Friday, January 09, 2009

14th Annual Critics’ Choice Awards Winners


I did watch the TV show that has a format suspiciously similar to the Golden Globes award show. The 30 minutes Red Carpet show was really terrible due to the interviewers and mostly actors not interested in paying attention to them (!!!).

It was kind of weird to hear winners making bitter jokes about them thanking critics’ for recognizing their work; I know they were jokes but as repeatedly said during the long show, if it wasn’t for the critics’ many movies will “disappear” in the vast sea of films that each year are released. Yes, I know that critics’ opinions are just opinions and is hard to believe how much they can influence viewers, but some really do.

Still, while watching the show and with the winners starting to be announced I started to wonder WHO are the members of this critics’ group as some of their selections really do not match the winners of more prestigious critics’ groups, they feel like more “commercial” critics’ than anything else and the show tries very hard to look like the Golden Globes that becomes at times annoying.

Then it was “funny” that some award recipients gave speeches like if they were receiving a Golden Globe or an Academy Award; my impression is that this awards show is not the best scenario to be thanking your family et all, as in this show it becomes less interesting than in the others. This should be a lot more informal so it can become a lot more entertaining. Yeah! That’s it I pinpointed the issue: this show was not really entertaining and I believe that unless they find their own proprietary style the show will be the object of comparisons and they will lose to more entertaining shows like Golden Globes or the Oscars.

There were some celebrities, but none like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt that if I counted the times they were in the screen probably will be more than a 100 times. The only time that didn’t annoy me was when Angelina had wet eyes because Heath Ledger won the award and yeah, me too my eyes got watery. (lol!) Now I definitively know that Heath will get an Oscar nomination and will win, as that will be a VERY special moment in the TV show; but I will not mind, as he absolutely deserves it.

Enough babbling about the TV show and I close by telling you that if you didn’t watch, you didn’t miss much. So here are the winners.

Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire
Best Director: Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire
Best Action Movie: The Dark Knight
Best Comedy Movie: Tropic Thunder
Best Animated Feature: WALL-E
Best Documentary: Man on Wire
Best Made for TV Picture: John Adams
Best Actress: (tie) Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married and Meryl Streep for Doubt (I was sorry Meryl was not there)
Best Actor: Sean Penn for Milk (liked his brief acceptance speech)
Best Supporting Actress: Kate Winslet for The Reader (Very sorry she was not there)
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight (the only really emotional moment of the show)
Best Acting Ensemble: Milk (the ensemble was absent only Emile Hirsh and Josh Brolin went up… Sean was in the bathroom??? –bad joke-, but he didn’t go up)
Best Young Actor/Actress: Dev Patel for Slumdog Millionaire (He wasn’t there and absolutely deserves the award)

To check the complete list go here.

Yes, the big winner is Slumdog Millionaire and if you check most critics’ awards groups you’ll see that they not necessarily agree with this group selection and me neither! (lol!) My thinking after watching the show was that American critics’ REALLY need to watch Bollywood movies so they can improve their criteria; but I know that they will have the same problem that most American audiences have: Bollywood movies are too long!!! And of course for many if not all, they have subtitles!

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