You’ll find out our cynically scientific guesses as to who will win the major prizes 2011 Academy Awards below. But, before we get into that nonsense, we’d like to unveil a more interesting competition—the 2011 Weirdcademy Awards. This is the award given to the weirdest movie, actor, actress and scene of the previous year, as voted by the members of the Weirdcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Weirdness.
Who makes up the Weirdcademy, you ask? Membership is open to all readers of 366 Weird Movies. All you must do to officially join the Weirdcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Weirdness is to say to yourself, out loud, three times, while looking in a mirror, “Man, I’d like to be an official member of that thing on 366 Weird Movies where you vote on the weirdest movies and stuff of the year, I forget what it’s called.” Do not scratch any part of your body within twelve inches of your own (or another’s) genitalia while repeating the formula, or you will be judged “unclean” and forced to repeat the ritual after a five minute purification period. Once you have completed this ceremony, you are officially a member of the Weirdcademy and entitled to vote in the online poll below. (Vote as many times as you like, but only once per day, please. We’ll keep voting open until February 27 at noon, so we can announce our results before the Academy Awards and steal their thunder.)
Without further delay, here are the nominees for the 2011 Weirdcademy awards:
Click below for weirdest actor, actress, and scene categories, and to see our picks for Hollywood’s “most conventional” Award Show.
And just in case you want to know who will win Hollywood’s Yawncademy Awards on February 27, here are the picks you can take to the bank.
MOST CONVENTIONAL PICTURE: The Social Network. It’s the safe choice: it’s very well done and there’s nothing controversial about it whatsoever, unless your name is Mark Zuckerberg or Sean Parker. The fact that it’s about Facebook will make the dessicated corpses of the Academy seem contemporary and with it (it’s like putting a Blackberry on a mummy).
MOST CONVENTIONAL DIRECTOR: The director of the Best Picture winner has won Best Director 7 out of the last 10 years and 17 of the last 20 years. There’s no reason to split the award this year as the Academy is going to give the acting award to their other favorite, The King’s Speech. David Fincher is a shoo-in.
MOST CONVENTIONAL ACTOR: Most critics thought Colin Firth should have won last year for A Single Man, but Jeff Bridges was getting too old without having won an award and the Academy was desperate to recognize him. Even if Firth hadn’t given the best performance of the year (and the consensus is he did), he’d win this category easily on the make-up call. The fact that his performance had a gimmick (stuttering) is almost overkill.
MOST CONVENTIONAL ACTRESS: This one is much tougher than it looks. Because it deals with lesbians raising a normal, well-adjusted family, the Academy will be desperate to honor The Kids Are Alright with something. It’s not good enough to win Best Picture, and Benning gave a good performance (there’s a nice scene where she discovers an act of infidelity during a dinner party and has to try to continue to be polite), so this looked like Kids‘ best shot. Then, Natalie Portman shamelessly stooped to the lowest depths to get the Academy on her side—she got herself pregnant. Now, she could retire from movies altogether, or even worse—she could lose her shape. The Academy won’t be able to overlook the possibility that this may be their last chance to honor Portman.
MOST CONVENTIONAL SUPPORTING ACTOR: This is possibly the most competitive category. The Academy may be tempted to balance out two major awards for The Social Network with two for The King’s Speech, but Geoffrey Rush has already won his Oscar. Jeremy Renner was passed over last year for The Hurt Locker so he could get some sympathy votes. Christian Bale has been out there forever, making 45 major motion pictures without a single nomination. This one is so close that the Academy might actually look at the quality of the performance as a tiebreaker—that remote possibility makes Bale a very slight favorite.
MOST CONVENTIONAL SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Cheating pays. Hailee Steinfield wasn’t a supporting actress, she was the main character in True Grit. The Academy won’t notice; they’ll just think how cute she would be holding a statute that’s about half as big as she is. Producers of The Kids Are Alright will kick themselves afterward for not nominating Benning here, but how could they have known Portman would get knocked up?
MOST CONVENTIONAL SCREENPLAY (ORIGINAL): Inception should win here; Christopher Nolan was passed over for a best director nomination, and the Academy will sometimes recognize a weird or a genre film with the screenwriting booby prize (see: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). As we’ve seen, however, they’ve been scrapping for someplace to recognize the Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner-esque social-engineering spirit of The Kids Are Alright, and they’re down to this as their only remaining option. Nolan gets snubbed, again. (Remember for future years—passing him up here makes his next non-Batman project a great candidate for a make up call).
MOST CONVENTIONAL SCREENPLAY (ADAPTED): The Social Network‘s Aaron Sorkin is a producer as well as a writer, so everyone wants to stay on his good side. Also, the Best Picture nominee gets an extra boost every year to win best screenplay (since it could be either an original or an adaptation, allowing the Academy to recognize another worthy candidate). It’s almost as good as being nominated twice. 7 out of 10 of the last Best Picture nominees have also grabbed a Best Screenplay award.
MOST CONVENTIONAL ANIMATED FEATURE: Come on, you know this one. You don’t need me to tell you. (Hint: it’s the only animated movie that’s also up for Best Picture). They didn’t even bother to put up a full slate of five nominees in this category.
I saw Surviving Life tonight, and it wins HANDS DOWN. amazing.
How could you miss Dogtooth for weirdest? That film beats all of these listed here.
It’s mainly an issue of copyright dates–I classified Dogtooth as a 2009 movie. The Temptation of St. Tony fell into the same boat. We cheated a little and considered Enter the Void as 2010 because even though it was first shown in 2009 at Cannes the final cut was completed this year. We do have a positive guest review of Dogtooth up, and I look forward to seeing it myself soon now that it’s out on DVD.
I’ve been considering Dogtooth a 2010 movie (as are the Oscars, who have a chance they probably won’t take to recognize true ultra-weirdness!), and by those standards, I do consider it the weirdest of the year. But I guess each contest has its own rules.
As it is, from the 5 I’ve seen, I’m torn. Going by this website’s attitude, though – that weirdness is aided by being GOOD – I have to pass Splice over for Black Swan, which is marginally less weird but also far, far better. Once I see Enter the Void (currently streaming through Netflix!), though, some of these votes might change.
(I have some quibbles with your Oscar coverage, by the way, but they’re mostly subjective and minor so I’ll leave it be.)
Go ahead and quibble if you like. Discussion is welcome.
I never gave my picks for the films I’d actually like to see win. I’d go for BP – Inception (wouldn’t be disappointed with either Toy Story or Social Network, though); BD – Fincher (wouldn’t be upset with Aronofsky); BA – Firth; BA – Jennifer Lawrence; BSA – Christian Bale; BSA – Hailee Steinfield (would like to see her recognized even though she’s in the wrong category); BOS – Inception; BAS – The Social Network.
I suck at keeping current, so I’ve only seen a handful of these, but ENTER THE VOID would seem to be the weirdest option here based on description alone (and a must see to boot! I added it to the queue). Just seen BLACK SWAN, which I enjoyed, and it does have its weird moments, but overall, not so weird. SHUTTER ISLAND, just didn’t do it for me and I didn’t find it particularly weird.
SURVIVING LIFE was amazing and it gets my vote for best movie here…BUT best “weird movie”? Yeah, I guess it is pretty weird, but I think this might be the least weird Jan Svankmajer I’ve seen. Unique, beautiful, but a bit lighter on the weird than I anticipated.
I agree with you Goregirl, its definitely not the weirdest Svenkmajer, but it still makes all the other films on that list look like blockbuster material.