With the Academy Awards coming up (or possibly not? Who knows!), I have been scanning the blogosphere trying to find crowd favorites and balancing them against previous academy decisions. Well, actually, I did about ten minutes of that, then I got bored and watched all of the lasagnacat videos, listened to Chocolate Rain about thirty times, and fell asleep in front of the soft glow of ridiculously overwrought forum drama.
I haven't even seen most of the films up for awards this years, so I say just divvy up the statues between the two Coen brothers and maybe hand Diablo Cody a lifetime achievement award for giving us hope that our own stripper blogs will one day provide inspiration for a movie that will psychically predict Jamie Lynn Spear's condition.
With that taken care of, I turned my attention to compiling a list of cinematic achievements that I think deserve their own statuettes. Take note, Clooney!
Best Actor to not appear in the movie he was billed as a lead for: Samuel L. Jackson, 1408. I went to see this film ONLY because I was hoping there would be a line of dialogue in which Jackson railed against a pasty John Cusak, "I told you not to go into no motherfuckin' 1408!" Instead Sam L.J. is in the movie for ten minutes at most, and that includes the time he spends inexplicably shrunk down and hiding in a mini-fridge.
Smartest Career Trajectory: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Southland Tales. What better way to convince people you are no longer a ridiculous fake athlete and instead a "serious" movie star than head up a movie where you play a fake athlete cum movie hero who develops amnesia and teams up with a porn-star Buffy to try to save the world from Wallace Shawn and Bai Ling? At least, that's what I think the movie was about, I can't really be sure since my head was too busy exploding.
Best Supporting Actor: Jonah Hill, Evan Almighty. The most expensive comedy made to date, and the only entertaining bits were Jonah's intern character and Wanda Sykes. And it is a dismal, dismal day in tinsel town when you are comedically upstaged by Wanda, Steve Carell.
Best Director/Best Film: Rob Zombie, Werewolf Women of the S.S.. Sure, it clocked in at something like three minutes long, and was a fake trailer sandwiched between the "I wish I could quit you" love-in of Tarintino and Rodriguez's "Grindhouse" moviellas (somehow that just doesn't roll off the tongue) but I maintain that whatever Rob Zombie touches turns to gold, unless we are talking about music, or that new Halloween remake. Nicholas Cage's turn as Fu Manchu was both unexpected and nuanced. And sure, you can say that it was just a rip-off of the Hollywood gem, Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S. but then you'd sort of have to admit that No Country for Old Men basically cribbed everything off of The Devil's Rejects.
If anything, I hope that while looking back at the roller-coaster ride that was 2007, we will remember it as one thing: The year of the ridiculous one-legged hookers.