Isn’t the cinema fantastic? For a few quid you can sit down in either a plush or stiff seat for at least an hour and a half and be sucked into an alternate reality. Bills, rent, impending court appearance and nuclear annihilation (except if you are watching a Tom Clancy based film) all cease to matter as what is happening on the big screen in front of you and shows you what goes through a directors head.
Every year, award ceremonies across the world celebrate the glory of cinematography, screen plays, set designers and directors, all of whom pour their heart and souls into pictures. Ceremonies such as the Oscars and the Baftas always look at the cream of the crop in the previous twelve months of film. Films that have moved people with emotional performances, light hearted scripts, gripping action, dazzling scenery and dialogue so quotable it becomes ingrained into the public’s vocabulary for a few weeks.
However, the National Movie Awards, ITV’s latest attempt to gain ratings decides to do away with esteemed judges and knowledgeable experts and decides to throw away awards by asking the public to vote for the winners of each category. They seem to have tried to follow in the MTV direction of film awards but while Americans create glitzy, glamorous and more money than thou ceremonies, for ITV, James Nesbit will do.
Now, what has really stoked my fire was to see Robert Pattinson walk away with the best performance actor award. If you do not know who Robert Pattinson is you either are the luckiest person on earth or a subterranean dwelling social outcast who considers Space Invaders to be the leader of contemporary video gaming and a firm believer that Nixon was not a crook.
Robert Pattinson is of course, the face of the Twilight Saga. His character Edward Cullen is some kind of faux vampire, emo wannabe as his ability to sparkle in daylight instead of burst him into a million ashy bits of ash denies him credibility as a real vampire. Pattinson’s sole duty in Twilight is to look consistently pissed off. As though he is repressing the thought that he once accidentally touched another male ‘vamp’s arse and liked it a bit too much.
He appears on the silver screen brooding with teenage angst and doing nothing more than being temperamental and...Well...a teenager of some sort.
Acting like you’ve been told you lifelong pet cat Captain Puss Puss was run over just moments before setting foot on set does not justify a moody performance to beat other more jovial performances. Not when competition from Jeremy Renner of Hurt Locker and Jeff Bridges are standing in the wings waiting to accept the honours.
How did Lt Aldo Raine or Colonel Hans Landa, two of Quentin Tarantino’s greatest characters not land a win? Because the National Movie Awards opened the flood gates for the countries throngs of fan girl/fan mum’s who voted en masse for their beloved Edward.
Now while voting for best performances is based upon an actor’s ability to really bring a character to life by a solid performance and outshining everyone else with an inch of the shot frame. I again mention Hans Landa played by Christoph Waltz who won each and every single best supporting actor gong around last year. That was a performance that was utterly convincing. Landa was funny, witty, terrifying and unpredictable. Perhaps his success was due to the use of Mr Waltz, an almost unknown actor who’s face was a blank canvas and had Hans Landa painted all over it by Tarantino.
Edward, not Robert, won because the fan girls/ mums don’t vote for Robert’ portrayal, they vote for the character of Edward as he is somehow the most lusted object since Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack from The Titanic. Somehow it seems that the perfectly desirable spouse of today is a deceased, human hunting, blood sucking vampire. If that isn’t a keeper of a once male specimen, I don’t know what is.
Yet we can breathe a sigh of relief. It’s all going to be alright. We are lucky that the ITV National Movie Awards are as prestigious and coveted as radioactive toilet paper. Any of the serious Hollywood names who received such an award no doubt take great care in hiding the evidence of that evenings proceedings. Those statuettes wouldn’t even earn a place under the loo roll holder in their mansions smallest bathroom.
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