Thoughts On The 84th Academy Awards

Not sure why I even bother with the Oscars. The show and the nominees are usually not much interest to me. The show garners a lot of attention for Hollywood during the awards seasons. For some reason, the awards do give substantial boost to films that merit attention. Since I follow movies releases in the US, Taiwan, HK and Zhong Guo pretty regularly, I know what I want to watch. I've already seen the trailers, looked up the movies where possible, and made up my mind if I want to see them or not. In most cases, I'll miss them in the theaters and look for them on DVD/Blu-ray. Since I am from LA, I do not have problems renting US releases, I just need to be patient. However, the Taiwan, HK, and Zhong Guo releases require some hunting on my part.

Back to the Academy Awards. In general, the movies I've liked and the movies highlighted by awards do not align with my taste. The awards do not like comedies, sci-fi, and foreign films in general. This is a general analysis. I have no stats to back me up. However, I did do it for this year for some reason. The big four awards are Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress. Of the pictures, actors, director, and actresses nominated, I have barely watched the films. Of that lot, I've only seen Moneyball and Tree of Life. Why? They are out on DVD. I've elected NOT to watch The Help even though it has Emma Stone and Jessica Chastain.

Why would I care about the awards if I haven't seen the majority of the films? And I doubt I'll watch the majority of them when they do get to DVD/Blu-ray. Comparing it to the Box Office totals to those nominated from the big four awards, only The Help was in the top 20. Looking at the top 10 of 2011 in box office totals, I've seen all but Cars 2. I liked the majority of these films. But they were largely ignored by the Academy.

So what's my point? My point is that I could care less about the Oscars and I'll continue to ignore taglines of "Oscar" winner. I'll continue to ignore any awards in general and just watch what I want to watch. There, I've said it, I will continue to be selfish and do my own thing.