This week is just too exciting for our liking – first Barack Obama gets inaugurated and now the Oscar nominations?
We literally can’t control our bowels. Literally. And, if anything, the Oscar nominations are even more exciting than the new president. Because, when they happen tomorrow, we’ll find out if The Dark Knight will get a Best Picture nod or not. Oscar hype over The Dark Knight has been steadily building for months now, and the repercussions of a nomination would be huge.
But we’ll have to explain them in a minute, after we’ve changed our pants. We really did mean literally.
For years now, Oscar audiences have been dwindling. And the Oscar board totally knows why. Is it that watching seven hours of preening millionaires trot up and down a carpet talking to Ryan Seacrest with their cheeks sucked in actually makes people so furious that they end up wanting to shit blood? Well, to be fair, yes it is. But that’s not the Oscar board’s opinion.
They’ve given the matter some thought, and have come up with two completely obvious ideas:
1) People don’t like watching clever people be funny, and
2) People don’t like it when boring films about sad people doing depressing things win awards.
And, to give them credit, the Oscar board have done something about it. First, they’ve decided to switch hosts, with Jon Stewart‘s intelligent barbs being replaced by Hugh Jackman wanking around in a pair of shiny spandex trousers. And secondly, there’s a very good chance that The Dark Knight will be given a Best Picture nomination tomorrow.
We all know how well-loved The Dark Knight is. The second-highest grossing movie of all time, The Dark Knight made a posthumous megastar out of Heath Ledger, incorporated groundbreaking cinematic and musical techniques into a complex story that refused to underestimate its audience and is probably the best film ever to have a lead character with a ridiculous growly voice that made him sound like a poorly Ray Winstone straining for a poo while having an asthma attack.
But if The Dark Knight did get an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, it’d change everything. The other movies likely to get a nod tomorrow are all barely-watched movies about either real-life politicians or sort of weird Billy Elliott rip-offs, but a nomination for The Dark Knight might even do the impossible and make people want to watch the Oscars. As the USA Today reports, Steven Spielberg seems like he’s up for it:
“I am really happy to see that The Dark Knight is making a last-minute run at recognition,” he said after the Golden Globes. “I was very happy with the Heath (Golden Globe) win and am looking forward to some more Dark Knight momentum. ? That balances things out.”
Personally we’re with Steven Spielberg here. For too long The Oscars have been out of touch with popular tastes, and a nomination for The Dark Knight would give the ceremony a real shot in the arm. And we’re not just saying that because we’re bitter about everyone hating Indiana Jones 4 like Spielberg is, either.
No, we’re saying that because we want to see a world where commercial success and critical acclaim are not mutually exclusive. We want, in short, to see Hotel For Dogs win Best Picture at the Oscars. Oh, what a world that would be.