing Fear - ***
4. Karama Has No Walls - ***
5. The Lady in Number 6 - *

That's right, goddamn one star for the winner. It was boring, totally cliched and the "star," this aged Holocaust survivor was actually a horrible musician and all her great "wisdom" was of the caliber you'd find in a Hallmark card. Very inspiring. Meanwhile, Prison Terminal, which followed a lifer in prison through his physical decline and death, was a riveting look at a side of the corrections system you never see, a compelling critique of the concept of life sentences and an emotionally devastating human story. I was crying by the end and I heard several others in the theater doing the same. It's a perfect short documentary. ******* IDIOTS!

And now, the foreign language film. I only saw two of these, but I rank them thusly (and pay attention to the star ratings):

1. The Broken Circle Breakdown - ****
2. The Great Beauty - 0 stars

That's right, ZERO STARS. The Great Beauty was a dreadful, unbelievably pretentious and tiresome movie. It was a riff on Fellini and Bergman, but it forgot the human elements of those filmmakers. It was populated with cartoon characters, weirdness for the sake of itself, and a main character who was simply totally flat. La Dolce Vita it was trying to be and I have rarely seen a film fail so utterly. It is the worst film I've seen in years. It feints at meaning, but is ultimately a superficial, totally meaningless film. And it was two and a half hours!

Meanwhile, The Broken Circle Breakdown, the tale of a married couple dealing with the illness of their child, is as perfect a film as I've seen in a year. It's harrowing, gripping and riveting. As the couple turn in opposite directions, the husband to his belief in the randomness of the universe and the wife toward a mystical spirituality, in order to deal with tragedy, it raises and discusses serious issues facing our culture today, all without ever being strident or giving us easy answers. And the performances are exquisite. I have little doubt that the female lead will be the best female performance I see all year; it's acting on a level you rarely see in your whole life. It's a brutal exploration of grief, unflinching and absolutely true. And the direction is spectacular, skipping through the years of the couple's relationship in order to show the ways in which life works on us. I have only seen a handful of films this calendar year but it is by far the best and a masterpiece for all time. And now it'll be forgotten while droves of people go seek out The Great Beauty. M************ IDIOTS!

I would burn the Kodak Theater to the ground right now if I was there and had a match.

EDIT: I can't get over it. The Broken Circle Breakdown gets four stars;The Great Beauty gets 0. Do you see what that means? The Broken Circle Breakdown wasn't just a little better; it wasn't even a lot better. It was as much better as it was possible for it to be. There is no larger spread than the spread between these two movies. The Great Beauty literally could not have been worse and The Broken Circle Breakdown literally could not have been better. Okay, I'm done. I'm done. I wish now I hadn't been snowed in last night so I could have gone to that Oscar party and thrown something at the screen.

 

I wonder if she'll flub up her acceptance speech because the host mispronounced her name as "Ulcer" instead of "Elsa".

 

I have, unfortunately, never seen any of his movies. One of the reasons I wanted to get to The Grandmaster. I mean, it wouldn't replace any of the essential classics he's directed, but it would have broken the "never seen any of his movies" bit.

 

wong kar wai has never even been nominated for an academy award. the academy awards suck a ****. it is a massive circle-jerk session.