The Academy Awards: Perfect Nominations or Out of Touch?

 

Oscar season is upon us again and just like every year, there are cheers for many people’s favorite nominated films and there are grumbles from fans who aren’t happy at with the nominations. And like every year, I am hearing the same two lines:

“The Academy is full of old people who are out of touch.”

“They never nominate films that people actually see.”

But is this true? The best example people give for these statements is 2008’s huge Best Picture snub for The Dark Knight. The films that did make the nominations that year were The Reader, Milk, Frost/Nixon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and the winner, Slumdog Millionaire. Four years later, the only movies from that list that people still talk about are Slumdog and Milk. Though I personally may have given Best Picture to Slumdog Millionaire rather than Dark Knight, I am baffled as to why a mediocre film like Benjamin Button made a nomination for Best Picture.

When that snub occurred, people are outraged. And this time, the Academy listened. A next year in 2009, the Academy Awards upped the chances for other films to win Best Picture by allowing nine films to enter instead of four or five. Not only that, but two science fiction films were nominated (Avatar and District 9), an animated film (Up) and also Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Though the nomination list featured typical Oscar bait such as The Blind Side, there were also agreat acting pieces such as Up In the Air and work from today’s best directors like the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man. I remember watching just about every nominated film during the December of ‘09 and just loving the quality of films that I was seeing. An excuse to view nine greats films? I was great! The Hurt Locker ended up winning that year and it was a choice most people were happy with. At the end, it seemed that the Oscars had redeemed themselves from 2008’s disaster.

However, 2010 and 2011 were mixed years for the Oscars, with people once again being less than thrilled about the winners. For 2011’s winner, The Artist, I’ve heard many people say it was just industry kissing its own rear with the movie being a glorified tribute to the golden age of Hollywood. This once again caused people to wonder if the Oscars really reflect today’s moviegoer.

For 2012, the nomination grumbles are not as loud. Like I said earlier, people still have things to say, but the nominations are no doubt the best films of the year year. While my own grumblings do demand justice for Moonrise Kingdom not getting, I feel the Academy pretty much nailed it this year.

Yes, it was a mistake that The Dark Knight was not nominated in 2008. But at the same time, another huge fan-followed franchise won Best Picture in 2003, that being The Lord of the Rings: The Return of The King. Then again, to this day people are still angry that Crash somehow beat Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture in 2005. With gay cinema being less shocking in 2013, would the outcome have been the same nowadays? We can even go farther back into controversial Oscar wins: Annie Hall beating Star Wars for Best Picture in 1977. Yes, Annie Hall is Woody Allen’s greatest film and is the quintessential New York City romantic comedy film but it definitely did NOT have the culture impact of Star Wars. Not even close.

But the grumblers can be ridiculous at times too. This year alone, there were people angry that The Dark Knight Rises was not nominated for Best Picture. As good as a movie as it was, this film had many flaws and was definitely not worthy for Best Picture in my personal opinion.

This is a debate that can go on and on in endless circles. With that in mind, I will have to say in conclusion that both sides are both wrong and right in this debate. I feel at times the Oscars do indeed choose less than worthy films as Best Picture, especially when comparing today’s winners to the legendary movies from the past. But I feel this also reflects the quality of films being lower nowadays when compared back then.

As a grumbler myself, what would I like to see from the Oscars? I would love for them to completely get rid of the Best Foreign Film category and allow an equal number of entries of films from all over the world. Perhaps it would get more Americans to see more movies from other countries. Nevertheless, I feel that would be the only true way to really decide what the best film of the year is.

(This post also written for cinemaddicts.net)

 

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The Movie Nilblog: Batman Retrospective

 

With the release of The Dark Knight Rises just around the corner, the plan for many people across the world is similar to what always happens when a film series is about to reach its grand conclusion: a mass re-watching of the previous entries. And in this case it would be Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. But I ask, why stop there? There are several other worthy Batman movies and I personally see the release of Rises as a terrific opportunity to watch Batman movies all week long.

When it comes to live-action Batman films, Batman Begins is definitely my favorite and in my eyes, a superior film to more popular Dark Knight. While Heath Ledger’s new interpretation of the Joker was amazing to behold and Aaron Eckhart giving the Two-Face character the storyline he deserved was something I had been wanting to see for a long time, at the end of the day, I wanted to see the movie for Batman. Though the titular character himself definitely did not fall into the backseat in order to give more screen-time to the flashy villains like he did in the Tim Burton/Joe Schumacher movies, Batman definitely had to share more of the spotlight when compared to Batman Begins.

In Begins, we were finally given our first live-action Batman movie that was all about Batman/Bruce Wayne that forced the villains to take the backseat for once. By using the B-lister baddie, the Scarecrow, and making the A-list villain Ra’s al Ghul, who really isn’t mainstream, this was achieved well. But that wasn’t the only reason. For the first half of the movie, one gets the feeling the film is more of a Bruce Wayne movie then Batman. We see what leads to the moment of the mask and learn the reasons for the troubled man turning to a life of being a crime-fighter.

 

 

Besides putting a strong focus on Batman/Bruce Wayne, I’d have to say my second favorite decision that Nolan made with Batman Begins was giving the Jim Gordon character such an important role. Though I enjoyed Pat Hingle‘s interpretation of Gordon with what little material he was given in the Burton series, it is in Batman Begins that we finally  see him as one of Batman’s first true allies when Gary Oldman takes over the role.. The scene with him comforting a young Bruce Wayne during the night of his parents’ murders immediately made his character so much more important than he had ever been in any other non-comic media concerning Batman.

 

 

But with all that said, Batman Begins is NOT my favorite Batman film, though it is definitely my favorite live-action one. My favorite overall has to go to Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, the under-appreciated film that is also within continuity of Batman: The Animated Series. 

Though the main villain is named within the film’s title, this movie is most definitely all about Batman and gives him one of my favorite origin stories ever. Directed by B:TAS creators Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm, this movie’s version of Bruce Wayne is not only focused on taking down crime to earn justice for his parents’ deaths but he is also a man terribly haunted by their memory. He feels this so much that in the movie when he meets the first love of his life, he actually feels guilty about wanting a normal life and literally begs the tombstone graves of his parents to let him stray from his goal of becoming a crimefighter. This is a huge contrast to Nolan’s Bruce, who was completely willing to both be Batman and date Rachel Dawes.

Without giving too much away about the villain known as Phantasm, this movie-only original character does not disappoint and plays an essential role in Batman’s origin. The secondary villain is more familiar and comes in the form of the Joker, played by Mark Hamill, the man who has owned that character for over ten years now. Though he is as great as always in this film (and my personal favorite Joker), the best thing is that his character in the movie is now free from the binds of television censorship and we actually get to see Mark Hamill’s animated Joker commit several counts of some sweet, sweet murder.

Batman is of course played by Kevin Conroy, who like Hamill, has been acting as Batman for more than a decade and is the Batman that most people my age grew up with. The movie is dark and ends on a very sad, hopeless note. Interestingly enough, though this movie’s version of Batman went on to be featured in several other TV shows (Superman: The Animates Series, Batman Beyond and Justice League), the events of this film aren’t really touched upon again until his final appearance continuity-wise. I’d like to think the ending of this movie is one of the things that helped harden the character that eventually leads him to grow old in isolation and was only meant to be revisited again near the end of his life. After all, Batman is meant to be tragic character. Badass, yes, but tragic.

 

 

So there it is. As far as Batman movies goe, Mask of the Phantasm is my all time favorite.

8.5 out of 10.

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