OFCS Gives Best Picture to 'Wall-E'
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Last-ish but not least-ish so far as awarding year-end, um, awards goes, the Online Film Critics Society has decided to honor Wall-E with its top prize, not to mention Best Original Screenplay and Best Animated Feature.Numbers-wise, The Dark Knight and Let the Right One In co-dominated with four awards each. Christopher Nolan took home Best Director for the former, which also won Best Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger's performance, Best Cinematography and Best Original Score. The latter won Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Foreign Language Film, and both Breakthrough awards -- for director Tomas Alfredson and young actress Lina Leandersson.
It was then The Wrestler with two wins (Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress), and one awards each for Wendy and Lucy (Best Actress), Man on Wire (Best Documentary), and Slumdog Millionaire (Best Editing). Truth be told, I'm kind of glad to see the love spread around, although I say that with an already established fondness for most of these films, and even if I wasn't the biggest fan of Wendy and Lucy, I can admit that it got just the award it deserves.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-20-2009 @ 2:34PM
Astin said...
I don't get the love for Wall-E.
It's a very pretty movie, most of the time. Telling a story effectively without much dialogue is all well and good, but it only goes on for the first act. Once they get on the ship, there's plenty of talking to fill out the plot.
On the whole, it's a cheesy robot romance full of clichés with some funny bits of slapstick and impressive visuals, with a b-plot (and it IS the b-plot) of a sledgehammer-subtle message against overconsumerism, globalization, and automation.
Best picture? Hardly. Best screenplay? Nope.
Yet I'll probably still buy it to keep my Pixar collection complete.
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1-20-2009 @ 6:34PM
Movie Lover said...
I don't agree with the previous comment. Wall-E is the best of 2008. It was the most emotional movie of the year. And if it could get the attention of the audience (including me) without any dialog for 40 minutes, it should get the Oscar for the best picture for sure.
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1-20-2009 @ 3:03PM
Stan Winsome said...
Wall-E was 1/2 of a great movie but once he got to the ship it just withered and died, reminding me a lot of the '80s non-classic Explorers. Also why did we get Fred Willard as live-action and then every other human as rubbery looking CGI? Be consistent with the rules. I cared what happened to Wall-E but not a whit about the human race- so what does that say? I loves me some Pixar but this one was a well-intentioned misfire.
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1-20-2009 @ 7:26PM
Matt said...
THANK YOU. Wall-E was pretty dang well done.
It wasn't just the "no speaking" thing. It was a great story, great animation, great music selection, and GREAT character development. The characters were great, and all had a personality. Thats a pretty big task for something that only beeps and boops.
Not to mention the message this movie had. Just brilliant.
The second half of the movie was great, to. The whole "robot love" thing was just brilliant. The ending....wow.
Ending song...excellent! Tells the whole story of the movie.
The Dark Knight was a GREAT movie, but didn't do enough to be the BEST for me. I'm glad Wall-E got the honor.
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1-21-2009 @ 4:59PM
Astin said...
There's one of the problems. It wasn't just beeps and boops. WALL-E and EVE developed deeper ENGLISH vocabularies as the movie progressed. If it was R2D2 and another beeps-and-whistles robot, then I'd be more impressed.
The character development was basic paint-by-numbers stuff. The message was obvious and heavy-handed from the get-go, but did have some amusing moments. And the robot love was the cheesiest romance I've seen in years.
Yes, the animation was top-notch, the music was fine, and I also enjoyed the ending credits. If this was anybody other than Pixar, I'd probably be impressed with it as an animated movie aimed at kids, but they've done SO much better in the past that I'm really disappointed.
1-20-2009 @ 7:27PM
Daniel said...
It's awesome to see LTROI get some love. I can't say enough about how much it rocks me. It definitely deserves all those awards. I wish it could get some Oscars. Though the nominations haven't been announced yet, it's probably not going to get noticed. But watch it anyway!
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