{"id":136,"date":"2009-01-22T10:21:59","date_gmt":"2009-01-22T10:21:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/textmessages\/2009\/01\/no-best-picture-for-wall-e.html"},"modified":"2009-01-22T10:21:59","modified_gmt":"2009-01-22T10:21:59","slug":"no-best-picture-for-wall-e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2009\/01\/no-best-picture-for-wall-e.html","title":{"rendered":"No Best Picture for Wall-E"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"walle.jpg\"<\/span>Oscar has fickle and pedestrian taste, and the awards are rarely an indication of a movie’s potential shelf life or artistic merit. (See: Crash<\/a>. Or, if you haven’t, don’t.) I was shocked when Atonement<\/a> didn’t win last year, because its mixture of melodrama, literary-ness, and something on the order of\u00a0a truly incredible tracking shot<\/a> is often what Oscar goes in for.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Film fans know this, we say it every year, and yet, and yet…it’s still disappointing when our favorite films are overlooked. My Facebook friends are boo-hooing over Christopher Nolan’s near miss at a Best Picture nod for The Dark Knight<\/a> (I don’t share their sense of loss; it’s a stunning movie with the best villain performance in years, but has no sense of story). The real loss is that the Academy didn’t see fit to nominate Wall-E<\/a>, which is as close to a masterwork as we’ve seen in film this year. It’s also a perfect 2008 movie: in the year that we most radically came face to face with the consequences of our over-comsumption, we had a gorgeous, prophetic movie about that exact subject, both chiding us and showing us how to overcome ourselves.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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It’s a shame that animated films don’t get nominated for Best Picture, because it is not unusual for some of the best storytelling, cinematography, acting, and all-around movie-making to happen in cartoons. The Iron Giant<\/a>, Finding Nemo<\/a>, The Incredibles<\/a>, and Ratatouille<\/a> were all among the best films of their years, and that’s just to mention American work.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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I’ve yet to see Slumdog Millionaire, The Reader, or Frost\/Nixon–studios are still reluctant to shed their old rollout distribution habits, so it takes forEVer for good movies to get to Colorado Springs. (But hey, Fireproof<\/a> is still showing!). So of the nominated pics, so far my vote would go to Benjamin Button<\/a>. Awesome movie to look at, with fine acting. Way too Forrest Gump-y for my usual tastes, but I was taken in by its audacious attempt to tackle big huge human themes: Loss. Regret. Responsibility. Colorado’s own David Fincher<\/a> has proven his ability to make movies in the big, classy old Hollywood style.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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Oscar has fickle and pedestrian taste, and the awards are rarely an indication of a movie’s potential shelf life or artistic merit. (See: Crash. Or, if you haven’t, don’t.) I was shocked when Atonement didn’t win last year, because its mixture of melodrama, literary-ness, and something on the order of\u00a0a truly incredible tracking shot is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"yoast_head":"\nNo Best Picture for Wall-E - Text Messages<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2009\/01\/no-best-picture-for-wall-e.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No Best Picture for Wall-E - Text Messages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Oscar has fickle and pedestrian taste, and the awards are rarely an indication of a movie’s potential shelf life or artistic merit. 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