WHY THE OSCARS ARE BULL TWADDLE: Doc Disses the Academy Awards

It’s that time of year again when the movie world is filled with suspense and excitement, where sane people who have jobs in the morning are willing to stay up all night and watch a load of politically motivated, politically correct, self-contragulatory bollocks. Yes, it’s the annual Academy Awards, and as you’ve probably realised, I’m no fan of them, even if I can’t help checking out the winners on the Monday morning. Every year I say I don’t give a damn and have refused to watch even highlights from the ceremony for several years, but remain interested in the results and even debate them afterwards as I bemoan the lack of sanity of the members of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

I suppose I should start with a certain favourite genre of many of us called…..horror. A quick perusal of the Best Picture winners over the years has revealed only one horror film, The Silence Of The Lambs, and I reckon the Academy only voted for that because they saw it as a thriller. Even if you look at the nominees, there are only three horror movies that are there; The Exorcist, Jaws and Black Swan, and some would debate that the last is a proper horror film anyway. Considering the many masterpieces of the genre over the decades that have not only wowed audiences but that are constantly critically lauded, from Frankenstein to The Innocents to Halloween,  one can only come to the conclusion that the  Academy is seriously biased against horror. Science fiction fares even worse, with no Best Picture winners at all and only Star Wars and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial deemed worthy of being nominated. In fact the fantastic in general is given short shrift. I am of the belief that The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King only won in 2003 because of the widespread upset that the previous two instalments of the trilogy lost out.

It’s often said that the Academy rewards commercial success, but actually it has a snobbish attitude to really popularist fare like, god forbid, action, despite the fact that it is as hard to craft a superb action movie as it is to craft a superb biopic. Widespread success is often punished. I am no fan of the Christopher Nolan Batman films, but considering that they have been loved by audiences and critics, you would think that at least one of them would have been nominated for Best Picture? But no, this superhero nonsense is considered not worthy of much merit by the narrow-minded fools of the Academy. Skyfall didn’t rock my world as much as it did that of many others, in fact to my eyes if a Bond film ever deserved to be in with the running of Best Picture it would have been On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but I was rather excited about all the talk that the latest film from a franchise which not only do I love but has given pleasure to so many people for four decades, could be nominated. But, of course, no, it didn’t happen. Such films only tend to succeed in categories like Best Sound and Best Special Effects. This also means that many great performances get overlooked, such as, to stay with 007, Sean Connery [whether you think he’s Ian Fleming’s character or not, few will deny he’s totally brilliant as Bond right from that card playing scene in Dr No], or come to mention it Daniel Craig. And does anyone think that, for instance, Johnny Depp will ever win an Oscar until he’s about 90?

Of course it’s usually easy to tell what the Academy do like. Overcoming disability or some kind of adversity. Political correctness. History, especially biopics. Musicals. You know the kind of thing, along with a distinct lack of interest in and unwillingness to reward the strange or the daring. They also love lots of dialogue, while a certain studio called Miramax seems to actively make films just to win awards. The scope is really quite narrow, and to be honest it has been like this since the Awards began, I mean who the hell besides a small number of old movie buffs have even heard of, let alone seen, Cimarron or Cavalcade? Another thing that seems to happen is someone getting an award for something that is clearly inferior to their previous unrecognised work but is given as some kind of apology. “Yeah, Mr Scorsese, we’re sorry that your masterpieces Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas lost out, so we’ll let your latest picture The Departed win even though it’s really a minor achievement by comparison”.

And this brings me to the greatest of all the crimes by the Academy against cinema, the fact that Alfred Hitchcock, one of the most praised, studied, influential and popular filmmakers of all time, never won Best Director. Even if films like Rear Window, Vertigo and Psycho weren’t considered good enough to be Best Picture, you would think their direction would have been rewarded, but no. A Hitchcock film did win Best Picture, but the person who went up on stage to collect the award for Rebecca was producer David O’ Selznick. Of course they did give him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1979, which is the Academy’s way of saying “sorry we’ve ignored your achievements over the decades so here’s a little recognition you can be happy about for a couple of years before you snuff it.”

Of course good work is often rewarded, but by and large the Oscars make my blood boil, and that especially includes music. How on earth did they think Gustavo Santaolalla’s score for Babel was even eligible, let alone the best score of the year, when most of it came from previous sources and the only new material amounted to a repeated guitar riff? Personal taste may play some part, though I doubt you’ll find many folk, for instance, who will say that The Pianist, The Hours, Gangs Of New York and The Lord Of The Rings:The Two Towers all deserved to be lose out to bloody Chicago. It’s all crap, and to be honest in the great scheme of things doesn’t matter that much. People will go and see what they want to see and time will often reward quality. I still can’t help getting worked up about it though.