Avatar vs. the Field...

Alright, after being told to "shut up" regarding his opinion of Avatar, the Dimwit will remark on exactly why Avatar was not the Best Picture of the year.

Originality: the story was a glorified re-hashing of Pocahontas and/or Fern Gully. Stop the evil greedy humans from destroying nature. There is a cheesy love story interwoven, and the lead actor goes from being on one side of the issue to being on the other, and thus proves his love to the woman who is on the other side. Really? That's the best storyline you could come up with James Cameron???? That's about as bad as throwing a ridiculous love story into a historical event in order to make a movie out of it... oh wait, that was Titanic... (which the Dimwit will admit he's only seen 2 scenes of, the most important of course: the "art" scene, and Leo DiCrapio dying)... We get it, humans are selfish and are destroying the planet, and in our current state, will destroy any planet we find which has unobtainium (SERIOUSLY?!?!?! THAT'S THE BEST FAKE MINERAL NAME YOU GOONS COULD MAKE UP???? UNOBTAINIUM???? YOU SUCK!!!!!)

The Dimwit agrees that the technology, CGI, 3-D viewing, etc was AMAZING, mind-altering and will eventually change the way we watch movies. And yes, it changed the $$$$ stream coming in because 3-D theaters charged $15 a pop instead of $10 for the pleasure of viewing it all in 3-D. From friends who saw it in regular 2-D, most of them were rather unimpressed with the movie as a whole.

Finally, the final nail in the coffin for Avatar's Oscar hopes is that there wasn't a single stand-out acting performance. Sigourney = meh. Sam Whatshisname = blah. Everyone else = meh. Funny that none of the actors in the movie were nominated for any acting awards don't you think? A great movie has to have great acting, in this blogger's humble opinion. Jeff Bridges definitely deserved his Oscar, he BECAME Bad Blake and his performance affected people. The Dimwit hasn't seen The Blind Side, but apparently Sandra's portraly of the football mama was strong... strong enough at least to overcome Hollywood's sudden uber-affinity for the force that is Meryl Streep.

So, in summation... weak script + mediocre acting + SUPER technological breakthroughs does NOT = Best Picture.

As for the winner, The Hurt Locker... great acting performance by Jeremy Renner, great script and great director. Couldn't be happier with the way it all turned out. The Dimwit wasn't a fan of 10 nominations for Best Picture, especially since there weren't really 10 GREAT movies this year. And in the end, he kind of wishes that Quinten Tarantino would have gotten a bit more love for Inglorious Basterds, but a minor gripe.

Alright, the rant is done...