Bitches and Their Candles

This week, the Golden Globe nominations were announced, and they prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that these 87 gossip columnists from around the world are abso-fracking-lutely off-the-wall insane.

Let's start with the comedies, work our way up slowly to the real batshit craziness. The nominees for Best Comedy are BURN AFTER READING, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, IN BRUGES, MAMMA MIA!, and VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA. Okay. Look. If those were really the five best comedies of the year, I wouldn't be able to deal with this world. It's a typical list of movies my grandma would like. Nothing too challenging. Just enough to give you a little chuckle. Well where the frack is ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO or any of the other millions of truly funny movies that come out every year? Or what about something like IRON MAN, which is truly bad-ass, but in a light-hearted way? The simple fact of the matter is the Hollywood Foreign Press Association doesn't have a sense of humor.

The nominees for best drama are even worse. THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, FROST/NIXON, THE READER, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, and SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. I've only see two of those movies. FROST/NIXON was very good, but not deserving of a nomination. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE was a contrived piece of bullshit. As for the other three, I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that none of them come anywhere close to being as good as THE DARK KNIGHT. God, I hope they're all better than THE DARK KNIGHT, because that would make them three of the best movies ever made. But I think the more likely scenario is that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is made up of a bunch of morons.

Most of the time, I can understand my choice for the year's best film not being the popular choice. Take last year, for example. DEATH PROOF was my favorite movie, but I knew there was no chance of it getting nominated for anything. It's a movie for movie-lovers. It doesn't have some sort of astounding message or anything like that. Don't get me wrong. It was way better than NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. But it wasn't plot-driven. It wasn't mainstream. It had flaws. It could be picked apart.

But THE DARK KNIGHT? That shit is air tight. It works perfectly on every level. In fact, I think it's been proven mathematically that it is indeed the best film of the year. When I hear people criticize the film, I can't help but think that they're just plain wrong. It's like those people who say CITIZEN KANE is a bad movie. Does anyone really take them seriously?

Yeah, I compared THE DARK KNIGHT to CITIZEN KANE. Deal with it.

My point is this. July 17th, 2008 is a very memorable day for me. I woke up at 6:00am and was at work by 7:30. I assembled our print of THE DARK KNIGHT and watched it. It was one of those movies where I instantly knew that I had just seen something truly extraordinary. That only happens a couple times a decade. After that, I had to work all day. It didn't really bother me, because I was on a DARK KNIGHT high. But then at Midnight, it came time to screen our other movie for the week, MAMMA MIA! Talk about crashing. Everything that I loved about THE DARK KNIGHT was missing from MAMMA MIA!, only to be replaced by shit, shit, and more shit.

And yet here we are, five months later, and guess which one the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has nominated as Best Picture.

Bitches and their candles.