Oscar Debacle
Before I go off on my rant, I want to take a second and thank two dear friends of mine--Amanda and Bamboo for kicking me in my ass to get the strip back up again. When 24 got held off for a year from TV thanks to the SAG strike, my ambition for drawing went with it-- first with 24thecomicstrip, and then Planet X.
Then I got tied up working on five consecutive reality TV shows-- and nothing sucks the life out of you faster than logging an interview for 3 hours at a stretch.
Anyways...
Yes, another Oscars, another sweep.
What I found rather annoying (other than the fact the musical numbers were still present rather than gone altogether, but hey, less is better)is that Wall•E won only one award of eight nominations, the Best Animated Film. It faced no real competition in any other category other than this one (Kung Fu Panda & Bolt were both excellent films too, incidentally) save for perhaps the Sound categories, where dynamo films like this, Iron Man and The Dark Knight excel.
But no, Slumdog Millionaire won it all, more or less. Had it been possible, I'm sure the Academy would have loved to have it in Best Animated too.
If there was ever an animated film that deserved a Best Picture nod since 1991's Beauty and the Beast, it was most assuredly this one. I'd even like to think that Spirited Away, The Iron Giant and The Incredibles were also deserving, but alas, cartoons will always be considered children's or family fare only in the minds of American filmgoers.
I'll let you in on a secret though-- cartoon were originally made for adults. Yeah, I know, crazy, right? Why do you think all those early Warner Brothers cartoons were rife with caricatures of big movie stars like Clark Gable and Edward G. Robinson? Because the grown-ups got a laugh out of them. Falling anvils, characters chopped in half comically, punches in the face, all adult-intended audiences without all the PC nonsense.
If you want to see what I'm talking about, pull out your copy of Wall•E (or your neighbor's-- one of them is bound to have it) and watch the short Presto to see what I'm talking about. Electrocution, de-pantsing, explosions, good old-fashioned tomfoolery.
Back to the subject at hand, cartoons in Asian markets (especially Japan) are revered as true adult-minded cinema. The aforementioned Spirited Away made more money than Titanic in their box offices, and for a while was the highest grossing film of all time.
And yet, cinematic treasures such as these are passed over, given their own little niche of a category to avoid "embarassing" the Oscars again for having a "family film" be nominated, and keeping everyone happy at the same time. But there were a lot more than three good animated films this year-- Waltz with Bashir for example was this year's Persopolis and didn't get so much as a mention for it due to a new silly rule that it must premiere in both NYC and L.A. by August 31st for documentary status. Granted, being nom'd for Best Foreign Film is nice, but it certainly deserved more credit.
It's always been one of my goals to someday get up on the Oscar stage and hold one of those industry self-congratulatory trophies for Best Film-- that just happens to be animated-- but seeing as how even a little robot with a limited vocabulary can win over audiences and critics alike and get all but shut out, I stand about as much chance as a lit matchstick in space.