Thoughts on "Awards Season"

Without fail, someone will ask me this week if I watched The Golden Globes on Sunday. The answer it, as it always has been, "No." Certainly, the dubious nature of the Globes is a motivating factor, I generally only watch The Academy Awards and try avoid the other shows whenever possible. When I was younger, the Cap'n was obsessed with analyzing, micro-scrutinizing, and trying to predict who would win and why.

Consider it the early phase of film fandom. In college, our cadre of "film geeks" spent hours debating the structure of nominations, the order of award ceremonies, etc. Long, ridiculous rationales about "so-and-so won last year so there's a better chance of such and such and this would make for the better meta-narrative surrounding this award-" it's enough to drive one mad. So I stopped following all of the SGA, DGA, BAFTA, Critic's Choice, Golden Globe, all of them. I limit myself to the Oscars, and I stopped trying to predict who would win two or three years ago*.

Part of this was the slow, creeping realization that if I can't honestly compare films that have almost nothing in common (let's say, for good measure, Inception and The Social Network, or even True Grit) but all made the "favorites" list of 2010, how was I going to predict the decisions of members of the Academy? As I grow older, I find ways to "rank" films I enjoyed the most, but that's certainly not a reflection of their box office prowess or entertainment value at first viewing - which is a little unfair, as your relationship to a film changes with time. I developed a system to avoid falling into a relativistic conundrum of "well, they're all good and all different so what does it matter?" Then again, when I do "year end" recaps, I make it clear they are subjective determinations, not the consensus opinion of writers, directors, producers, actors, critics, et al.

For example: I have MacGruber on my list of favorites, as well as Piranha. One of them is well regarded, but won't me showing up on any award show lists. The other was forgotten almost immediately after release and is broadly regarded - largely by people who never saw it - as "another bad SNL movie." Piranha, which proudly included its Rotten Tomatoes "Certified Fresh" stamp on DVD and Blu-Ray ads, won't be mentioned anywhere in the next few months (save for one exception below), a fact the cast opted to lampoon in a "For Your Consideration" video on Funny or Die. MacGruber, on the other hand, has probably one chance of making it to the podium.

This brings me to the one "award" worth looking into over the next few weeks: The Golden Raspberry or, as most people hear of it, the Razzie. Razzies are traditionally handed out to what I would refer to as "punching bag" movies: high profile films with well known actors that failed miserably and that no one saw but largely assumed were terrible anyway - films like Battlefield Earth, Freddy Got Fingered, I Know Who Killed Me, Gigli, Leonard Part 6, and Batman and Robin. Easy targets, not much imagination involved in making fun of them.

By most rationales, there are a few movies from this year that qualify for that, but MacGruber fell on its face pretty hard, making it a prime "punching bag," if only anyone remembered the movie existed. Unsurprisingly, it didn't make the short-list - this year's Razzie nominations aren't out yet - which isn't a shock to me. As I said, it has to be high profile enough that anyone can immediately hear the title and say "oh, that's a BAD movie."

Let's look at the short-list, which contains not many huge surprises, but seems to be missing some high profile, poorly received, under-performing films. The films in contention to be nominated "Worst Picture" are:

The Bounty Hunter
Clash of the Titans
The Expendables
Grown Ups
Jonah Hex
Killers
The Last Airbender
Little Fockers
Sex and the City 2
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
Vampires Suck
Yogi Bear

Per usual, this is a list of movies nobody will defend, save for the vocal contingent who are going to be very surprised to see The Expendables up here (more on that in a second). There are two films that jump right out at me that fit the Golden Raspberry M.O.: Tron Legacy (not well received by critics and has yet to recoup its budget, by a long shot) and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (which vanished from theatres a month after release). Throw in Kick-Ass if you like, but the reason it isn't on the list is the same reason The Expendables IS but Predators ISN'T: people won't immediately identify the film. Predators has the exact same rationale for inclusion as The Expendables (the same could be said for Machete) - but not the marquee recognition.

Tron Legacy could, it seems, end up in their new "Worst Eye-Gouging Misuse of 3D" category, where it would tangle with Resident Evil Afterlife, The Last Airbender and, apparently, Piranha 3D. See, the cheap and easy solution is to ignore that audiences liked the film, critics liked the film, and the studio was so happy with the response that they gave a sequel the green light before Piranha opened. It's easier to say "it's a 3D horror movie with gratuitous nudity, so it must be terrible." Scott Pilgrim, despite having all of the normal criteria for "Razzie" consideration - huge marketing push, well known star, director on the rise, colossal failure in connecting with audiences - won't make the list because, well, it's not a cheap punchline.

At this juncture, I realize that the Cap'n has essentially made my point about why "Awards Season" is impossible to predict, even with an award that caters to the easiest possible joke about value judgments in film. With that, it would perhaps behoove me to stop here.

* I'm almost positive the first and last time I printed out "nomination" sheets was when No Country for Old Men won Best Picture, much to the chagrin of There Will Be Blood fans.