Avatar, boo hoo

[dalekboy]

There are all these folks crying about Avatar not getting Best Picture. I like Avatar, it's visually stunning, and technically brilliant, but to me Best Picture should also include the script, which in the case of Cameron's film had some serious issues.

Of the films I had seen in the Best Picture category, I would have rated District 9 significantly higher. The story wasn't one we'd seen variants of thirty-seven times before, and the main character wasn't charismatic or likeable. That's a brave movie-making choice right there.

As for people complaining about Bigelow winning Best Director, and them saying she only won because she's a woman, here's a can of shut-the-fuck-up, drink deep.

She won in spite of being a woman. If you can't accept that little fact, you're part of the problem.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

[GregT] I woke up on Oscars night with - literally - a nightmare that Avatar had won Best Picture. I was so angry. My subconscious had already formulated Hurt Locker's Best Picture epitaph - "The Academy has learned the lessons of E.T. not wisely but too well." Not sure why I was so riled up over a less and less meaningful award but there you have it.

Saying Avatar should have got Best Picture is making a profound personal bias. It's saying, "I saw this film, and I enjoyed it, and lots of other people enjoyed it, and they all agree it was pretty awesome, so therefore it is better than these other films." The same logic would have handed Best Film to the Moon Landing, several Olympics opening ceremonies, and certain episodes of Big Brother. Popularity, enjoyability, and the ability to be inoffensive are not, and should not be, considerations in giving the highest commendations for art.

Avatar is a profound technical achievement, and it's a pretty damn good work of showmanship, but the same can be said for the pyrotechnics rigs on a Wrestlemania entrance ramp. (Have you seen those things?) They don't win Best Picture, and neither should Avatar, because at the end of the day, as a work of cinema, it rises no higher than technical competency. It doesn't aspire to the heights, let alone scale them.