The independent film awards - if only they existed!

From
Press Herald

Posted: February 3 2011

Indie Film: Thoughts on the best of 2010 from an 'independent' thinker

By DENNIS PERKINS

The Oscar nominations have been announced. And, as usual, the Academy blew it with safe, predictable and mostly just plain lame choices.

Luckily, Indie Film Guy has a modest proposal.

The Indie Oscars!

Host: Patton Oswalt. There's no bigger, funnier film geek on the planet. Watching the hobbit-y standup turn his nerdery on the movie industry would be revelatory.

This year's Oscar nominees pointedly NOT invited to the Indie Oscars are:

1. "The King's Speech." Nice, pleasant, royalty-based, professionally engineered mom-bait like this is the antithesis of indie.

2. Nicole Kidman. Watching the exquisitely-sculpted Kidman spill gorgeous tears down her porcelain face for 90 minutes? Not at these Oscars.

3. "The Kids Are All Right." Thankfully, gay protagonists are not enough to marginalize a film anymore, and this agreeable, conventional drama has settled comfortably into the mainstream.

4. Natalie Portman. Without Darren Arnofsky to make her look good in "Black Swan," she'd be as pristinely dull as ever.

5. Christian Bale. He's buff, he's emaciated, he's buff, he's emaciated. We get it.

And some Indie Oscar nominations:

1. The little girl from "True Grit" goes in the Best Actress category. She's in every scene and has about twice as many lines as Jeff Bridges, but was nominated for a Supporting Actress Oscar. The Indie Oscars have common sense.

2. Jean Dujardin as Best Actor for "OSS 117: Lost in Rio." Nominating an actor for a foreign comedy might be pushy, but funny is funny, and Dujardin's peerlessly douche-y James Bond manque is hilarious.

3. Russell Brand as Best Supporting Actor for "Get Him to the Greek." Again, the Oscars think comedy is beneath them, so I'm letting Brand's turn as hilarious yet soulful drug-addled rock star Aldous Snow (doing his own singing!) into the Indie Oscars just to teach them a lesson.

4. Tilda Swinton as Best Actress for "I Am Love." I'm actually stunned that the Oscars didn't nominate Swinton (she learned both Italian and Russian for her role, and Oscar loves stunts). Besides, Swinton is brilliant, mysterious and may, in fact, be an alien.

5. "Best Worst Movie" and "Marwencol" for Best Documentary. These are just really good.

6. Robert Duvall as Best Actor for "Get Low." Duvall isn't going to be around forever, and the Indie Oscars are determined to reward his consistently stellar work now, rather than with a condescending "We're sorry we didn't appreciate you and you're about to die, so here's an honorary award" award.

7. "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" for Best Picture. There's no way this unclassifiably-spazzy Edgar Wright-directed comedy/adventure/action/martial arts mashup would get nominated for anything, but I was so giddy by the end that I thought I'd throw it in here just to tick people off.

8. George Clooney as Best Actor for "The American." How can one of the biggest stars in the world qualify for an Indie Oscar? When he lets himself look his age and suggests an entire world inside his closed-off, tight-lipped character, that's how.

Dennis Perkins is a freelance writer who lives in Portland.