Cinerant

I Just Don't Care

I used to get incredibly jazzed about Oscar nominations.  When I was on the East Coast, I’d make a big deal about getting up to watch the nominations live.  I’d do predictions about who and what was going to get nominated, I’d immediately do analysis about what all of it meant, etc.

This year, I just don’t care.

I think I had this problem last year, but it’s even more exacerbated this year.   I don’t even feel a need to see all the films that will be nominated for the major performances.  Granted, I will probably have seen all the films that will be nominated for Best Picture (with the possible exception of Letters from Iwo Jima), and I’ll have seen most of the acting nominees, but for those ones that I haven’t—Volver, The Last King of Scotland, Venus—the only potential major nominee I really want to see is Half-Nelson.  And of course, I have to wait for it to come out on DVD next month to rent it.  I just don’t care.  

I think the major reason for that is because of the sorry crop of movies this year.  I was talking to somebody the other day and said that really, I couldn’t even put together a top 10 list for the year.  At most, I could only come up with 5 movies that really impressed me this year:  Little Children, United 93, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Departed, and The Queen.  Sure, there were some that were good—Dreamgirls, Children of Men, Thank You For Smoking, The Devil Wears Prada, Notes on a Scandal.  There were some that were ok—Babel, Borat.  There were some that were way less than ok—yes Little Miss Sunshine, I’m talking about you.  But even the ones that were good weren’t great.  They had problems.  They didn’t completely work—which at the end of the day makes me say, I really don’t care.  

Even as performances go, there wasn’t a performance I saw this year that I was so blown away by that I wanted to root for it all the way to Oscar night.  The closest two were Phyllis Somerville and Jackie Earl Haley in Little Children, and she probably won’t get nominated for Best Supporting Actress and he’ll be a stretch to get nominated for Best Supporting Actor.  Loved Kate Winslet in the movie, but she’s not going to get nominated.  I’d love to root for Ryan Gosling because he’s so frickin’ talented at such a young age, but I’m not sure he’ll be nominated.  

Again, I just don’t care.  Maybe I should just sit at home and watch Friday Night Lights instead.  

posted by cinegod @ 12:29 PM