I love movies.  I can think of no better way to spend an evening than to watch a great flick with my wife in the comfort of my own home. (Okay. Maybe I can think of one better way!)

I rarely go to a movie theater any more. The prices are outrageous, and, it seems to me,  people no longer know how to act in public any more. These are HUGE deterrents for me. NOTHING annoys me more than spending a small fortune to get into the theater, and then being stuck sitting directly in front of some rude, arrogant jerk who feels that he has to make a loud, running commentary of the picture as the rest of the audience tries to watch it.

In fact, idiot audience members and exorbitant ticket prices are two of the biggest reasons that I recently bought my big screen TV with SurroundSound.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about here.

I wanted to talk about The Academy Awards, and why I hate them, don’t believe them, and NEVER watch them.

There was a time that I believed that if a picture won an Oscar, or was nominated for many Oscars, that it was a picture worth seeing. Now, I believe that, like most other things in this country and this world, these awards are almost completely politically motivated. (I don’t mean Democrat vs. Republican or Liberal vs. Conservative. I mean Hollywood politics – what actor or director sucked up to or pissed off wealthy Beverly Hills factions and movie moguls.)

To illustrate this, let me talk briefly about two movies that I just recently viewed: The Wrestler and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Now, let me just say that I rarely write reviews of movies I’ve seen. I leave that to my two friends; Steve (looserobes) and Martin (greatmartin).

However, in the case of these two particular movies, I have a hard time holding my tongue.

The Wrestler was a gamble for me. When I saw the movie on the Netflix website, I chose it because I used to love Mickey Rourke. The Pope of Greenwich Village, Diner, and Angelheart are all fantastic films from the past.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was a movie that I waited for with great anticipation! I had heard so many wonderful things about the film, and it had been nominated for twelve freaking Academy Awards!!!! ( Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Musical Score, Best Editing, Best Visual Effects, Best Make-up, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Writing - Screenplay adaptation.)

Well, in my humble and professional opinion, the highly touted movie…sucked. Was that too technical or too obscure for you? Okay, rather than mince my words, let me just say that I truly disliked this film, as a whole, and I feel like I wasted 2 hours and 48 minutes of my life watching it last night. TWO HOURS AND FORTY-EIGHT FREAKING MINUTES on a movie that was based on a ten-page short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald! ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-EIGHT MINUTES!!!!!!

(Fitzgerald’s short story, by the way, is incredible. It’s tells a simple and interesting tale in such a way that makes the reader actually care about the characters involved.)

If you ask me, one of the biggest failings of this film is that the director is just so FULL of himself! The story could have easily been told in ninety to one hundred minutes.  All that needed to be done was to pare down some of those interminably long, drawn-out scenes such as where Benjamin is hobbling down a street for three full minutes on his crutches. (Nothing else happened in that scene. Just him hobbling. The purpose of the scene, I suppose, was so that we could marvel at what a great job Brad Pitt did hobbling, what great age make-up he was wearing, and what a great job the special effects people did making Brad appear to be so much shorter than everybody that was passing him.) Three minutes is a VERY LONG PERIOD in movie time!

When I’m writing a script, I know that I can hold an audience’s attention for about an hour and a half. After that, their butts start to get sore, and they begin squirming around, shifting their weight, and glancing at their watches. Most audiences have the same attention span.  When you exceed that, you run the risk of losing the audience. To do that is, in my opinion, pure arrogance on the part of the director and the playwright.

As a director or a playwright, it is important to remember that, no matter how IMPORTANT you think your work is, your main objective is to entertain. (Also, as an ex-teacher, I know that learning stops as soon as the student (audience) becomes bored.)

Best Editing nomination? I don’t think so.

Best Directing? Not to my way of thinking.

I will agree with The Academy for nominating the film for Make-up and Visual Effects, Best Supporting Actress and even, perhaps, for Best Art Direction. (The framing of some scenes is absolutely breath-taking.)

 I strongly disagree with them on the film’s nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Screenplay.

(Sorry, Brad, but you were just busy looking handsome and being Brad with a southern accent.)

My choice for Best Film, Best Leading Actor and Best Leading Actress? If you’re really interested, that will be the subject of my next post.