It’s too long. We’re miffed by the nominations, and sometimes the process itself. The production numbers are cheesy and interminable. We’re displeased with the final results more often than not. Years later, we’re typically embarrassed by the outcome. So let’s scrap the Oscars and replace this evil with another: We’ll choose the best movie of the year through something similar to the presidential-selection process.
Vantage Point took first place this week with the lowest winning score in Box Office Power Rankings history. Granted, that’s less than a year, but still … .
A heretical question about Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood: Is Daniel Plainview a good person? The inquiry is an overstatement, because the answer is obvious: Of course not. But contrary to the assessments of many critics, I don’t think Plainview is evil, and more than that I’m not convinced he’s much different from most of us. Plus: Michael Clayton.
Between the initial calculations and now, my Box Office Power Rankings-derived formula has not changed its Oscar conclusion: No Country for Old Men is still your Best Picture winner on Sunday.
In this week’s edition of the Box Office Power Rankings, I was planning to address critical disconnect – not between arbiters and their audiences but between critics and themselves. Specifically, I was curious about movies with which there is a large gap between Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores. In this week’s rankings, the extremes were Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour (Rotten Tomatoes: 85; Metacritic: 59) and Step Up 2 the Streets (Rotten Tomatoes: 25; Metacritic: 51).
Hannah Montana, meet Daniel Plainview. In my absence, I’ve let the Box Office Power Rankings slip, so here are three weeks’ worth. And we get the strange chart-topping pair of There Will Be Blood (January 25-27) and Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour (February 1-3 and 8-10).
