|
AWFULLY OVERLOOKED: Gone Baby Gone
While Hollywood’s brightest and best were voting on the cinematic achievements that defined the year in cinema, Mirror readers were busily determining which hussies were the hottest and which on-screen battles were the brawling-est. Thus, with all due respect to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, we present the results of this year’s Alternative Academy Awards.
Movie most over-looked by the Academy
A fairly even distribution here, but readers ultimately chose to reward Ben Affleck for directing the gritty Beantown crime drama, and acknowledge that David Fincher’s own brilliant murder movie got totally robbed.
29% Gone Baby Gone
21% Zodiac
19% 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
17% Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
14% Grindhouse
Most overlooked performance
Among all the No Country shine, Josh Brolin’s overdue breakthrough performance (in a great year for the actor) managed to slip through the Oscar cracks. Hope he’ll be content with this. Our own Gordon Pinsent can rest easier for not being nommed himself as co-star Julie Christie, against all predictions, didn’t pick up the Best Actress statue.
31% Josh Brolin, No Country for Old Men
21% Gordon Pinsent, Away From Her
18% Marie-Josée Croze, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
17% Emile Hirsch, Into the Wild
13% Amy Adams, Enchanted
Best Soundtrack
Go figure, but readers picked the cheerful, integration-minded tunes of the Hairspray soundtrack overwhelmingly over darker fare like Johnny Greenwood’s screeching There Will Be Blood score.
38% Hairspray
20% There Will Be Blood
17% (tie) La Vie en Rose and
The Darjeeling Limited
8% Zodiac
Best male bod
Everybody’s favourite howling, bearded Spartan Gerard Butler gets the beefcake prize, with Mortensen’s turn as a nude, tattooed, Russian fighting machine close behind. Not many liked our Cate Blanchett joke, and nobody wants to see Bruce Willis in the all-together.
29% Gerard Butler, 300
27% