One is about the war in Iraq, another about killing Nazis; and another about the fantasy world of blue people. The race is on for the Academy Award for Best Picture and unlike the last couple of years, this year's category has something or everybody.
Best Picture is the award that matters the most. It's saying this is the best movie of the year. This year marks the first since 1943, that ten films are nominated instead of the usual five. James Cameron's Avatar is the highest grossing of the pack and is the most popular. The film has grossed $2.5 billion since its release in December 2009. Disney/Pixar's Up is the first animated feature to be nominated for best picture and blockbusters like Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards and The Blind Side are also big contenders. Other nominations include Up in the Air starring George Clooney, A Serious Man by past-awardees The Coen Brothers, District 9, And Education, The Hurt Locker and Precious.
This season is by far the least predictable. Since the Oscars wrap up the awards season, it's usually obvious what film will be awarded after the other big award shows conclude (i.e. The Golden Globes, BAFTA and SAG.) Normally, a film sweeps the award shoes making it easy to predict the recipients of the Oscars, however this year brought some confusion since each show had a different winner. And this is the Oscars and no award is easily predicted. The Oscars go more for performance than for popularity (remember Out of Africa won over The Color Purple?) "Avatar" just might be out of luck. The ceremony is voted by directors, actors and other movie buffs so it's like voting against the competition. Avatar's huge success might prevent it from winning the Oscar.
All in all my vote goes to The Hurt Locker. It's already won the BAFTA, which is the British equivalent of the Oscars and overall, this movie has one thing that many of the others fail to create: great performance. Best picture winners are chosen based on the performance of the cast and all the graphics in the world couldn't have Avatar from horrible acting. Nevertheless, Sunday night will be an exciting one; my prediction may just be right but then again it's the Oscars so we might have that 2006 Best Picture fiasco all over again.
Ariel, Some good stuff here, and i can tell you're working on developing your voice, which is good. There are two things I would think about: the words you're linking from. "Won" in relation to out of africa, and it takes you to a wikipeida page. You want to link on the movie names, and then if there's an interesting article that someone else wrote about how that movie won, reference the article and link to that. Likewise, "Since 1943" - it's just a weird choice of words to link to the idea of having ten movies instead of five. i would instead explain the change and then reference a story or two that tlks about it and link on the names of the stories.
ReplyDeleteAlso, every movie should be linked. Basically, if you can link, you should. Four is the requirement; you're welcome to do more.
Secondly, always ask yourself: why would someone read this? What information/opinion/insight/enjoyment am I giving them that they can't get from anyone else or anywhere else. I think you need to sharpen the point of your posts a bit. Does that make sense? There's a certain generic quality to them. The answer may be to bring more of your personality into them, or to be really super rigorous with your linking.
Something to think about
hc