Announcing Jonathan Lack’s “Dream Academy Awards!” – Nominations Coming Next Week!

The Academy Awards are really, really frustrating. 

I could write a whole essay about why they are silly and not worth putting any stock into – remember, even in the best of times, they aren’t definitive, just the opinions of one group of people – but in short, I’ve been growing increasingly aware over the past few years that, more often than not, the Oscars are wrong about pretty much everything.  As with most award shows, the films that campaign the hardest and have the most “prestige” are the ones that win, whether or not they are actually worthy of recognition.  Sometimes the system works and “The Return of the King” wins 11 Oscars.  That was a good year.  Typically, though, mediocre-at-best fare like “The King’s Speech” walks away with Best Picture, and it takes me months to rebuild any of my faith in Hollywood.  Most years, I pick one or two winners I desperately want to see get a statue (Natalie Portman last year), and if they get at least that right, I can put up with watching the Academy embarrass themselves over and over again for the rest of the evening. 

But since I’m not part of the problem, I should really try being part of the solution, so this year, I aim to rectify the insultingly inaccurate nature of the Academy Awards using the power of my imagination!  The Academy announces their official nominations on Tuesday, January 24^th, and in four articles leading up to that date, I’ll be revealing my own nominations in the first annual Jonathan Lack’s “Dream Academy Awards!”  I’ll be going through almost all of the categories, sans Documentary and Shorts, and because this is all in my imagination anyway, I’ve expanded all the categories from five nominees to seven, since five is too few to recognize all the good work from the past year. 

This is a fun project, because while I don’t like the execution of the Oscars, I do like them in theory.  It’s cool to recognize achievements in individual elements of film, rather than just what the best films were as critics do with a Top-Ten List, and I think this will give me a chance to illustrate what I personally value in the technical, sound, and acting categories in the world of film.  Sometimes before the Oscar Telecast in February, I’ll announce the Winners of my Dream Academy Awards as well, possibly in podcast form!

The Dream Academy Award Nominations will begin next Tuesday, January 10^th, with four sets of nominations posting every Tuesday and Thursday for the next two weeks: here’s the schedule:

Schedule:

The Technical Categories – Tuesday, January 10^th

Music and Sound – Thursday, January 12^th

The Acting Categories – Tuesday, January 17^th

The Big Categories – Thursday, January 19^th

Actual Oscar Nominations – Tuesday, January 24^th

I will, of course, also comment on the real Academy Award nominations and compare (or, more accurately, contrast) them to my own imaginary ones on the 24^th.  I hope you enjoy this little project, and I’d love to hear who your Dream nominees would be.