Poll – Which was the Bigger “Snub”?
February 23rd, 2010 | 
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With "500 Days of Summer" (above) and "The Hangover" both being critically acclaimed comedies, which film received the bigger Oscar snub?
A recent Variety article by Glenn Whipp takes a (very) light jab at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences by pointing out, as many have done, that comedies have yet again stayed out of the Oscars’ list of Best Picture nominations. Two pics he mentions specifically are 500 Days of Summer and The Hangover. The latter made the American Film Institute’s Top 10 of the year, and the former even made the Movie-Thoughts Top 10. Both films were critically acclaimed, with The Hangover earning 78% on RottenTomatoes.com and 500 Days of Summer earning 86%.
Whipp notes in his article that it is not the concept of comedy that the Academy has excluded, being that A Serious Man has black comedy, Up in the Air has spurts of humor, Up is debatably an action/comedy, and Inglourious Basterds is peppered with tongue-in-cheek fantasy.
So what’s keeping The Hangover away? Crudeness is no doubt the answer, but that’s only an explanation for its brand of humor. In other matters that the Academy judges, which include artistic quality and technical prowess, the film can be said to fall short. The topic of human interest (which couldn’t be a broader label) is another favorite of the voters, so if Judd Apatow’s 40 Year Old Virgin didn’t have a chance, then certainly The Hangover wouldn’t. But what about 500 Days of Summer? A smart, funny film about how to get over what you thought was a great relationship surely satisfies the Academy’s criteria, right? Apparently not. We are left to only guess, which is really all we can do.
This all begs the question of, if we were to consider these two films’ omission by the Academy a snub, which was the bigger snub? Leave your vote in the comments section of this post or via this site’s Contact page. Tell the world what you think!
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The answer is, neither. While I loved both movies, I don’t believe that The Hangover warrants Oscar consideration simply for being entertaining, and lets face it, while 500 Days was quite good, it would never get the necessary votes required to win anything. The “academy” is far too snooty to recognize what is, at it’s core, a comedy. Personally, the biggest snub in my opinion is a little film called “The Road”. The film is emotionally moving and beautifully shot with minimal special effects, criteria that I thought movies were judged on. My main qualm is that The Road was not even considered for best cinematography. The fact that a film like Avatar is nominated for the same category is simply laughable, the movie is one giant special effect. No location scouting or creative use of camera trickery was required to film that cash cow. If you have seen The Road, you know that it is brilliantly shot and contains some of the most haunting imagery captured on film this year. Bleak, but at the same time strikingly beautiful, the images in The Road are almost entirely REAL. Imagine that, shooting a movie without covering every inch of the frame with false, computer generated imagery. Call me old fashioned, but James Cameron is getting entirely too much acclaim for making what is essentially a three hour action movie with no story. Yes, he did invent a new form of technology but is this 3d movement really what cinema needs right now? The Road was definitely deserving of nominations, cinematography at the very least. The fact that it was completely overlooked in favor of shiny Hollywood bombast just shows what direction cinema is headed in. Things will continue to get dumber and dumber until we are all watching someone fart in 3d for four hours.
Sign me up for 3D farting.