(Vote for who you want to win. Who should win? 12 more categories here.)
After nabbing the ACE editing and ASC cinematography awards last night, it looks like Slumdog Millionaire may be headed for a sweep unlike any we’ve seen since the Hobbits took over both houses of Congress. I have ask, Really? No Country for Old Men – 4, The Departed – 4, Brokeback Mountain – 3… and Slumdog Millionaire – 9? Really? Slumdog Millionaire is twice or 3 times as good as those films? 9 Oscars is as many as The Last Emperor received. More than Gone With the Wind (8), Lawrence of Arabia (7), and The Godfather II (6). Really?
Not that many of us don’t love Slumdog, but is everything about this remarkable film really so much better than anything else anyone else did in any other movie of the year? As fellow ADer, faux, said early this morning: “Awful. It’s as if the other movies were nothing.”
You know, I almost hope it happens. It would be the perfect lemming-like cliff-dive climax for the Academy to suddenly fall all over itself trying to prove how cool it is — after proving just the opposite with its set of lackluster safe-bet nominations last month. “We’re the Oscars! We go our own way! But wait, now we all go the same way!” Like a herd of sweep sheep. That would be a properly sputtering and fitting end to this fitful season of unfit misfits and diva fits.
(Vote in 12 more categories after the cut)
But that would be cheating the nominees in several categories who did genuinely better work. So it would be help sooth some bruised feelings if Slumdog Millionaire topped out at 4 or 5, and left room to acknowledge some of the other brilliance we saw onscreen this year.
Here’s our chance to show the Academy how it ought to be done. The set of polls we’re conducting today are meant to rate which movies we think deserve to win — not which ones probably will.¬† Instead of jumping onboard the runaway train barreling headlong for Mumbai, vote for the actual talent and acheivement you feel is the best. If that’s Slumdog Millionaire, fine. Otherwise, you can choose to refuse to drink the AMPAS Kool-Aid.
