Requisite Oscar Rant

The Academy Awards were on last night. It was the first time I hadn't watched them in over a dozen years - pretty much since I knew what they even were. Hell, I watched them in China last spring by waking up early and going to a bar. Bars in China don't close and have international cable.

You see I love movies, so being informed about the better offerings and rooting for my fave is always a good sport. It's been a month since the Superbowl, so by this time of the year I'm getting particularly desperate for some form of epic competition.

But I didn't watch them this year because I wanted to go camping and it was just too damn nice outside. And because I knew what the awards would be. That's a problem.

Part of the fun of the Oscars are the upsets, and this year it was pretty clear there weren't going to be any. The only remotely competitive major category (Supporting Actress - Mo' "I'm fucking insane" Nique) still went to the slight favorite.

The 10-film Best Picture category was also utterly ridiculous. There are some years where there are more than five Nominee-caliber films. But this year there were only three, so even nominating five would've been a little pointless and redundant. Anyone can easily pick out the five films that were thrown in to artificially swell the ranks.


All that said, I still reserve the right to bitch about the results I just read about (and saw coming anyway).

The Hurt Locker is probably the best film of this group from a technical/artistic/everything-else angle. But it's not the best film of the year. The best film of 2009 is Up in the Air.

Up in the Air encapsulated the year that was 2009 into a film. It breathed it, it oozed it. Everything that this very special, important, and yet downright painful year to be an American was, Up in the Air expressed it.

The Hurt Locker was excellent, but it's four years too late. It's not what 2009 was all about. It's an artistic documentary of the Iraq War. The whole damn war didn't project any meaning onto 2009. The problem is that Iraq isn't just over, it's also meaningless. It's unimportant. A tragedy, to be sure, but not one that impacts the collective American psyche anymore. Something that took place in the past, but doesn't affect us today. Let's just say it's not Vietnam.

Up in the Air was not as much of a cinematic achievement as The Hurt Locker. Certainly not as much as Avatar (good thing that's not what they give the award for!). But Up in the Air was the best, most important, and definitive film of 2009. Too bad a woman didn't direct it, or it might have won.