The 86th Academy Awards Winners
An Oscar is undoubtedly the biggest honor any filmmaker could receive for their hard work in creating a cinematic work. While I may hear amongst many of the people in my life just how much they don't care about the evening's victors, I treat my viewing of the Academy Awards almost like the average American treats the Super Bowl. Growing up in an extremely small town, a lot of the nominated films weren't accessible to me and my predictions really reflected my sheltered viewings. Now that I'm in actual civilization, I've been able to catch a lot of the films, and I must say that I have become quite a professional at guessing who will be taking home the big prize of the evening. Last Friday I wrote a post on my predictions for the major categories of the evening, and I am proud to say I was pretty much eight for eight with my guesses. Perhaps I should say 7.5 for reasons of my Best Picture award, but I highly doubt anyone cares too much about that. With that said, here are this year's winners...
The 86th Academy Awards Winners Predictions
The early months of any year are full of awards and recognitions for all of those filmmakers who worked hard in the previous year to produce a form of entertainment that will have the capability to transcend the decades. While a variety of these award nights seem to take precedence throughout these first few weeks of the year, they all seem to merely be leading up to the largest of filmmaking honor ceremonies: The Academy Awards. The night on which the golden Oscar is distributed seems to always be the hype, and these smaller ceremonies just add to the predictions that film fanatics everywhere are making for the late winter celebration. 2013 brought a lot of excitement for filmgoers around the world, and this Sunday could be the test of whether a viewer's favorite film executed just the right amount of excellence for the Academy to spread cheer. So, without further blabber on my part, here is what I think will be receiving each honor this weekend.
YouTube Music Awards... Interesting
The inaugural YouTube Music Awards (YMA) took place Sunday night in New York City. The website-sponsored music awards show, touted as a celebration of the do it yourself content environment Youtube helped to foster. It was billed as the crowning moment of years worth of artists that have taken things into their own hands to make it on their own terms. From the sounds of it, the YouTube Music Awards seemed poised to crown those who had used the website as a come up. Think Mac Miller, Macklemore, Chance The Rapper and the hundreds of young artists and directors across the country using the site to get their art to the world.
Instead, the YMAs featured headliners Arcade Fire, Lady Gaga and Eminem performing while shooting live music videos with program director and legendary video director Spike Jonze. It was, in the words of one of my former Journalism professors, one of the biggest public blowjobs in the history of already blowy award shows. The awards show was, in essence, Jonze's wet dream, a grand stage for the director to remind everyone he's pretty good at what he does. Add in the fact that hosts Jason Schwartzmann and Reggie Watts rarely had any idea what to say and you have yourself a show with a production value seemingly lower than many of the videos the site hosts.
In a similar position to that of MTV on September 14, 1984 when the Video Music Awards first entered the world, YouTube finds itself as the de facto landing spot for music videos in today's media climate. Perhaps because of this distinction, the YMAs came to fruition yesterday. Jonze, earlier last week, voiced his interest in creating "live music videos" at the awards show. While playing on YouTube's reputation as an open-source type format from which anyone can make a name for themselves, Jonze missed the mark in directing videos for larger-than-life acts such as Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire, Eminem and Avicii; forgoing the up and comers that make the greatest use of the streaming video site.
It wasn't all bad. While the artists featured may have been different from what I had in mind when first picturing the YMAs, organizers did get plenty right. For one, by producing a live awards show, albeit a show Jonze described beforehand as one in which "We’ve been given a lot of room to make a mess,” YouTube was able to step up and prove itself a viable alternative to traditional television-an important distinction as viewers increasingly ditch the tube and cable for free streaming service via the website. Winners were also voted on by fans, a nod to the user-generated content and interaction that has made YouTube the media Goliath it is today. While Eminem interestingly won 'Artist of the Year' days before his first album in two years came out and kid's group Girls' Generation won best video, it was a good move to leave it to the fans. . . I guess.
Regardless of what I or anyone else thought of the show last night, it happened, and that's all that really matters at the end of the day. The web was flooded with fresh memes and, soon, a slew of new Jonze-directed videos. Any first run is going to be a little rough around the edges (see: early VMAs), but it will be interesting to see where YouTube takes the fledgling awards setup-to the mainstream or tailored to the users actually frequenting the site and providing much of the content. Either way, organizers of the show and YouTube can sleep easy knowing they're having a better week than former YouTube owner Chad Hurley, who got himself in Kanye West's line of fire this week, although Tyler, The Creator may feel differently (see below).
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Arcade Fire, Eminem, Lady Gaga to headline Youtube Music Awards
Oh, how the world changes. When I was in high school we were still downloading videos off of Kazaa, wondering what this Youtube thing was. Today, the seminal website has it's own award show, the Youtube Music Awards, which today announced Eminem, Arcade Fire and Lady Gaga as headliner of the event that will take place live in New York City on November 3. The show, directed by Spike Jonze and hosted by Jason Schwartzman is "a celebration of music honoring the artists and songs that YouTube fans have turned into global hits over the past year." Watch a video announcing the awards show below.
http://youtu.be/9ckE_S5Y5QM