Hollywood Awards Season

I've been thinking about this for a long time, and it occurs to me that I am way out of the popular culture. This time of year, we are inundated with movie award shows that seem to honor films that are: 1) obscure or "artsy" or 2) favorites of the liberal elite. Oftentimes both. What's more, it seems that I very rarely actually see any of the films that are in the running. I got a little curious about this, so I went to look up the nominees for the awards shows that came to mind, and this is what I came up with:

Academy Awards/Oscars: Best Picture
-- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
-- Frost/Nixon
-- Milk
-- The Reader
-- Slumdog Millionaire

Golden Globes: Best Motion Picture - Drama
-- The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
-- Frost/Nixon
-- The Reader
-- Revolutionary Road
-- Slumdog Millionaire (winner)

Screen Actors Guild Awards: Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
-- The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (winner)
-- Doubt
-- Frost/Nixon
-- Milk
-- Slumdog Millionaiore

People's Choice Awards: Favorite Movie
-- The Dark Knight (winner)
+- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
x- Iron Man

MTV Movie Awards: Best Movie (held early summer 2008)
x- I Am Legend
-- Juno
x- National Treasure: Book of Secrets
x- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
-- Superbad
+- Transformers (winner)

Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards (held in March of 2008)
-- Alvin and the Chipmunks (winner)
+- Transformers
-- Are We Done Yet?
x- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

These are the awards shows that just came to mind. Look at the ones that have the pluses or the exes. These are the ones I've actually seen in either the theater (+) or on DVD at home (x). Clearly I don't get out much, but what I also noticed is that of the most prestigious awards (Oscars, Golden Globe, SAG) I don't really see those kinds of movies. Typically, they are morally questionable films and rated R, so I don't even bother. Strangely enough, percentage-wise I saw more of the movies competing in the MTV movie awards than in any of the others. Go figure ... MTV! Truly shocking.

The other thing I have to comment about is that as far as the Kids' Choice Awards, it seems quite inappropriate for Transformers and Pirates to be on that list, as they're both PG-13 movies ...

Anyway, if you need your fill of awards shows for movies, wikipedia has a quite comprehensive list of awards. Truly the film industry is very much self-congratulatory. In my opinion, they don't have much to be congratulating themselves about, as the "big" movies that win these awards use sex and violence as crutches in their story-telling.