I'm guilty of spamming Serenity in all categories - but only because I thought it deserved it :)

aapac | January 09, 08:50 CET

What? No Gina Torres or Jewel Staite?

Nebula1400 | January 09, 09:05 CET

Before taking this list too seriously, check out the 3rd scariest movie of the year.

Satertek | January 09, 09:33 CET

...Goblet of Fire as Best Picture! bwaaaaaahaHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAAAAA-- *choke*

The First Weevil | January 09, 09:43 CET

Heh, well, this is a popularity contest. I did actually think Goblet was surprisingly good, and it's in my top 10, but not on the top spot (that's Serenity, Hotel Rwanda, Mean Creek, Crash and Sin City as my top 5). It probably got in due to the huge Potter fanbase.

I'm starting to see how other people may feel when they see Serenity take the top-spot in som lists. I'm sure the Goblet voters honestly felt that it was the best movie of the year.

I forgot to vote in this one though - heh. But, then again, one more Serenity vote wouldn't have made much difference.

GVH | January 09, 10:21 CET

Couple of things to note ...

- Serenity consistently lost to RoTS in most categories.
- Chewitol Ejiofor really should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor instead of Adam Baldwin
- And how is Memoirs of a Geisha eligible for Best Foreign (non-english) Film Category? And if it is, shouldn't Serenity? At least they spoke some foreign language now and then.

[ edited by NickSeng on 2006-01-09 08:38 ]

NickSeng | January 09, 10:35 CET

Popularity contest indeed! It's interesting to see how many films and actors appear in both the 'best' and 'worst' categories.

purplehazel | January 09, 10:42 CET

Good God, people didn't think when voting, did they? HP as best film of the year is hilarious but since it's so popular, it was expected. But Emma Watson so high in best actress? Excuse me while I go puke. I've never heard of anything more ridiculous. I had liked the girl before, but seeing GoF, she had so many acting clunkers it killed me to watch. Some seriously bad overacting choices there.

But should I be surprised? Popularity contest...

zimshan | January 09, 11:08 CET

More people saw RoTS.
As much as I enjoyed Baldwin's performance, Ejiofor should have been nominated Best Supporting Actor, definitely.
To a large portion of Americans, if a movie has a cast of all Asians, even if they're speaking English? They'll considered it a "foreign" movie. (Just like if a movie has a majority Black cast, it's a "black" movie. Go figure.)
:/

[ edited by AmazonGirl on 2006-01-09 09:30 ]

AmazonGirl | January 09, 11:30 CET

Goblet of Fire is both the third funniest and third scariest movie of the year....

Now I quite liked Goblet of Fire, I think in terms of movies for pure entertainment it was like.... maybe 4th this year. However best movie of the year strikes me as kind of well... ludicrous.

Admittedly, I think Serenity as #5 best movie of the year is pushing it a little bit as well, but that's only because, whatever people make of the Box Office receipts, this year has had a lots of great movies.

rabid | January 09, 11:47 CET

Sure, it's a popularity contest, but I guess it's better to be popular than unpopular. Now, should we feel disappointed that Serenity didn't show up in either the Best Documentary or Best Animated polls? ;-)

billz | January 09, 12:15 CET

re: Emma Watson, so much agreement! The performances were generally good -- particularly the kid who plays Ron is getting pretty decent comedy chops -- but Emma Watson had a couple of tin moments that threw me out of the movie.

Anyway, cool to see the Browncoats representing. I voted, but sadly not always in Serenity's favor; Brokeback Mountain was the best movie I saw this year, and Heath Ledger rocked my world, which believe you me, surprised me as much as y'all. The rest of my best of list includes Serenity, 40 Year Old Virgin, Breakfast on Pluto and King Kong.

dottikin | January 09, 12:20 CET

Hm, I have a few theories since this is a rather dodgy popularity contest... Memoirs of a Geisha fans might have been not paying attention and assume that said "foriegn film" not "non-English" film (yes, I'm aware it's from an American film studio) or wanted to give the movie a shot but thought best picture would be too crowded a field. Also, there's a chance that given how it only entered wide release fairly late in the year (and even then it wasn't that wide) many people who read the book might be voting based on the trailers as they haven't been able to see the movie yet. As for that, I'm just angry that Gong Li at least didn't make best supporting actress for being such a terrific bitca.

We did a pretty good job of stuffing the ballots though-- While Adam Baldwin was entertaining, I cannot believe he would have managed to pull off a best supporting actor thing without fan help since I can't imagine typical people going out of their way to look up a supporting actor that often as opposed to an unknown actor/actress in the lead. He was entertaining sure, but uh... Chewetel Ejiofor? put in a great performance that seemed to resonate with a lot of people who aren't amongst the hardcore fans.

orangewaxlion | January 09, 13:19 CET

I don't agree about Emma Watson. Both she and Rupert Grint did a fine job in HP4 and I was pleasantly surprised by pretty much all performances. I still think Daniel Radcliffe is a slight disappointment, but when compared to the last three movies all performances were simply much, much better.

