For Your Consideration, can you stop?!?!

As Awards Season is opening, and the countdown to the Oscars started, movies like The Social Network, The Kids Are All Right, and Inception are getting real awards buzz that await for the Oscars. Critics, bloggers and film freaks would predict movies that would be recognised as the best films of the year. But seriously I hate it.

The problem with Awards Season is that voters and board members of each organisation that hand out movie awards nominate movies we never heard of and/or just focus with at least two movies that are certain to win a Best Picture award especially at the Academy, we skip each award event because of these movies. This was my problem with last year's award season. People were looking at two movies: a $2 billion grossing movie (made from Hollywood) Avatar and a $46 million grossing movie (independent) The Hurt Locker. The Hurt Locker was the champion of this battle ultimately winning Best Picture at the Oscars. (Interesting fact - Hurt Locker was released the same week as Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen. Ironically, Transformers was named Worst Picture). The movies that were recognised but were not part of the close battle was Precious. It was adopted from Oprah and I was wondering whether that the screenplay was almost patronising, it mustn't won the Best Adapted Screenplay which would have been reserved for Up In The Air.

However the biggest problem I have with the season was For Your Consideration.

For Your Consideration is three words made by Hollywood studios to advertise movies in websites, newspapers and magazines and DVDs to convince organisations that give out awards (the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Screen Actors Guild) to nominate their movies which they think is great and they would spents millions of dollars to advertise their movies for the sake of them being submitted for a nomination or two

What causes this. I don't know. Hollywood studios would like to cash in because they have sympathy towards directors, actors and writers who make movies for their studio. If it was a box office or critical success or both, then the studios will likely to show these film again in ads in every entertainment publication for a better chance of having the movies submitted.

FYR is getting really obvious and at the same time oblivious of the conseqences it would have on the studios. If the movies submitted for voting weren't nominated, then they would have to lose $70 to $80 million in advertising revenue. This is going too far

Last year, studios submitted Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen for the Oscars as well as 2012 because they both grossed around $800 million. However both were also critical disasters receiving a 20% and 42% by Rotten Tomatoes respectively. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen was later honoured for Worst Picture at the Golden Raspberry Awards. It was weird given how it's absurd to see Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich nominated for a Best Director

But there were some movies that were putting great risk of advertising and for that matter was recognised by others. When the Academy announced ten Best Picture nominees, Warner Bros. put in ads for The Hangover. It was a box office hit as well as acclaimed. It wasn't nominated for any Oscars, but won a Golden Globe for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy).

One thing I hated about For Your Consideration is that it doesn't achieve anything for each film unless the films advertised were submitted for voting were then nominated. Studios are so desperate for the recognition they want for the films they've produce, that the more advertising the less chance it has for a spot at the Oscars.

FYC had some movies successful for an Oscar nomination that it became a total loser. For example Martin Scorsese had Harvey Weinstein, the studio owner for The Weinstein Company to advertise his movie Gangs of New York for a bid at the Oscars. It did, received nine nominations and not a single win. It is a pity cos it was a waste of $50 million.

But when Scorsese hit back with The Departed receiving his deserved Oscar for Best Director, there was no marketing with the three worded heading. So he might have learnt his lesson... sort of. He now has Shutter Island in the FYC heading and it is possible that his latest flick has a one in 34 chance of being nominated. If it was marketed for Best Picture then it would belong to The Blind Side slot (the nominee that was nominated for no reason).

This would be a grim story for Toy Story 3 which Disney heads are so desperate to have the film winning Best Picture, it named it the Best reviewed film of the year (with a 99%). This movie would have an impossible chance from winning from any categories nominated except the Best Animated Feature category in which much of Pixar had dominated. No voter would be voting for an animated feature for the prestigious award even if it was the highest grossing animated feature or was part of the greatest trilogy of all time.

I would say that when they (the studios) use FYC, it is because they had wanted to be recognised since the awards season had officially lost their mainstream appeal. Precious, Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, and There Will Be Blood were all well known because they were critically acclaimed and when they are popular with the public it's during awards season. Juno had grossed $300 million with a $10 million budget.

Last year, when Avatar became the highest grossing movie of all time it is $2 billion in counting. Now we see Avatar to be the total loser of every awards event with the exception of the Golden Globes while The Hurt Locker wins big.

Now if I guess, if a movie became so big based on word of mouth or box office hit they are likely to get pwned by the voters. This was what happened with Brokeback Mountain which had lost to Crash for Best Picture in 2005. Many people claimed that homophobia was a factor of it winning, but I believed that Brokeback focused too much on its FYC that it lost.

FYC is also a way of manipulating the voting process. It is a form of propaganda to convince voters to nominate their movies. It's like an political election where your movie campaigns to be recognised. These can be the movies that are produced for the stupid. If my theory is correct, I would expect Grown Ups to be campaigned for Best Picture and Best Ensemble.

It is the greed of studio heads to cash in so their movies can be recognised. Movies are not nominated if a movie was bad or if the movie was great. Unfortunately studio owners as well as the members of the Academy are the stupidest people on Hollywood for decision making on toast.

