The Retroactive Oglethorpe Award (Movies) 2010

My new favourite idea (brought to you by Netflix Canada, unofficial motto 'Not the most popular movies but how about this documentary?') is to create a time machine that goes back in time and does nothing but change the Academy Awards results.

Imagine the possibilities...

We all know the Academy Awards. In one word; pretentious. Another word might be 'narcissistic' which besides being incredibly hard to spell is not something Hollywood has never been called. If it weren't for Hollywood, where would be America's white trash magazine industry?

It's the ultimate awards show, where past winners decide who new winners will be. Once you have been awarded an Oscar, you become one of the voters in the Academy. You become part of a 'clique', a special circle within a wider special circle, like the illuminati or the G7. Your influence can either help or kill a career and most importantly, sell tickets for the studios as the proudly proclaim X actor was an 'Academy nominee' at one point in their careers. Be and Academy Award Winner and expect an extra 100,000 people in the seats. That's sheeple marketing for you.

It's an exercise in societal voyeurism where the common people are invited to watch the beautiful, rich people perform fellatio on each other. In theory it's designed to bring artistic credibility to a medium that reflects our humanity or inhumanity to fellow human beings with thought-provoking movies such as Schindler's List or 2013's winner 12 Years A Slave (haven't seen it but i'm guessing it's about someone being a slave for 12 years). The Awards are an attempt by the culturally elite to erase the reality that most of Hollywood is built on the profitability of brain-numbing, gun-shooting, hi-faluting moral garbage like the Saw or Star Wars franchises or Adam Sandler's latest piece of shit.

Jack and Jill 2 coming soon.

When I invent my Time Machine and go back in the past, I will make sure the Awards have a Best Comedy Award. Or a Retroactive best Cult Movie Award - movies only qualify after being in circulation for 10 years. That way movies that may have done nothing at the Box Office will finally get the acknowledgement they deserve, like Idiocracy or Rocky Horror Picture Show.  And best comedy? Why not create an award for the movie that makes the most people happier leaving the theater than when they entered it?

So, let's go back and make things right starting with 2010.

Back to 2010

The Winner of Best Picture is something called The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow. It has something to do with war and morality. It was up against Avatar, James Cameron's epic FX environmental-message picture. See the theme? And speaking of cliquey, Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron used to be married to each other. 

The Hurt Locker wound up winning Best Picture with Bigelow also winning Best Director. 

Here's the Trailer;

Pretty standard stuff. America. Average guy doing an extraordinary job in a foreign country. Without him, people would die. That's what America is, after all.  Right? Right?

Yawn....

The New Best Movie of 2010:

Inglorious Basterds.

Remember how I said the Awards were all about being in the right 'clique'? You should, it was in the introduction. Here's a great example. Inglorious Basterds was directed by Quentin Tarantino which if you have ever seen an interview with him, comes off as a bit of a spaz. He's created at least three genre-redefining movies in the last 2 decades and has won 2 best screenplay awards for Pulp Fiction and recently for Django Unchained.

That's pretty decent in itself but remember, those awards are voted on by his peers - in screenwriting. And he deserves them. He's a great screenwriter but he's also a great director. The apex may have been Pulp Fiction, roundly recognized as the greatest film to come out of the 90s - but who did it lose to? Tom Hanks and Forrest Gump.

But that was then. Maybe I will change the voting back in 1994 with my Time Machine but first, let's make things right in 2010. Inglorious Basterds was amazingly tight and suspenseful. It was for the 'educated' film goer as it made you read subtitles for half the movie. It had Brad Pitt for star power and a lot of it went anti-stereotype as the Jews in it were downright tough motherfuckers. It wasn't 'family friendly' but neither was the Hurt Locker.

While many insiders got caught up in the behind the scenes drama of Kathryn Bigelow being a woman and also the ex-wife of fellow nominee and King of SeaWorld James Cameron, others in the directors category were also talking about the weirdo that wanted to personally strangle his leading lady for her on-screen death scene. Which QT did, taking over for Christoph Walz. Inglorious Basterds left you guessing who would live, who would die. It gave us an alternate view of history where the Holocaust is cut short not by military might but by the vanity of the magic of the silver screen.


Best Comedy Oscar of 2010:

The Hangover

Remember how hilarious this was? Before they made the two shitty sequels that makes you never want to go back and see the original that kicked it all off? If you haven't seen it, it's a classic buddy comedy but this time instead of 2 buddies, they have THREE! Nearly unheard of if you don't include Three Amigos, the Three Stooges, Tropic Thunder....

Yet the Hangover hit and it exploded. It was finally a great date movie for guys that were tired of taking girls to see Rom-Coms. Girls didn't mind it as it had Bradley Cooper in it and a cute baby. It had all the necessities, a great comedian in Ed Helms, a good comedian in Zach Galafinkas, eye candy in Cooper and an epic black out stag night in Las Vegas where they lose the stag and spend most of the movie trying to find him by finding out what they did the night before, which involved a chicken, baby, a whore, tiger, and a former heavyweight champ.

Inaugural Cult Movie Oscar:

Cult Movie 

So many to choose from...but let's go with the very first Cult Movie, one that few can argue as I think everyone associated with it is dead now. It's a morality play and causes one to think if the message is the medium or is it the other way around? Either way you cut it, this movie caused people to shit their pants, the director was pretty much shunned by all of Hollywood and well it didn't do so great at the box office in 1932. The movie was called Freaks and it gets the inaugural Cult Movie Oscar by Ogie Oglethorpe.

This was one of the first movies you couldn't really just go and tell people that you saw. Admitting you saw it was a judgement in itself. If you saw this in 1932 you probably sneaked in hunched over like you were going to see a porn. You didn't tell your wife or pastor, that was definite and you probably heard about it from that weird single guy you worked with. If you lived in the UK you didn't see it as it was banned for 30 years upon its release.
Yet it lives on in more ways than one. It's a voyeuristic pleasure and nightmare to watch; you just can't get this level of participation by handicapped performers any more because it's probably illegal. It's an indictment of the old American way of life and also an example of capitalism at it's finest for in the end, it's not about the Freaks but about the quest for Riches. And finally you can see the origins of the 'one of us' chant you may have heard at one time but had no context to.