Oscars 2012: The Final Word
What can one say about such a non-event as the 2012 Oscars? Perhaps not quite that it was “The Most Boring Oscars Ever!!!!,†as Nikki Finke is apparently obligated to say about every Oscarcast. But […]
The Descendants
The Descendants (2011) -vs- About Schmidt (2002)
The need for a Smackdown between writer/director Alexander Payne’s earlier effort About Schimidt and his Oscar nominated The Descendants is so obvious that we just can’t let the final days before the Academy Awards go by without […]
Oscar Week at the Smack
Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences have their way of picking movie winners; we have ours. We’re not gonna say Movie Smackdown’s way is necessarily better than its Oscar competition, although […]
The Oscar as the Ultimate Smackdown
Despite the major studios’ insistence on making primarily mega-budget, tent-pole, comic-book, sequel-remake, monster-alien-scifi films as their bread-and-butter, challenging and compelling original films do get made every year through alternative means. And, despite the harping and complaining we all do, there always seems to be a great crop that bridge the divide and are worth saluting. Those are the kinds of films that the Academy Awards gravitate to as their nominees. […]