September 23, 2009

Jeff Wells knows exactly what 10 films will be nominated for Best Picture this year!

Well, no, but in his rather odd attack that he posted on Hollywood Elsewhere on Awards Daily's poll on what readers think will be nominated for Best Picture (poll found here) he seems to dismiss almost every film in the running except for the 10 he decided on. I don't mean to attack Wells, but there's two things that bug me about this:
1. It's a poll of what readers think, not what will happen. It's that kind of mightier than thou attitude that turns people off to film critics and some bloggers in general, and it's something we desperately try to avoid here, so when I see it, it bugs me.
2. It's 100% impossible to have any certainty about what will end up being the 10 Best Picture nominees. Half the movies in contention haven't even come out yet, and a handful have barely been seen by anyone, so it really just is a guessing game now, so for Jeff Wells to declare game over with him the winner just seems irresponsible to me.
-You be the judge though....am I off base and Jeff Wells has it all correct or did Wells unnecessarily attack the poll on Awards Daily?

6 comments:

  1. No, you're in the right here. He's guessing just as much as we are: half of his logical explanations consist of "forget it", "not in the game" "foreign language" (right, because a film spoken in a foreign language would never ever have a chance to get nominated, right Slumdog Millionaire?). I don't think he gives a single good reason why anything else couldn't be nominated. For Get Low and Summer Hours, his logic is that he hasn't seen or heard of them, respectively. When attempting to defend his selection of Tree of Life to be nominated, he says "I haven't seen it, but, well, you know". What on earth does that even mean?

    This man is clearly an idiot attempting to prove that he knows something we don't, and failing miserably. He deserves all the hatred coming his way, and I have no sympathy for him.

    Carry on.

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  2. that was my main critique, simply that his reasoning is poor, and certainly not strong enough to warrant this kind of tough talk, but hey, least we try not to around here. As the saying goes, "better to not talk and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt"...

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  3. It's ridiculous. I mean all those comments about each film. "A Single Man...gay-o-vision" really? That's just unprofessional and snarky.

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  4. any type of logic that certainly gets rid of an uncertainty is questionable. the awards seasons is inherently uncertain and kind of arbitrary. he comes off as a dude who believes he knows how things will transpire. no one knows anything. besides, it's just a poll. it's not that serious.

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  5. agreed, or we would have a job, among other things...

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  6. lol (the back track) you can still get a job as an awards prognosticator. you just need to acknowledge the fact that there's inherent uncertainty in predicting. also, you have to accept the fact that you're going to get paid in Major Bison dollars.

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