The National Movie Awards were went out on ITV this week – I don’t think its unfair to suggest that its not really one of the world’s major movie awards ceremonies, but it does involve the public voting for their choice rather than movie pundits and critics. Of course, sometimes when you open such awards to public votes you end up not necessarily with the best films but the most popular. I don’t mean that in a snobby, movie elitist kind of way (well not too much), but you do realise with some small depression that it means we’re talking major studio mutliplex offerings for the most part here. Not that I have anything against some popcorn enjoyment at all but it would be nice to see a little more depth there – I mean Meryl Streep winning best actress for Abba musical Mamma Mia? Ah, the cutting edge of the cinematic thespian’s craft…
(Heath Ledger and Christian Bale in The Dark Knight, (c) Warners/DC)
Still, the populist voting did also mean awards went to some genre flicks (which, let’s be honest, often get overlooked in the more heavyweight awards ceremonies), including Pixar’s Wall-E for Best Family Picture (and given how much emotion and characterisation Pixar squeezed out of a non-talking character that’s a fair win, I think), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull won Best Action/Adventure (personally I was a bit disappointed with it, especially the overly silly last act, but it had its moments), Johnny Depp won Best Actor for Sweeney Todd (I loved the film, love Johnny and his cheek bones, but I’m sure there were more challenging acting roles more worthy, surely?) and The Dark Knight won Best Superhero. (via The Times Online)
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