Sean Weitner | The competition
So are the Oscars the premiere movie awards for someone interested in the
quality of movies? Let's restrict ourselves to Best Picture nominees:
Oscars
A Beautiful Mind, The Fellowship of the Ring, Gosford
Park, In the Bedroom, Moulin Rouge
Golden Globes
Drama: A Beautiful Mind (winner), In the Bedroom, The
Fellowship of the Ring, The Man Who Wasn't There, Mulholland
Drive; Comedy/Musical: Bridget Jones's Diary, Gosford
Park, Legally Blonde, Moulin Rouge (winner), Shrek
AFI
A Beautiful Mind, Black Hawk Down, In the Bedroom,
The Fellowship of the Ring (winner), The Man Who Wasn't There,
Memento, Monster's Ball, Moulin Rouge, Mulholland
Drive, Shrek
The critics' organizations don't have nominees and don't announce
runners-up, so they're less useful here. But: If you were to recommend to
someone one of these lists of movies, which would you choose? I know Oscar's
the shortest list, so try to mentally compensate for that, and ignore that
all of these different organizations have different purposes for the awards.
The question is only which list of movies is better.
Andy Ross | Tough one
This is a tough decision. I love that the Globes give equal weight to the
Best Drama and Best Comedy/Musical categories, because so often drama is
just given the benefit of the doubt as being superior. However, the Golden
Globes always throw in those dumb wild cards like Legally Blonde.
I'd have to go with AFI. They may make those dumb lists every year to get
publicity, but I still like the direction they are taking this awards show.
(And, they are the only ones of all the television awards who seem to care
about quality.)
Really, what would be so wrong in having the awards given by genre. I know
that it creates a lot of hassle when films cross genres, like Beetlejuice,
but isn't that what they're saying by relegating animation to
its own category? That split has existing for so long in the short films. I
really think that an awards show in which comedy goes up against comedy and
sci-fi goes up against sci-fi would be great.
Sean Weitner | A provocative idea
Hopefully it will spawn some responses from the others tomorrow. Until then,
let me leave you with an on-topic
bit of hilarity.
