Rumor has it that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences may actually honor some movies at this year's Oscar ceremony. Movies, as opposed to, you know, films.
Movies are those big, loud, colorful things that play on many cineplex big screens every month of the year in front of hundreds of thousands of rapt Americans who have paid 10 bucks a pop for the privilege. Films, on the other hand, may star some of the people we see in movies, but they are smaller, often darker and almost always much less fun. Like hothouse flowers, they bloom in the months of November and December when they arrive in art houses or in single-screen limited engagements to play for an audience comprised of academy members, the entertainment media, aspirational filmmakers and people who still subscribe to The Nation.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, December 19, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 40 words Type of Material: Correction
Oscar Confidential: The Oscar Confidential column in Wednesday's Envelope section incorrectly cited "There Will Be Blood" as last year's best picture Oscar winner. The best picture award last year went to Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country for Old Men."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, January 07, 2009 Home Edition The Envelope Part S Page 5 Calendar Desk 1 inches; 42 words Type of Material: Correction
Oscar Confidential: The Oscar Confidential column in the Dec. 17 Envelope section incorrectly cited "There Will Be Blood" as last year's best picture Oscar winner. The best picture award last year went to Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country for Old Men."
They are often exquisite and in the last few years, they've won all the big Oscars despite the fact that few people saw, or ever will see, them. Even after it won best picture last year, "There Will Be Blood" wasn't exactly filling an entire wall at the local Blockbuster.
But this year, we have been led to believe, things may be different. Five years after Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" swept the Oscars, the academy may be recovered enough from its anti-epic backlash to re-embrace its heritage -- entertainment. Big movies, popular movies, movies like "Mary Poppins" and "Jaws," and "The Towering Inferno," "Ben Hur" and "Titanic," all managed to win Oscars despite being popcorn-selling crowd pleasers.
There have been a lot of good old-fashioned movies this year, including a Superhero Summer ("The Dark Knight," "Iron Man," "Hancock," and even "Get Smart") and the return of both the 1940s comedy in "Ghost Town" and the all-out epic with "Australia." Already there are signs that the academy is not unmoved. There is an active Oscar campaign generating buzz for "The Dark Knight" and not just for Heath Ledger but for best picture. Likewise "Iron Man," which stars sentimental favorite and Golden Globe nominee Robert Downey Jr., whose rational insanity propelled "Tropic Thunder" out of the standard Ben-Stiller-film slot into cultural, and Oscar, conversations.