I'd think Emma Watson has a pretty good carreer in front of her, if she decides to go into acting after finishing with HP and wasn't bothered with her performance at all. And I'm generally a pretty critical fellow when it comes to acting ;-).

Also, Zimshan:



I think you could've been a little more respectfull there. But maybe that's just me.



Well, I'd say that pure entertainment value is something to be strived for as well. A movie can be great on entertainment value alone, even if it has no deep layers or comments hidden within. I think Harry Potter served as a prime example of this fact, giving us a darkly engaging movie which kept my behind firmly in the theatre seat for the entire running time. Hell, I enjoyed it so much I went out and saw it again. And I'm not that big of a fan. That, to me, means the movie is pretty good at what it aimed to do and as such I'd give it a place in my best of the year list (somewhere in the lower half of my top 10, probably).

Sure, there's more meaningfull fare out there, but at the end of the day movies are entertainment even if they also serve a role as a social commentary or a mirror for society from time to time.

:edit:

Also:



I feel we shouldn't be too negative about popularity contests. Hell, our own massive voting in some of these lists got Serenity pretty high on some of those lists. Now I'd say Serenity deserves it, but if it wasn't for popularity contests and online polls and the like, we wouldn't have seen our BDM mentioned quite as often.

[ edited by GVH on 2006-01-09 11:27 ]

GVH | January 09, 13:24 CET

It's a movie poll partly decided by rival fanbases. I don't think anyone should be surprised by the results. Whether or not they should be seen as valid by the general public is a completely different story.

Simon | January 09, 13:26 CET

Harry Potter _again_? (Rolls eyes.)

Still. I know that I voted for a couple of films that came out in Germany in 2005 but that I _thought_ might belong in 2004, and I was astonished that IMDB didn't stop me from putting then in. Obviously, it wouldn't have stopped us from voting SERENITY as best documentary, either. (Or those who thought SIN CITY was an indie film, or GEISHA a foreign-language one.)

On the whole, it's nice that SERENITY made fifth-best movie, because it means visibility again to people who know zilch about rivaling fan bases.

bschnell | January 09, 14:27 CET

Well, GVH, I'm going to have to disagree with you on the performances in Goblet of Fire. They were much worse than those in Prisoner of Azkaban. I'm not saying it's the kids' fault; it's not. I directly blame Mike Newell, who crazily fucked up things I like to call "story structure" and "pacing."

I also blame the fanbase, so critical of the fact that POA was maybe a little different than the book (even though it was miles above the others in terms of story, character, photography, direction, etc.), for making Newell stick so strictly to the book and in essence suffocating the life out of the movie.

And, to actually be on topic, I voted for Serenity for Best Picture, Best Director (Joss), Best Actress (Summer), Funniest, and Scariest.

UnpluggedCrazy | January 09, 15:14 CET

Pretty good showing for Serenity IMO - no mention of anything Serenity related in the 'Worst of' categories yet RotS & Brokeback et al are all listed somewhere.

The Do That Girl | January 09, 15:19 CET

Fair enough ;-)



And here we're disagreeing to be sure. I'm very happy with Mike Newell. In fact, I'd say he's the best director for the movie series so far. I don't see how he 'fucked up' the story structure or pacing of the movie. In fact, I feel he did a great job of condensing the megasized book to a 2+ hour movie. I'd say this results in a movie which may even be better than the book. It lost the extra weight and is a trimmer, more streamlined experience for it.

As for the acting: I actually don't see why anyone would claim it got worse in comparison with POA. In Prisoner, apart from many things I disliked, the acting stood out most. Daniel Radcliffe was particularly dreadfull and I don't think that was completely his fault. His better acting in HP4 would prove that and the same goes for the other kids.

In fact, in interviews I read, I saw that Newell actually did acting workshops for all the actors, because he felt the script was more demanding, acting-wise, than the previous movies had been. I'd say those workshops payed off.



I'm actually very surprised to read this. I'm not a member of the Potter fanbase, but I have read the books and watched the movies. Prisoner was much more loyal to the book than Goblet is, so straight away this doesn't make much sense to me. What's more, Prisoner has bad directing. Switching scenes with little flying butterflies or other 'cute' finds didn't work for me at all. Also, in trying to create a 'darker' movie, Cuarón lost all the magic that makes the books so enchanting. I feel he tried to hard to make something special (which you can't blame him for), but in the end that ambition backfired and 'suffocated the life out of the movie' ;-).

Newell didn't actively try to create a dark movie through lighting, music and overall tone. In fact, in the first half, Goblet is almost a comedy. But the endproduct is much, much darker than Prisoner ever was. The comedy, the better acting, the better characterisation all serve to draw you into the story more. So when the dark stuff happens it hits home much more than it ever did in Azkaban.

With apologies for straying off-topic this much.

GVH | January 09, 16:49 CET

The second I saw that Sin City was in the animated category and Walk the Line was in the documentary category I stopped taking this poll seriously.

Not that Walk the Line isn't based off of truth, but it's not a documentary by any means.

war_machine | January 09, 17:35 CET