ALSO

Here is my rant about the Academy Awards. I always have a love/hate relationship with them. There are obviously some good movies that got nominated for best picture (Hurt Locker, Inglorious Basterds, etc.), but any awards show that would nominate The Blind Side as the best picture of the year is totally messed up. Think about it...the Oscars are actually saying that there is a possibility that The Blind Side was the best picture made this year.

Despite the presence of a few good movies, the only truly innovative development in film this year (in my opinion) was the technology of Avatar. Not the movie itself, just the technology used to make it. The thing that makes me so sad about Avatar is that it had the opportunity to be, without exaggeration, the best movie ever made. But instead of sucking it up and hiring a decent writer, James Cameron's ego got in the way, and he decided to pull the story out of his butt. And I know Titanic and The Terminator aren't brilliant scripts, but his complete disregard for a good story in Avatar will have more lasting impact. With his new technology, he is setting a standard. And from now on, movies using his new technology need not live up to any standards of plot or character, or anything really, as long as the audience is sufficiently impressed by the cool colors and imaginary creatures.

That's why Avatar is exciting, but also scary. In my opinion, movies as they currently exist are going to start fading out, and the business will branch off into two directions. The first one will be movies like Avatar, which will become more and more interactive, and less and less actual structured movies. The plot will become insubstantial, and it will purely be about the viewing experience. The other branch (although maybe this is just wishful thinking), will be television, and other cheaper, serial productions. We are living in a golden age of TV right now. In my opinion, more creative things are being done on TV than in movies, and more and more people are staying home and watching TV on their computers than going out to see movies in theaters. The industry needs to adapt TV to the computer generation, and maybe some creativity can be salvaged.

Anyways, that's my rant at 8am in France, the day after the Oscar noms are listed.