An Early Look at the Oscars

I usually wait to dabble in Awards hyper-mania until later, on the eve of the Oscar nominations. But, in light of recent changes to the Academy's awards set-up, the surge of top 10 lists beginning to be released, and the announcement of the Golden Globe nominees (which is more or less the official kick-off of Awards Season) next Tuesday, I thought I would share my thoughts on what I think of the current state of the Academy Awards, and who I suspect (with help from the Awards Daily people, a great site I highly recommend) could be nominated/win.

Let's start things off with the most obvious topic: Best Picture. Because the Academy has been criticized for being too "narrow," especially with their exclusion of the the second biggest movie of all time from the top prize short list (though The Dark Knight still managed to scrape in 8 nominations, more then The Reader), those snobbish, elite status members have decided to change the rules, instead allowing 10 movies to be nominated for Best Picture.

Back in the days of yore, there used to be up to 10 nominations for Best Picture, until 1944, when the rules changed and the list was shortened to five films. Now, its back to 10, and I have had reservations about this decision from the moment I heard it. While, yes, it means more movies will be nominated, it still doesn't matter because the five movies that don't have corresponding directors nominated in the Best Director category will immediately be eliminated by prognosticators, leaving the obvious short list of 5 still valid. They were still nominated, yes, but it seems more like a way for the Academy to squeeze in comedies and big budget Hollywood movies, which typically don't get nominated these days.

Of course the list of 10 opens up the high possibility that, maybe, one of the five films without a correlating director will win, and if that ever happens, then this decision would be a more exciting one. But, let's face it, very few of the 6,000 Academy members see EVERY picture nominated...and there were only five! Ten? Forget it, they are too busy. They have lives, they can't be expected to view EVERY single nominated film, while someone like me who rarely has anything to do with his January will plunder into the immense depth of the nominees. In short, it is always what is most popular, and any films sans directors will be ignored.

The 10 also takes away the enjoyable element (for me, anyways) of guessing which movies would be nominated. If there were 5, I would maybe pick Up in the Air, Precious, The Hurt Locker, Nine, and Invictus, and label An Education as the dark horse. Having only seen three of those five I still feel it is a solid list. But now the list is opened up so movies like Up, Avatar, The Lovely Bones, Inglourious Basterds, and Star Trek could could get nominations. When you have a list this dense, it really seems like the Academy is trying to be more open-minded. How about keeping it at five, and nominating Up in the Air, Up, Inglourious Basterds, The Hurt Locker, and Nine? I'd say that's a pretty varied category (also surprisingly drama-lite), but the Academy would much prefer the dark dramas...all of the them.

And at this early stage, who do I think could claim the top prize? Well, anyone who has been paying attention to Up in the Air knows that that has been garnering considerable claim, and I bet it could garner Jason Reitman his second nomination. Hell, if the movie wins, it gets his father, Ivan Reitman, an Oscar (Ivan acted as a producer), and it very well could: it's a funny, yet poignant look at a loner, and a snapshot of our current times. Is it the best of the year? I don't think so, but I've only agreed with the Academy maybe thrice this decade on what the Best Pic of the year was. I wouldn't be mad if it won, though.

As for director, probably the corresponding names to the movies mentioned above: Jason Reitman, Clint Eastwood, Lee Daniels, Kathryn Bigelow, and Rob Marshall. This could also be a year of split director/picture wins, with Eastwood winning another directing Oscar and Reitman taking Picture.

The Best Actor category at this point is pretty boring, actually. We don't have Jamie Foxx, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Daniel Day Lewis, or a Sean Penn - Mickey Rourke-level of dynamic and exciting performances. We've got Clooney for Up in the Air, Morgan Freeman for Invcitus, Matt Damon for The Informant!, Jeremy Renner for the Hurt Locker (though I am half-anticipating a snub), Daniel Day Lewis for Nine, Colin Firth for A Single Man, and maybe this Jeff Bridges movie Crazy Heart will do some business. Out of those seven potentials, though, I'd be hard pressed to pick a frontrunner at this point.

