Tonight is the biggest night of the year in Tinseltown, even bigger than Christmas if you can believe it. Tonight of course is the 83rd Annual Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars. The Oscars, despite being heralded as one of, if not the biggest, most prestigious of awards in not just film, but in any art form there is, are rather bizarre at times in terms of the recipients of the fake gold statuettes. And this is what has inspired me to write this brief, late night blog. For those of you not in the know, the Oscars are decided and determined by a relatively small (couple of hundred) board of people. These people create the short lists, then reduce the short lists down to the nominees for each category, and following that, decide upon the eventual winner. The list of nominees for the biggest of the awards; that being for Best Picture includes ten this year, double the usual five, and this is not in the least surprising considering the remarkable twelve months of cinema that we've just been treated to.
The nominees are as follows:
Black Swan
127 Hours
The King's Speech
Inception
Toy Story 3
Winter's Bone
The Kids Are All Right
True Grit
The Fighter
The Social Network
Now, looking back at that list of films, I reckon that the majority of you will have ruled out one of them immediately, and despite the fact that you've probably never even heard of Winter's Bone, I'd guess that you have ruled out Toy Story 3. Am I right? It's animated, and a family film. Therefore there's got to be no way that it can win, even though, in my humble opinion it truly is the film of the year. But alas, the Oscars will snub it, as it is 'only an animation'. Never mind the fact that Pixar have actually proven to be the only essentially flawless production company in that none of their eleven films to date have been bad, or even average for that matter.
The front runners to win the best picture crown as of right now are undoubtedly The King's Speech and The Social Network; both of which are great films, but are in my eyes undeserving of this award as I would even place Black Swan ahead of them. I just got back from the cinema having seen True Grit, and thought that was an awesome piece of film, a true western. That won't win because the Cohen Brothers got the best picture nod a few years ago for the brilliant No Country For Old Men. Meanwhile, because it came out over half a year ago, everybody seems to have forgotten about just how great Inception was; a very innovative and inspired film, that unfortunately seems to have fallen out of mind and proved too complicated for some viewers. Alas, Toy Story 3 will fall to the biggest injustice as it certainly evoked the most emotion out of most who went to see it at the pictures. It certainly got to me!
I may be ranting about nothing here, as I could wake up in the morning to news that Pixar pulled off the upset, and that Toy Story 3 received the nod, and walked away as the first animation to win Best Picture. It most likely won't though, as was said by a whole host of critics on this past week's Film 2011, all of whom actually agreed with each other that Toy Story deserves it, despite the inevitable snobbery.
Time will tell...
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