I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!

It's Tuesday night. I'm lying in my bed with the lights off. The only illuminations are coming from my backlit keyboard and my laptop screen (with the brightness turned down). I'm listening to "The Wrestler" by Bruce Springsteen. I tried to argue with my friend why Slumdog Millionaire deserved to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song. However, after listening to it over and over again, it is an absolute tragedy that it didn't even get nominated. I swear to god that the Academy had something against The Wrestler this year. The movie should have one at least two awards (Best Actor, Best Original Song), and that's leaving out the possibility that it would have one Best Picture, had it been nominated. I haven't seen The Reader, but it must have been a hell of a movie to beat out The Wrestler to the Best Picture nomination.

I didn't want this to be a blog about the Oscars, but it's going that way, I have a few more things to say. Everyone is "poo-poo"ing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Someone on the Oscar.com message board said that "it's just another Forrest Gump." When was that a bad thing?! This movie was directed by one of my favourite directors, David Fincher. Reading the movies he's directed is like reading a list of some of my favourite movies. Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Is there a reason why this director has a way of getting the absolute best out of Brad Pitt? I think the relationship that David Fincher and Brad Pitt have could be compared to that of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Somehow, he gets the best out of him. Those three movies (Se7en, Fight Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) are my favourite Brad Pitt Movies (probably in that order). Brad Pitt doesn't get enough recognition. People tend to see him as an A-list actor who doesn't really do much to have that status. However I actually think Brad Pitt is a bloody good actor. Yes, he acts in stupid movies that are pretty obviously just for the money, but that doesn't make him a bad actor.

I have a few more things to rant about on this topic. I know that when you start a new paragraph you should make a new point, but I just need to break this up a bit.

How the hell did Se7en not win any Oscars? And only get nominated for one? Se7en sounds like "The Wrestler" of 1995. The Best Picture that year was Braveheart. Sorry but, Se7en is, so, so far a better movie than Braveheart. Brad Pitt did get nominated for an Oscar that year. It was for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, for Twelve Monkeys. Oh, I have another point to make. Zodiac. I don't know if you've seen this film. I rarely hear a good word about it from my friends. Most of them say that it was long-winded and boring. The movie was long, yes. I went to the late night showing of it, not quite anticipating it's length and ended up in the theater until after 1am. This was the first movie with Robert Downey Jr. in that made me sit up and recognise him. Obviously he's been around for much longer than 2 years, but this was the first movie I'd seen which I knew he was when I was watching it. He was absolutely superb in this movie and it is one of my favourite performances. Zodiac did not get anywhere near the recognition it deserved.

I'll move on from this point. In Bruges. If you've read this blog at all, then you might have read my review of In Bruges. If you have, you'll know I loved it. I still maintain that it was one of, if not the, best movie of 2008. I was astonished when I found out that it was nominated for an Oscar. Best Original Screenplay? Damn straight. I compare it to Milk, which won that particular Oscar. Milk is a very good movie, but I feel that In Bruges should have won. In Bruges is an absolute breath of fresh air. It is the definition of Original Screenplay. It would have been nice to see In Bruges win the won Oscar that it was nominated for, but I wasn't holding my breath on it.

I just realised, Michael Clayton was very unfortunate. It won one Oscar last year, Best Supporting Actress (Tilda Swinton - who seems to be everywhere now). Admittedly, No Country For Old Men deserved to win the awards it did. That is one absolute masterpiece. But I was blown away by Michael Clayton when I watched it. Maybe it's because I'm a law student and found the lawsuit fascinating, but the acting was truly wonderful. I don't know if it needs to be said, but, Tom Wilkinson. Tom Wilkinson knocked me off my seat in this movie. His performance echoed that of Peter Finch in Network. And I absolutely love Network. Network is one of my all-time favourite movies. An interesting note is that Peter Finch won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Network. He was the first person to win a posthumous Academy Award, the second being Heath Ledger for his role of The Joker in The Dark Knight (as if I needed to explain that). Oh and, if you don't know who Peter Finch was, he was an amazing actor. He won 5 BAFTA awards for Best Actor.

This is going to be a long post. If you've read this all the way to this point then I highly commend you. I don't think that there's much else I need to say at this point. But, there you go, the mandatory post about the Oscars. I didn't want to make it, but apparently I had a lot on my mind about these Oscars than I thought I did. By the way, I loved Slumdog Millionaire, and it deserved every Oscar it won. In general, I was happy with the awards. I would have liked to see Let The Right One In be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. However due to the process that the Academy uses for nominating Foreign Language Films, it could not be nominated. The Academy needs to nominate foreign language movies based on the exact same merits they base the Best Picture nominations on. However because of the twisted system, it did not get nominated.

Right, I think I'm done now. Thanks for persevering if you read this entire post. Oh and one last point, I opened the comments to anyone (I didn't know I had it the other way). So please, if you read this blog, leave a comment. Apparently there are people who who read it, and I'd love to hear from you. So please drop me a quick line to let me know who you are and that you're reading. :)

Thanks a lot.

Speak soon.

[The title of this blog is a quote from Network by the way]