Best Actress will be the more interesting category. It will be an obvious battle between two stellar performances, Gabourey Sidibe for Precious and Carey Mulligan for her dynamic performance in An Education. Yes Meryl Streep will be nominated (when isn't she these days?), and possibly Abbie Cornish for Bright Star, Marion Cotillard for Nine, or a very dark horse would be Saoirse Ronan for The Lovely Bones. Regardless, it will be Sidibe and Mulligan battling to the end.

Supporting Actor seems to have become the new category for crazy, deranged villains. We had Javier Bardem's compressed air-tank-touting Anton Chigurh and Heath Ledger's deranged Joker. This year, two of the nominees will most likely be Christoph Waltz for his terrifying, yet exquisitely evil Nazi villain, and Stanley Tucci, as the rapist and murderer in Lovely Bones. Matt Damon for Invictus could creep in here, Woody Harrelson (for The Messenger) is starting to get the buzz, the Academy could even favor Christian McKay's turn as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles. This category is always the most interesting, because it is where the most diverse character actors show up.

Supporting Actress has eluded me the past couple years, so I won't say much more then guessing one or two of the six women in Nine (Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Fergie, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, or Sophia Loren) could show up here, Mo'Nique an an obvious frontrunner for Precious, Anna Kendrick possible for Up in the Air (I was not as enamored with her performance), and a maybe Melanie Laurent for Inglourious Basterds (she was Shoshana, and was awesome). So for who will win...Mo'Nique? Honestly, I suck at this category, so I'll stay away until I am FORCED to make a decision.

There are still a dozen or so movies left for me to see before Oscar time. December is when the most exciting, though not necessarily best, movies come out. With The Lovely Bones, Nine, Avatar, Invictus, and A Single Man, among many others, to see I am ready for the mass amount of dinero I must spend at my local cineplex.

No Russian

My roommate just bought the newest first person shooter (FPS) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The game is a standard FPS, very thrilling, very exciting, very detailed. I watched my roommate play the first three levels of the game, to see how cool it was, and upon the arriving at the third level I wondered if I would really ever want to put that game in the console again.

Now, it takes a lot to offend me. I think almost anything is OK, and love the satire level of shows like South Park, where any and all subjects are under target. I also embrace the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and have gotten much pleasure out of finding and killing the virtual policeman, and hiring virtual hookers to later kill them and take their money. I enjoy the FPS, where you have to fight an enemy combatant and take down the other team.

But in Modern Warfare 2 I witnessed a level that has offended me more then anything else in recent memory. Be warned, I will openly discuss this entire level, and if you would rather be shocked by it yourself, I say go ahead. It kind of has to be experienced first hand to really get a sense of the shock of the level.

It is preceded by a cutscene, in which whatever character you are playing as (the game jumps between different characters) is informed by his boss that he has been infiltrated into a Russian Mob group or something. Basically, this guy is The Departed level undercover, and can't do anything to blow it. The game warns you at the beginning that this level is controversial and you can skip it, but honestly it should tell what is going to happen in the level, because your curiosity is immediately peaked and it is your natural urge to find out, first hand, what this level is all about.

It opens quite calmly, with you and four of your Russian terrorist buddies entering what my roommates and I originally assumed to be bank, and drew the conclusion of bank robbery. Suddenly, the four terrorists open fire onto all the innocent civilians standing in line at what we realized was a security screening for an airport! Only then did I realize where this level was going.

You spend most of the level slowly walking through the airport, like the Columbine kids or anyone else, quickly picking off any and all innocent civilians you can find, lobbing grenades into elevators and committing mass murder against everyone. My roommate was so shocked that he refused to fire any rounds unless it was necessary, which it did become when actual armed policeman showed up.

