Name Dropping

By Alan Appel
Sometimes, more isn’t actually less; it’s effectively more . . . and better. That came to mind as I watched HBO’s telecast of Avatar. James Cameron’s
boldly imaginative and technically eye-popping fusion of sci-fi adventure and ecological fable set on the planet Pandora is—even in a televised non-3D format—an epic for the ages.
Yes, it won three second-tier Oscars (for art direction, cinematography and visual effects) and has become the highest grossing movie of all time (presently at $760 million, and that’s only domestic, and counting), but it was not last year’s Best Picture. Nor was Cameron the Best Director. Those honors went to The Hurt Locker and its gifted director Kathryn Bigelow (Cameron’s ex-wife). That movie is the lowest grossing Best Picture of all time.
Which demonstrates, once again, that audience approval, even on a globally grand scale, sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t in forecasting the Oscar for Best Picture. Or maybe the Academy just doesn’t get sci-fi films. I mean, we all love Annie Hall, but beating out Star Wars in 1977?
What the critical consensus is for the Most Important Picture can be a better barometer. Here, story and cast do count, but a weighty message—and the artfully visceral way it’s delivered—can seal the deal. And make no mistake, The Hurt Locker, an almost unbearably intense chronicle of a U.S. Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal Team in Iraq—how they defuse devices, why they do it and, if they survive, how it leaves them—is an important piece of work. More meaningful, for sure, but in what impressively ambitious technical or narrative sense was it more Oscar-worthy than Avatar?
And that’s the odd, totally unpredictable (and irritating) thing about the Oscars and what exactly “Best” means. Cameron gets jobbed last year, yet won the big prize more than a decade ago for Titanic, a soggy romance with a pair of dream boats in the leads. Call it “reverse payback.”
That is, belatedly rewarding the veteran, even legendary, actor (or director or writer) for a lesser film to make up for past oversights (how else to explain John Wayne for True Grit or Paul Newman in The Color of Money or, yes, even Sandra Bullock  last year for The Blind Side), is one thing (and makes only sentimental sense), but the Academy, getting all guilty conscience on us, is occasionally wont to stiff an artist for superior work if that person somehow previously copped an underserved prize. Maybe that explains Cameron’s loss last year and, never mind how he must have felt--it screwed up our Oscar pools.
So what’s the Best Picture outlook for 2011, sprawl vs. small? Expensively mounted (and mega-hyped) studio entertainments vs. provocatively themed smaller, independent films? Next week we’ll size up the early field of favorites—including one much-touted drama that pairs prime candidates for “payback” and “reverse payback” Oscars.
Read more: http://technorati.com/entertainment/film/article/oscar-emmy-watch-musings-misgivings-reverse/page-2/#ixzz15MeyZJAT