Les Invasions Barbares picked up the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
I guess I should be proud – a win for not only Canada, but my home province of Quebec. But I haven’t actually seen the film. And nobody except people from Canada will really care about who won one of those “filler” categories which, let’s face it, is exactly what the Best Foreign Language category is. When Canada starts making movies that can compete on equal footing in the big categories, the way our recording artists do at the Grammys, then maybe I’ll pay more attention.
The acceptance speech was at least not as dry as all the others of the night. “We’re so thankful that Lord of the Rings: Return of the King did not qualify in this category”. With 8 Oscars so far for LOTR, and counting, that statement elicted a good laugh.
Update: If that speech was one of the better acceptances of the Oscars, Sean Penn’s acceptance speech for Best Actor in Mystic River was one of the worst. He got up there and immediately said “the one thing any actor knows, other than the fact that there were no WMDs, is that there’s no such thing as ‘best’ actor”.
Does the man have so little class that he’s utterly incapable of shutting up about politics for one night?
Update #2: That’s 11 Oscars for Lord of the Rings.
At least Finding Nemo won Best Animated Feature and Sofia Coppola won for Best Original Screenplay.
The Lord of the Rings films bore me silly, sorry.
I knew it would sweep and opted to watch The Phantom Menace twice instead. Far less painful.
The best actor speech was the worst because it should have been delivered by Bill Murray!!
Does the man have so little class that he’s utterly incapable of shutting up about politics for one night?
Frankly, I’d rather have an actor talk about politics than about how God decided to make them rich and famous.
They have won, let them have their 30 seconds to do whatever it is they want to do about it.
Of course, I would never actually watch an award show, I think it takes years of TV exposure to develop the tolerance for that type of programming. But still, if they want their 30 seconds to be political, let it be political.
Sari , The barbarian invasions was nominated for best original screenplay. Which is quite remarkable because non-English films don’t often get nominated in major categories (see Life is Beautiful). So it is competing on an equal footing with other moveis.
Perhaps you should start paying attention.