Now, you may be asking, and I am asking myself this too, why does killing random virtual people in GTA not bother me at all, but when I get to MW2 I am sickened by what I am seeing? Well, this is what I think goes into it: GTA is violence on such a ridiculous level that you can't believe it will ever happen. When you walk up to someone, shoot them, and then run, it seems comical, and then you just spend a good deal of time running from the police and you either escape or die. Eventually, though, you do die, it is probably this reason alone that I have no qualms about random killings in GTA.

I also have no problems with killing adversaries in FPS because, well, they are armed and trying to kill me. I have to fight back, and it adds a level of exhilaration to the whole thing.

But here, there is no enjoyment to be had. It happens so unexpectedly that it shocks you, but it also conjures up memories of Virginia Tech and Columbine, and also the fact that this really could happen. It really could! So then why is this a video game level? Yes, you are warned to skip the level, and in the inevitable case I do play MW2 I will just select that option so I don't have to deal with it. But you are not told what you are missing, and curiosity will drive you mad (though you could look it up on the Internet).

I visited message boards to gauge people's reactions to this level and got the two expected sides: shocked and disgusted, and then people who just let the bullets fly on the innocents. The main argument from those who "enjoy" the level is that it isn't real, it isn't happening, so it is not bad at all. In fact, many have argued that it is no worse then what has been put on film. But just because it isn't real, doesn't mean it shouldn't effect us; I believe the game designers intended that level to effect the player on a different level then one would be expected to feel normally about a video game.

Now for the real kicker of the level: after spending five minutes killing innocents and then blowing apart guards, you are about to make your escape, when the Russians reveal they know you are undercover and shoot you in the head. The whole point of the mission was to maintain your cover, and instead it was blown all along! It's a great point of discussion, to be sure, but it just leaves you with a big feeling of "what was the point of that level?"

What was the point? To my understanding, that character hadn't been introduced at any point in the game. His role was completely irrelevant, nothing was furthered, and you watched hundreds of innocents die. Plus, if the CIA had a man undercover, and knew this attack was going to happen, would they really let it carry out just for the sake of continuing their agent's cover? Sadly I think the answer is yes, and 24 has posed weird questions like these in past seasons.

In the end, some may call me a pussy for finding the level disgusting, and I say go ahead. I like knowing I have some moral reservations about SOME things these days, which frankly is saying a lot because we live in a world where we have been desensitized to the point where airport murder levels are acceptable. Sometimes we need to pull back the reins a bit and evaluate what the point of that really is.

What's Left for The Office?

I rarely do this, break off from film and review something television show related, especially when that television has only started its season. But The Office had a very important episode this past Thursday: Jim and Pam finally tied the knot.

This may sound like the ramblings of someone who has probably spent too much time watching this show, but I feel it is important to "blog" about it because Jim and Pam's relationship has been the emotional thrust of the show, the center story that the rest of the series has more or less revolved. I had always imagined the show ending with Jim and Pam's wedding, but now it has happened a mere four episodes into the show's sixth season.

Which begs the question: what's left for the Office? This show now almost feels over to me, as everything is fairly routine and, as the past season indicated, whenever something gets shaken up it just resolves itself simply a few episodes later (Pam moving to NY for school, Michael and Pam quitting Dunder-Mifflin). Jim has been promoted to co-manage with Michael Scott, and while the episode "The Promotion" hilariously detailed the way these two play off each other, I also feel it is a device that will become tired very soon.

The only thing left, I guess, is for Michael Scott to find his true happiness, which it seems he may be on the way to discovering considering who he hooks up with at the end of the wedding. But there is no satisfying way to wrap up each character's story lines. Pam is going to have a baby, another exciting prospect I guess. What I'm trying to say is this needs to be the show's final season. Can you really imagine a 7th season of the Office, where Pam and Jim are parents?

To comment on the wedding episode briefly, I thought it was an effective combo of hilarity and sappiness that worked for me. The dance at the end was, I guess, also kind of stupid, but it worked for me in that stupid kind of way. I haven't seen the YouTube video that inspired it, but I probably won't seek it out. The Office's interpretation was a fitting way for Jim and Pam to get married, I guess.