Yes, I'm glad that Heath Ledger won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his knock-out performance as the Joker. But there's a basic problem with the Academy Awards that this New York Times article points out:"Still, all the showmanship seemed only to highlight the basic challenge of a ceremony whose producers were hoping to capitalize on movies’ strong commercial appeal: The best picture candidates — The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader and Slumdog Millionaire — altogether had fewer than half the viewers of The Dark Knight, an audience favorite that was praised by many critics but still did not make the cut."
Why would the Oscars snub a critically acclaimed film like The Dark Knight? Just because the powers that be can't stomach comic book stories? Heck, we're lucky the Oscars finally acknowledged The Lord of the Rings, a trilogy of--gasp!--fantasy movies, based on Tolkien's classic books.
I'm not railing against the movies that were nominated. I'm just saying that the folks who pick the nominees for Best Picture might want to broaden their minds...
2 comments:
The Oscars are truly a strange life-form.
Steven Spielberg made the critically acclaimed, box-office-popular E.T. But it was considered a "fantasy fluff" story...not enough depth. (Forget the fact that it touched humankind's deepest longing for connection to something greater than itself!) He made other good films, too. But the Oscars couldn't deny Spielberg's talent and 'gravitas' after he made Schindler's List, could they, even though his Holocaust masterpiece did not necessarily bring in "big bucks"?
With Lord of the Rings, I honestly think the film community was waiting to see if Peter Jackson could pull it off...make three movies at the same time in a little out-of-sight-out-of-mind country, have them all be of consistent quality and be true to Tolkien's archetypal tale. By the time the third one came out, I honestly think the sweep they achieved was on behalf of the whole trilogy. (Just an aside...the husband of a friend of mine worked on LOTR for 6 months in New Zealand, and said it was one of the most exhilarating, exhausting, surreal experiences of his life.)
My hope is that the Oscars will look at the quality of the story and the way it is told rather than screening movies by the social-issue-du-jour method or the "is this high class enough" method.
Dark Knight should have been nominated.
Me
Thank you for your thoughtful replay, WW!
I agree with everything you say here. If The Dark Knight hadn't been such a critically acclaimed movie, I would understand why the powers-that-be overlooked it. But it was critically acclaimed. And the only reason for snubbing it seems to be because the Oscars dislikes the idea of movies derived from comic books.
But comic books are a wonderful source--they represent a sort of modern mythology. Ditto for books and films in the fantasy and sci-fi genre. And, in general, the Oscars snub all of them.
I agree that the film community wanted to see the whole trilogy before rewarding LOTR...but I still see the fact that they nominated and chose LOTR as an enormous step forward. It's just that they've still got a long way to go!
Meanwhile, what a wonderful experience for your friend's husband. That's something he'll be able to talk about for the rest of his life!
~Rose
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