So I broke down and saw Avatar in 3D with Mia. And I’ve come to decide I will never let the Golden Globes sway my film viewing ever again.
At the close of the 2010 Golden Globe Awards, Dexter’s Michael C. Hall (Dexter) and John Lithgow (Trinity Killer) both won for best male performance in a television drama, which was actually well-deserved. Jeff Bridges won for best male performance in a film drama, and Robert Downey Jr. won for best male performance in a film comedy. Chris Waltz won for best supporting actor in a dramatic film, which was well-deserved for his amazing villain in Inglourious Basterds. Beyond that, there were very few that I agreed with. Mad Men, although I like it, shouldn’t keep winning because people think they should like it. It’s a hit-or-miss show, and I really think for as many great episodes that there are, they’re matched by just as many—if not more—mediocre-to-boring episodes. It’s inconsistently good, which keeps it from being great. I’ve always thought, since day 1, that Dexter should win best drama—especially for this season, which was tied with the first for best-so-far—but I think that the Sopranos-famous Matthew Weiner will keep winning for Mad Men. At least its stars won. And Michael C. Hall has had cancer? Wow, he really kept that close to the chest. And finally, Toni Collette was a great win for her role(s) in United States of Tara. It was a strong first season.
Alec Baldwin is hilarious, but I felt that David Duchovny should have won best actor in a television comedy for his role in Californication—although Baldwin’s win didn’t upset me. I would just like to see the spotlight go to someone a little less mainstream, but more deserving. Duchovny is a great failure in the Showtime original show.
For the few that I felt that they simply nailed, there were so many misses that it’s ridiculous. Best Director and Best Picture for a Drama went to Avatar, which I will flat-out say should not have won. I’m no huge fan of Jim Cameron, but he’s a solid director. I just hate that two of his films have placed him into a realm that he should simply not be in—as director of two of the highest grossing films of all time. Scorsese or Spielberg should be in there. Hell, anyone but Michael Bay should be ahead of Cameron, honestly.
The other few “upset” wins (besides Avatar’s) that simply blew my mind were Glee! for best television musical or comedy (gag!) and Sandra Bullock for best female performance in a drama. Sandra Bullock? She’s the female equivalent of Brendan Fraser. I don’t need to elaborate more on that. Glee! is quite possibly the worst thing to come out of Hollywood since Twilight. And it beat out solid stars such as 30 Rock, Entourage, The Office, and even newcomer Modern Family, which has gotten solid reviews. Mia and I tried to sit through an episode of Glee and it was close to an ABC family original show. Or something equally terrible spawned from The Disney Channel. Trite nonsense pandering to the idiotic masses watching crap like Twilight and Jersey Shore who couldn’t tell a good storyline if it raped them in the face.
On to Avatar. You know, since I’ve seen it, finally. The storyline was good. Nothing really groundbreaking there. Directing? Meh, it worked. The acting was decent, no big holes there. The main army guy (Stephen Lang) and Giovanni Ribisi were two stand-out performances, but I simply love Givoanni, for some reason. He’s one of my favorite character actors, and I’m not sure why. Sam Worthington has a solid career ahead of him as an action star, following his role in Terminator: Salvation and with the upcoming Clash of the Titans. Nothing really great, but he seems to be a strong male lead, as any action star needs to be. Sigourney Weaver was forgettable, for some reason, and the rest of the cast was ho-hum. Was that the nerdy guy from Dodgeball as the other main avatar driver? It was!
So how was the CGI that I bitched about previously? We saw Avatar in 3D, at a regular digital theatre. Not IMAX, which may be a better experience. I’m not paying my own money to test this theory, though. My feelings were that yes, the CGI was better on screen (than in the trailers) and after 2 hours of watching it, it started to work a little better. My belief is that the 3D effects and layering helped to mask the crummy quality of the CGI people. Sure, the backgrounds were lush, but it wasn’t seamless or fully believable. Far from it. In all honesty, it should have won for Best Animated Film, because at least 70% of it—if not more—existed solely as CGI. It was nothing more than a really long cartoon for the most part, with people thrown in here and there. Perhaps the characters are a breakthrough in CGI motion-capture and modeling, but they still look like animations. It’s not fooling me, and was distracting enough that I was paying too much attention looking at the textures and eye/mouth movements instead of being tricked that they were real. I think if one were to see it in regular format, not in 3D, there would be much more obvious errors in the layering/etc. I for one feel that there was no reason for it to be in 3D, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and say that perhaps IMAX 3D, with a broader range of vision, may help give the illusion. For us, the edges of the screen cut off and totally killed the fake depth perception, and didn’t really add anything to the experience.
So for all those who said “Don’t knock it till you try it!”, I saw it, and I’m knocking it more now. It wasn’t that good, surely not worth the praise it’s been given—and sure as shit not worthy of an Oscar. I just hope the more-or-less-a-joke Golden Globes were a fluke with the wins.