Enough with the Armonds

There were two posts I made in The Catalyst. One was about how critics miss the point and become incredibly inconsistent and unfairly biased when they review movies. Another one was about the buzz about The Social Network. The movie on Facebook.

Now I told you on that post about my experiences on Facebook, how South Park called this device pointless and the predictions I made about the movie and how it's gonna effect us. The audience. Where it is certain that most of the audience are using Facebook. I said it was going to hurt some users who would be insulted about the aims of Facebook and why we are using it.

Now in this post, I'm gonna combine these posts together so I can protest on one critic I really hate. And you would hate him too. Every film critic would also hate him as well. I'm talking about this guy below:

Armond White.

Meet this guy. It's ironic that his name and his skin colour contrast together. I don't know any African American film critics, but I think people who has a great taste in movies and the internet know him as 'the troll' which means to mock someone out of annoyance.

Now I didn't mention him on the post about critics because I was focused on David and Margeret who are really well known critics in Australia and also I forgot about him but here's the facts.

• Armond White used to be a music critic so why did he moved to movies when he hated that field he's given to analyse so much
• He agrees with the movie website 'Rotten Tomatoes' 52% of the time and had slash out many films which are almost destined to get 100% like Toy Story 3
• White's considered a contrarian who rejects in popular opinion.
• White's best films he rated were most people including me think were awful including Transformers; Revenge of The Fallen, Jonah Hex, Grown Ups, and any movie critics think are awful
• White's worst movies were movies we think are the best. He hates Toy Story 3, Inception, Star Trek, Iron Man, Up, Up in The Air, The Dark Knight, any movie we think is the best.
• He was first labelled as a troll by Roger Ebert after disagreeing with his review on District 9, one of the best reviewed movies of 2009.
• White claims to have watched 400 movies a year and his aim was to help the viewer get to understand film better.
• He adores Steven Spielberg (well why can't we?) and hates Noah Baumbach just like David Stratton like Michael Winterbottom and hates Lars Von Trier. 

White's is what I think matches my blog post's rants about critics. He's biased towards and against one filmmaker, he's against movies about his race, put in allegories in his reviews and calls himself a film critic which is just a hobby going into a cinema and enjoy watching the movie. Critics are just people from an outlet going into the cinema.

But here's something. About three hours ago, I was on my Twitter and RT had announced that The Social Network which was getting really rave reviews and early Oscar chances had got its first negative review and unsurprisingly it is White himself.

In his review, White commented about the character of Zuckerberg as an 'obnoxious protagonist Noah Baumbach didn't write' before that White said that director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin sould worship Zuckerberg and not accusing Zuckerberg of being a big jerk. He concluded in his review that The Social Network is a TV-trite.

Well I just checked into Rotten Tomatoes again and believe it or not he hates every movie he reviewed except for the movies I mentioned above. In his reviews, he use many words we don't usually use in real life. In other words, he's like Spock from Star Trek where he's an illustration of rationale and that's what he's like. In other words and I don't want to be mean and to be metaphorical, White is a Vulcan.

In his review of Easy A, he declared that movie the worst of 2010 when it is so good, receiving universal acclaim.

His review on The Wrestler commented on Mickey Rourke's performance labelling both it and the film crap.

He compared Inception to playing Grand Theft Auto which would have been worst if GTA had been turned into a movie. Inception and GTA has something in common. They're both about stealing something for a person involved. The huge difference is that Inception is not a video game and doesn't contain Leonardo Dicaprio shooting Ellen Page in the face. So this made me angry.

What's even annoying is that he gave Grown Ups, the thumbs up calling it heartfelt. As well as Transformers 2 is which he calls it art when it's just a bunch of metal fighting each other with no script at all. Anyone so stupid who never want to read reviews in New York would go pay their money and waste it for that film.

White is indeed an intolerant, nasty, hypocritical troll and he would love to make things back to the status quo when we're becoming a progressive society nurturing our opinions. The status quo making us going into his huge depth of dumb movies.

As for me, I have to be stuck with many people that are like Armond Whites at my school. People torment me for watching Inception, a really smart movie nobody in that school watched and anyone who watched it think it's the worst they've seen so far. While the majority of the school has seen Grown Ups and called "the funniest movie of the year". These people are some of the most intolerant hypocrites I have ever met.

But as the moral goes, everybody has an opinion. And whetyer you like it or not, every film isn't perfect. 99% for Toy Story 3 isn't that exactly the percentage we want, but it's ok. We enjoyed it. HE doesn't. We can't do anything about it.

If White want to make America a country with no taste of culture, wished Justin Bieber would forever lived on this planet when we seriously want him to die, eat the same plain food we should eat, then we don't care. White maybe felt bored in every movie he sees.

In that case, Armond White could be the most annoying person tied with Justin Bieber.

And here's a song I would like to compare to that douche.



In a generation where most of the world is globalised with annoying people from Disney, Justin Bieber's a god, and damn it, Megan Fox's the sexiest thing on the planet, the minority of this generation would make Armond Wite, the critic for the New York Press, a butt of all jokes in arts and culture

A pitchfork rating of no stars. >:)