I have to admit, after a week of vacation, I’m actually excited to be sticking my head back into the Oscar race. Not that I’ve really found much since I got here. Pretty much everyone else went on vacation in the last week as well, and except for a smattering of top ten lists, there wasn’t a whole lot of discussion going on.
So what’s news? The biggest thing right now is the looming Golden Globes ceremony, which is looking very likely to take place on January 13 without a television broadcast. Not only does this ruin my plans for that night—come on, what’s more fun than the Globes?—it might ruin some Oscar campaigns too. As a reminder, the WGA is threatening to put a picket line outside of the Globes, adding insult to the injury of there being no writers to write the ceremony to begin with. A picket line means few to no celebrities, and no writers means terrible banter, so the conventional wisdom is that it’s best for all of us to just keep the whole thing private.
What does this mean for those of us who haven’t a thing to wear to such a fancy ceremony? Well, for dedicated awards hounds like me, not much. There will likely be some liveblogging and real-time updates from the press that’s collected there, so even if we don’t see Katherine Heigl say “Oh shit” when she wins an award (as she did at the Emmys), someone will be there to tell us about it. The really important impact, though, will be when it comes to everyone else, those who don’t drop everything to see little gold statues handed out—you know, those with real lives. With most of the contenders out in theaters right now, each of them stands to get a huge box office bump from an award. It’s even better if someone comes off as totally charming in their acceptance speech—like, if Daniel Day-Lewis made a hilarious crack when accepting his award, it would be on the Today show the next morning, and a small percentage of America wouldn’t be afraid of him anymore after seeing previews for There Will Be Blood. I promise this would work.
Think about a movie like Atonement. Its buzz has fizzled significantly after it was ignored by the critics and SAG, but it’s had a slew of Globes nominations keeping it afloat. If no one is there to see it win awards, though, will it accomplish anything at all? Its box office figures are already getting grim—everyone wants to see Juno instead, and I can’t say I blame them—and it could really benefit from a Globes win. No matter how many statues it takes home—I’m betting some, but not all of them—the potential audience will probably never hear about it.
The thing that keeps getting me over this news, aside from being bummed about missing the whole shebang, is a reminder that, amid the fun and games, there’s a pretty real battle going on in Hollywood. It’s like after 9/11, when the Emmys were delayed and the awards shows got all serious, except this time it’s not a national tragedy but a pissing match that we’re all forced to witness. So while we were all willing to let Hollywood tell us to bow our heads and pray to remember the victims back in 2002, we’ll probably be much less likely to let them take away our entertainment so they can battle over a few pennies. What’s supposed to be the most fun night in Hollywood, and the most fun to watch, probably won’t end up being much fun at all.
So for now I guess we can continue looking over the year that was, look tentatively into the future-- Cloverfield, just come out already!—and remember the best movies of the year on our own terms, not what some stupid awards show tells us. Not that I will actually be able to do that, but maybe you’re all bigger people than I am. And until the CB Top Ten lists show up in a few short days, you can entertain yourself with the collected Top Tens of a slew of movie critics over at Movie City News-- it’s pretty remarkable. Did you know that Knocked Up has shown up on more top ten lists than Gone Baby Gone? Or that three critics out there actually put Spider-Man 3 on their lists? It’s a strange world we live in, friends.
Oh, and hey: HAPPY 2008! I’ll catch up with you guys there in a few days.
