Still licking my wounds over last night's "Crash" upset at the 78th Annual Academy Awards--"crash" being an appropriate description for my Pia-Zadora-worthy performance in this year's Oscar office pool. After a mere 15 out of 23 categories correct (62.5% for all the John Nashes out there reading this between hallucinations), I'm officially renouncing "Entertainment Weekly" as my tip-off source for the more obscure categories. Have these guys ever called "Best Live Action short" or "Best Animated short" correctly? Really, has anyone? Even the cine-blogs and "insider" chat boards I scoured had "The Death Of Kevin Carter" and "Nine" positioned as (respective) champs.
Granted, a few gaffes were no fault but my own: failing to predict that "Brokeback Mountain"s Albertan vistas would woo the Cinematography mavens, and a big "duh!" that "King Kong"s astonishing sound FX would fail to score it a statue in both audio categories (I figured the usual prejudice against genre films would leave the big monkey empty fisted save for Visual Effects). In the end, it's really nothing more than a shell game, so in a stab to reclaim my title as Resident Cinematic Know-It-All (somewhat disturbing, though, that many at The Cathode Ray Mission today were positively beaming over my loss), I hereby challenge this year's office pool winner to a round of NTN Showbiz trivia--"Scene It" is way too easy...
So, now that it's finally over, here's my late, redundant, and entirely single-minded list for The Best Of 2006:
BEST PICTURE (STUFF THAT DAZZLED, ENGROSSED, MOVED, OR ENTERTAINED ME SPECTACULARLY...):
Batman Begins
Sin City
Good Night And Good Luck
Wallace And Gromit: Curse Of The Were-Rabbit
King Kong
Syriana
Land Of The Dead
Millions
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Sympathy For Lady Vengeance
RUNNERS UP (MEANING IT MUST'VE BEEN A GOOD MOVIE YEAR...):
A History Of Violence
Layer Cake
Munich
The Corpse Bride
Capote
The Constant Gardener
The War Of The Worlds
Mirror Mask
BETTER THAN YOU'VE HEARD (DIDN'T DRINK THE CRITICS' KOOL-AID...):
Jarhead
Domino
The Island
Constantine
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
Star Wars III: Revenge Of The Sith
WORST PICTURE (THOSE WASTES OF TIME LAZY, DULL, OR DOWNRIGHT :
CONFOUNDING...):
Neverwas (unreleased)
Hide And Seek
The Amityville Horror
Manderlay
The Adventures Of Shark Boy And Lava Girl
