The Best Picture category at the Oscars 2010

This year they doubled the number of films nominated for best picture at the Academy awards. With 10 films to choose from we actually have three genre films represented: Avatar, District 9 and Up! As there hasn't been a genre win for best picture since 2004 Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, this is pretty exciting. Here are my opinions on the chances all three titles have.

District 9: I've heard a mixed bag of reviews of this film (no I haven't seen it yet, although it's in my ziplist - that's like a Canadian Netflix for you US residents) mostly positive ones from people who don't watch a lot of genre and very negative ones from genre fans who preferred the film when it was called Alien Nation. I do cheer the fact that it means we can look forward to more world genre films entering the mainstream.

Up: The movie was amazing, beautiful, and actually brought me to tears at one point. Although I'm talking about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which like Up, was nominated for Best Pic and best Pic in another category (forgien for Tiger, Animated for Up) back in 2001, I can say the exact same thing about this gem from Pixar. I think people are happy Up was nominated, but being up for the same award in two categories will kill it's chances of taking home the big one.

Avatar: Sorry haters, but this film without a doubt has the best chance of being a genre Best Picture. It's list of wins and nominations so far is pretty extensive, and like I said in a previous post, it may be seen as a great SF flick in the long run.

So there you go, my final impression, Avatar has the best chance of the genre pics nominated to win, but we'll see in March.

In defense of Avatar

Normally I would be doing a character of the week right now, but as I saw Avatar last night and then read or watched all kinds of negative reviews on it today, I thought I would give my opinion of the film.

Many of the reviews basically saw that although the film has some stunning visuals, it's story is derivative of films ranging from Dances with Wolves to Ferngully (which is entirely true by the way). In my opinion however, this misses the point.

The point of a story is to bring the audience in and keep them engaged, something that for me and my twelve-year-old daughter, Avatar definitely succeeded in.

Deciding whether or not a film has value in the big picture is tricky. Watching the film I definitely saw many aspects of earlier SF films that I had seen as a kid, but the thing I try to keep in mind is that films like Avatar are the ones that SF writers 20 years from now will have seen in their youth. People say this film doesn't say anything new, but they forget that to take into account that it is speaking to a new generation of fans.

In the end, I found the film a good way to pass an afternoon, but for my daughter, it said some new things, and it will be these kids, who in 10 years will really be able to tell us if the film was a classic or not.