Awards season swung into full magniloquent mode with the Golden Globes ceremony tonight. It was a pretty good night for Brokeback Mountain, which took Best Picture-Drama, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. There should be quite the showdown on Oscar night between Philip Seymour Hoffman (winner for Capote), Joaquin Phoenix (winner for Walk the Line), and Heath Ledger, who many still consider a strong contender.
I generally like the Globes ceremony better than the Academy Awards, as they're usually a looser affair. Steve Carell's acceptance speech was a highlight, even if his show (The Office) is a pale imitation of the original, and one which I've sat through two episodes of without cracking a smile once.
Anyway, the critics association that I'm...associated with - The Online Film Critics Society - announced their 2005 winners yesterday. And they are:
Best Picture: A History of Violence
Best Director: David Cronenberg, A History of Violence
Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line
Best Supporting Actor: Mickey Rourke, Sin City
Best Supporting Actress: Maria Bello, A History of Violence
Best Original Scrrenplay: Good Night and Good Luck, George Clooney and Grant Heslov
Best Adapted Screenplay: Brokeback Mountain, Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana, based on L. Annie Proulx short story
Best Cinematography: Sin City, Robert Rodriguez
Best Editing: Sin City, Robert Rodriguez
Best Score: Brokeback Mountain, Gustavo Santaolalla
Best Documentary: Grizzly Man
Best Foreign-Language Film: Downfall (Germany)
Best Animated Feature: Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Breakthrough Filmmaker: Paul Haggis, Crash
Breakthrough Performance: Owen Kline, The Squid and the Whale
I voted for exactly two of those, I think. And not for the big categories, but there it is. Sin City got three awards? Okaaaay.
And I guess the writer/producer of the Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby deserves the "Breakthrough Filmmaker" award because...Crash was a really deep meditation on how racism is bad, and stuff.
It's nice to see I'm not the only person that thinks Crash is a bit over-rated. Yeah, it was good, but c'mon, wasn't it borrowing pretty heavily from Magnolia (and to a lesser extent Traffic)? Being socially meaningful doesn't automatically make a film better.
Crash blew, Magnolia wannabee crapfest.
Downfall was great, two hours of Nazis killing themselves and their children, I could watch it over and over again.
Sin City I loved because it was the most faithful comic book adapatation of all time, more like that please.
Bonnie and I spent the evening cursing the fact that George Clooney got fucked over by two gay cowboys. And you can print that, _Variety_ magazine!
George Clooney got fucked by two cowboys? And I missed it?!? I'd have Tivo'd if I had known.
CRASH is the worst movie of the year.
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE is brilliant and deserves much more love.
Although I want to join the OFSC, I get scared when they heap praise on something like SIN CITY. It was a movie I enjoyed, but it wasn't "that" great. The more the online critics are given a voice, the sooner movies like OLDBOY and HOSTEL will be revered as masterpieces.
*sigh*
The fact that apparently intelligent people like A History of Violence is disconcerting. The bully subplot alone makes that film deserve nothing but mockery.