Movie Review - The Hurt Locker

We (me and my superpartner) watched The Hurt Locker, partly because I was really interested in it. I thought I'd like it cause of the way it was filmed and that it felt like a documentary so you didn't have to sit and wait for the storyline to be played out before you. And partly because it won so surprisingly many Oscars.

We both felt it really delivered. It lacked the tedious clichés, it had A-list actors in small roles, it had brilliant actors in lead roles. It had the documentary feel with the hand held cameras without the seasickness of overly-shaky presence-hunting shots (hello Bourne 3). It also didn't bother with a film-school beginning-middle-end structure that "every story needs" according to all film school teachers I've ever met.
It sort of just continued, like you got to hang with the men for a while and then they went on trying to turn Iraq from a dictatorship to a democracy, and you continued with your life.
If you pull it off, it's awesome. And they did. With the direction, cinematography and acting being top notch, they certainly pulled it off.

People I've talked to say that it was a good movie but that it wasn't worth all the Oscars, I say; fuck the Oscars. It's all politics for retarded idiots and inbred ass-holes that only need to pat each other on the back to feel good about making millions of dollars every year to pretend to do stuff. It's the same with Live Aid, Live8, Hope for Haiti or whatever name of the event the Popstars/Actors/models/whatevers lend their names to and take their private jets to this week to feel good about themselves. Enough ranting :)

The problem I have with the Oscars are these:
In 1974 Al Pacino was Michael Corleone in The Godfather II. If you have talked film and roles with friends you have probably ended up talking Al Pacino, and probably The Godfather. So he must have won the Oscar, right? Wrong. So he must have had brilliant opposition then? Yes.
That same year Jack Nicholson did the role of his life as JJ Gittes in Chinatown. So he won then? No, he didn't. Cause the jury in all it's wisdom found that Art Carney was the logical choice for his role in Harry and Tonto (he sits on a train with his cat). I bet you and your mates haven't spent hours taking about that film! The key here is that he was due. He should have had it before so his time was up.

In 1992 Al Pacino was due, because the role he really was worth and Oscar for, went to somebody else who was worth it before, so he got it for Scent of a Woman (where he is blind, charming, drives a Ferrari and shouts everything and that is incidentally way he still shouts every line).

I also loathe the "Oscar" movies. You know those movies that you just know will be nominated even though they weren't especially good or popular. Like Chariots of Fire (students running on the beach to the music of Vangelis) who won the same year Raiders of the Lost Ark was released. May I be so bold as to say that Raiders pretty much changed cinema?
So the Academy can't recognize a truly great movie right before them, and they also lack the skill to recognize a future classic. So pretty much as useless as the UN.

In 1990 Goodfellas was released. That is the movie every director speaks about. It's at place 14 over the best movies ever on IMDB. It's so good that you actually remember it winning the Oscar. But it didn't, cause in 1990 the epic (and when I say "epic" I mean "personal insult to my backside forced to sit here and growing carbuncles to watch this putrid adolescense slush") Dances with Wolves *vomit sounds* won.

At least Pulp Fiction won, that one rewrote the book on how you make movies (and made John Travolta able to buy some new jumbojets he can fly around alone in telling people not to fly).
No wait, it didn't. Which isn't strange because it came out the same year as The Shawshank Redemption which is forever nr1 on IMDB (yeah I think the Dark Knight pushed it down for a couple of days but that's a parenthesis inside a parenthesis). So it lost to a really good opposition, at least. No, it lost to Forrest Gump ("life is like a box of chocolates" smilies and fake ping-pong).

And I must end where my hate started, when Saving Private Ryan lost to Shakespeare in Love.
When Saving Private Ryan was released in 1998 the art of war movies made a giant leap. It got the old veterans cry like school-girls. When Shakespeare in Love won the Oscar I cried like a school-girl because that was the night that I understood that even in fantasy-land, politics is just around the corner.

Stay tuned, tomorrow it's gonna be less angry and more Formula One.
Cheers

Links
http://www.cracked.com/article_18460_5-reasons-oscars-matter-even-less-than-you-thought.html
http://www.imdb.com/