Monday 8 March 2010

Pandora's (Slightly Smaller) Box Of Oscars

Clearly the Academy Judges agreed with me: there was indeed no argument that Avatar deserved nominations for Art Direction, Cinematography and Visual Effects as these were the three wins. A great achievement, but "only" a good film. In some ways the situation is similar to Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956) which was nominated for seven Oscars but only won Best Effects for some impressive envelope-pushing by John P. Fulton.

I have yet to see The Hurt Locker, this year's success story. I missed it the first time around as I'm not all that keen on straight war movies (I prefer films like Lord Of War or Wag The Dog) but I'm now extremely keen to see it. The Academy can be a little proud this year but should still be ashamed of it's failure to recognize female directors: no previous wins in this category and only three previous nominations (Lina Wertmuller - Seven Beauties 1976, Jane Campion - The Piano 1993, Sofia Coppola - Lost in Translation 2003) plus two female director winners of the Best Foreign Language Film award. Jane Campion and Sofia Coppola did win Best Screenplay Oscars. [source: wikianswers.com]

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2 comments:

XStina said...

Yeah, female directors still are kind of invisible within the industry, which is really quite sad. I think a lot of them do some wonderful work too.

Also agree with you about Avatar, it got the awards is deserved, I'm glad it didn't sweep the show.

9 March 2010 at 00:57
Sci-Fi Gene said...

Thanks for your comments XStina. I think you're right that it is still a problem throughout the industry, not just at the Oscars (Also we can't claim to be any better here in the UK - Kathryn was also the first woman to win this category at the Baftas)Hopefully visibility will improve in future...

9 March 2010 at 18:30

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