Houston, St. Louis & Florida Name Their Favorites

I'm just going to keep using this one photo I concocted below until people stop with the Hailee Steinfeld is a supporting actress in True Grit meme. I've even seen her so labelled IN REVIEWS that have nothing to do with Oscars. Oscar culture has truly distorted all concepts of narrative in our modern society. I realize that I'm the lone ornery voice of dissent but, so what? I'm demonstrating my own true grit; Hailee would be proud of me... well, except for the part where I wouldn't nominate her.

But, the ageism and sexism of movie awards is really getting to me this year, sorry.

Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), the captain of True Grit's ship.

Fact: No teenage boy who was leading a picture like True Grit (just imagine the gender reversed) would ever win any awards beyond "breakthrough." Remember when Leonardo DiCaprio won all those statues for his wildly acclaimed "supporting" work in This Boy's Life (1993) and Jesse Bradford won all those awards for King of the Hill (1993)  and Christian Bale won those same prizes for his debut "supporting" work in Empire of the Sun (1987) and Max Records won them for supporting all of those Wild Things Whereever They Were last year and remember when...

No, neither do I.

Pretend Hailee was a boy and imagine her chances competing against Bale or Rush. HA! Like that would ever happen. People respect veteran actors too much to take their trophies away from them. But put a young girl up against a veteran actress and the veteran actresses are toast. They get no respect.

Anyway... if you wanna discuss what Texas, Missouri and Florida critics are honoring, keep on readin'.

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Wrestling With Florida

As we discovered earlier today with the SAG nominations, the Oscars are all but over, a month before the nominations are announced: Slumdog Millionaire will win. Barring Benjamin Button becoming a huge hit (iffy) with the public when it opens @ Christmas, Slumdog just has too large a constituency to leapfrog. Especially when the other Best Picture hopefuls have larger obstacle to a win (genre, gay focus, too lightweight, etcetera).

Today the Danny Boyle inspirational picked up it's umpteenth BP win from Florida's Critics. I was born in Florida so I perk up whenever I hear "Florida" though what follows those three syllables is almost never something I want to hear what with Bush dynasties, hanging chads, anti-gay legislation and hurricanes as frequent chasers. The good news: The Wrestler picked up both Actor and Supporting Actress and it probably needs whatever teensy attention it can muster at this point. They so miscalculated with the mid December release date for such a small and seemingly modest movie. It needed time to sink in as a contendah. Full list of Florida winners here. On a 'they clearly don't take this too seriously' note, the Florida Film Critics web page hasn't been updated since 2006. If they don't care why should we?

I'll try to post a smidgeon about the other critics awards tomorrow... but I've updated my Oscar pages to reflect all the wins in the top eight categories. Thank you to Scene Stealers for an updated chart of winners thus far.
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