1 March 2010

The Academy Awards (Oscars) - a love/ hate relationship

So it's the Academy Awards next sunday, and i'm very much looking forward to seeing Christoph Waltz win the Best Supporting Actor award....which if he doesn't win will result in a whirlwind of abuse being launched at the television, or perhaps a little more appropriately just have me tweeting my disappointment....

A year on though and it's still the events of the previous awards show that are still fresh in my mind, with both good and bad points lingering in my consciousness.


Bad -

Every year at the various awards shows they have a showreel of fallen filmmakers and actors who have passed away in that year, in this particular awards show the reel unfortunately contained Charlton Heston (the master of the 4 hour movie). As the video played out and the different faces came on screen, everyone applauded....such names Paul Neumann and Heath Ledger were also in this particular reel.
And then Charlton Heston's clip came on, and the applause lowered significantly. Almost silence. Until the next face on the reel showed up and the applause resumed.

I was disgusted. It was since then that I realised there are oscar-politics.
Apparently Charlton Heston had fallen out with the panel or guild that makes up the academy awards some number of years earlier, and despite the fact that he was also the head of the NRA (National Rifle Association), it seems as if the entire actors guild had been deliberately turned against him for his defiance.
It's also only in the last few weeks that I discovered that the late Marlon Brando had also been in a similar disagreement and recieved the shame shun of applause when he had passed away.
I found it really disappointing to watch....should they not at least be applauded for the many great performances that they had given to the world of film?


Good -

There was one redeeming feature of last years ceremony which I found very inspiring, Terry Gilliam was awarded the life-time achievement award and he was pretty cool doing his speech even putting in some funny jokes...but then he said something along the lines of:

"I think it's absurd that they're awarding me a life-time achievement award for the films that i've done....when i'm still trying to figure out how to actually make one"

I found this particularly inspiring because i'm someone who always wondering how the professionals do things, and if the way that I do things is the right way. And it's just very reassuring to know that one of best people in the field who people look up to is still learning and still has doubts when working on a project.

4 comments:

KarlDoran said...

Mate, the Oscars are bollocks. They've always been political. The nominations often shamelessly skipping the best films of the year in favour of the judging panels favourites. It also massively favours films from the big studios over intelligent, stylish and much more interesting independently produced films. Forget the Oscars. It's complete bullshit.

Tokyobob said...

Innit. It's just the fact that most people don't give a plop about the others like the Baftas, etc...

Anyway, we'll soon see where their priorities lie this Sunday....if 'Avatar' wins best original screenplay I'll piss myself.

Tokyobob said...

one interesting thing though is that one of the animations we saw at Bradford festival is up for best animated short....that 3D one with the guy drinking tea in a cafe.

KarlDoran said...

Oh yeah! I liked that one. Is that the one where he hasn't got enough money and so he stays for ages drinking loads of tea/coffee and then he tries to pinch some change off a homeless fella? Totally agree about Avatar. Formulaic, obvious Hollywood nonsense. Looked great though.