Each year as Oscar season rolls around I find myself less and less interested in who wins. And I realize that part of the problem is that not only have movies gotten worse, but the awards themselves seem less and less relevant. Best Picture? Best Screenplay? How many many truly valid contenders are there each year anyway? I think the Academy needs to loosen up a bit and add some new awards that truly reflect the state of filmmaking in the 2010′s.
I propose (nominate?) these new categories:
- The “Ooops, you shoulda won 14 years ago for a better movie” Award: This year’s winner, Jeff Bridges for that kinda boring-looking alcoholic country singer movie. Previous winners including Al Pacino for Scent of Woman, Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine and anything Clint Eastwood has won in the last 10 years. Another optional category: Best Alcoholic Country Singer Movie (there tends to be at least 3-4 every year)
- The Pierce Brosnan “Thank You For Not Singing in a Movie This Year” Award: given annually to Pierce Brosnan. Along with a check for $6 million dollars, just to make sure.
- Worst Movie Based on the Worst Movie: I think this would be an interesting category. With all the remakes of terrible 80′s horror movies — Friday the 13th, My Bloody Valentine, and Halloween II, this year alone – it seems too easy to say that your remake is merely “better than the original.” But if people were competing to see if it was somehow possible to produce a remake that was actually worse than the crappy original, now you have yourself an interesting contest!
*by the way, an interesting note about Halloween II. This is where our obsession with remakes and sequels gets totally out of hand. The original Halloween came out in 1978. Followed by many, many sequels which were released between the years 1981 and 2002. Then the remake of the original Halloween came out in 2007, a mere five years after its 6th sequel, Halloween 7. Meaning we came dangerously close to a break in the time-space continuum in which the sequel to the original came out after the original had already been remade!!! I’m no quantum theorist but I do believe if that had happened our entire solar system would have been swallowed up by a black hole. (And don’t get me started on Halloween 2, the remake. Does that mean it’s also Halloween 9? Do I carry the one?)
- Most Tossed-Off End Credit Song (by a major songwriter): This year I nominate U2′s theme song from the film Brothers. It’s a little ditty called “Winter”. Or as I like to call it, “Bono trying to clear his throat while The Edge plunks away at a piano.”
- The Jenny McCarthy Award or “Least Convincing Dumb Actor as a Scientist”: Past winners include Keanu Reeves in Chain Reaction and Denise Richards in The World Is Not Enough (both played nuclear physicists) and Tara Reid in Alone in the Dark as a anthropologist (although in her defense, Tara Reid playing anyone who completed high school is a stretch).
*Denise Richards may need to win the Lifetime Achievement Award for this category because she played a nuclear physicist named Christmas Jones. (Enjoy some of her brilliance below)
More categories on Friday!
