Academy Awards 2010

Since the announcement of the nominations for this year's Academy Awards contenders, Hollywood is filled with buzz, speculation and interest (yes, that also consists of whether Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will walk the red carpet together or individually). Now like every organized industry, Hollywood too has its groups and factions which tend to influence the award nominations. By the end of the year, leading newspapers,critics and fan created websites usually publish a list for the films which will be favored by the Academy when the nominations are announced. By the end 0f 2009 it was more or less known to the public which films might get a nomination for the prestigious and most desired award. And since this is the first time that more than five nominations for the Best Picture award is being given out the media buzz coupled with public frenzy is at its highest.

Coming to the nominations the films nominated for the Best Picture Award (namely Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up, Up In the Air) are a mixed bag. It seems that the Academy itself was too excited with the more than five nominations part and hence overlooked some of the best films produced this year. Not for a moment will I say that the ten films which have been nominated are no good films. They undoubtedly are. But for an award which is considered to be the most prestigious, most respected in the world of cinema and securing which is every director's dream I personally feel that the nominations (especially the ones for the Best Picture) should be more in respect with the content of the film rather than the names associated with it. With James Cameron's epic 3D Science fiction film Avatar getting a nomination, people from all the related fields of cinema were generally surprised. The common criticism Avatar received from critics as well as the audiences was the lack of an original story and any attempts to design character depth. Avatar undoubtedly was a visual marvel and perhaps the best viewing experience in the history of cinema. But since the Academy claims to encourage content over anything else when it comes to the awards, Avatar being nominated is slightly disheartening for film buffs like us. Something similar happened last year when The Dark Knight was not in the list of nominations for the best film award since the Academy considered it to be too dark and psychologically complicated a film to be honored with an awards as prestigious as the Oscar (a statement controversially issued by a very renowned member of the Academy who later apologized). The problem lies not in the fact that a film having least cinematic value (from a storytelling point of view) like Avatar getting a nomination. What bothers me is that many films telling far more original and better stories are being overshadowed for quite some time now due to the politics being played by various factions who are a part of the voting panel of The Academy and the studios controlling a major chunk of the voters. It was very shocking to see a film like Avatar with such a cliched script and a story extremely unoriginal (some critics even accused Cameron of copying elements blindly from Dances With Wolves and At Play in the Fields of the Lord) story securing a nomination while a film like 500 Days of Summer which is filled with freshness, a lovely heartwarming story,dazzling performances and a rocking soundtrack being unnoticed by the Academy. It was also very surprising to see The Blind Side getting a nomination because if one takes out Sandra Bullock's career best performance from the film all that remains is a melodramatic,predictable story, good for viewing with your family on a Sunday afternoon but definitely not enough to secure an Oscar nomination. Well written anddirected with extreme effort and dedication, films like Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro and Duncan Jones' Moon were ignored by the Academy. While the first two are certainly not Soderbergh and Coppola's finest works, they surely are films with good stories and great direction which I believe are what the Academy should consider when nominating films for the Best Picture Oscar. An Education a coming of age film about a young girl residing in London during the 1960s got a nomination as well. While certainly a very well made film An Education tells us a story on which films have been made previously as well. Repetitive content should be discouraged where new ideas are originating almost everyday. Sophie Barthes' Cold Souls, a hilarious debut by the female director (best known for her series of short films regarding the 9/11 conspiracy theories) having a brilliant,humorous story and stellar performance by its leads has been surprisingly ignored by all major film festivals this year. Also director Robert D Siegel's Big Fan a tragicomedy about a lonely sports fanatic and his empty discontented world was hardly mentioned in any critics' list for the top films of the year and was ignored by the Academy as well. Comedies Whip It (dir. Drew Barrymore), Zombieland (dir. Rubein Flescher) and The Informant (dir. Steven Soderbergh) had a very well written screenplay which balanced adequately between comic and dramatic moments. Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson a gritty and dark portrayal of prison life and its hazardous consequences was one of the best films of 2009 which hardly got any exposure from any section of the media giving The Academy a great excuse to ignore it. The Coen Brothers' most matured film till date (A Serious Man) failed to earn them a Best Director nomination which was annoying since a film with such careful, affectionate direction deserved more than just a Best Picture and Best screenplay nomination. Michael Stuhlbarg, Robert Downey Jr, Nicolas Cage, Tobey Maguire and Viggo Mortensen were at the best of their acting abilities in A Serious Man, Sherlock Holmes, Bad Lieutenant, Brothers and The Road respectively. George Clooney (Up In The Air) and Morgan Freeman (Invictus) have given performances far more superior than the portrayal of their respective characters in the films for which they have been nominated this year. I guess its time The Academy learns to encourage films which are not produced by the Big Studios dominating Hollywood for decades and sticks to what it claims to stand for. If this continues for long the importance of The Academy Award will gradually decrease and so will the fact that it is respected by directors, producers,critics and fans all over the world.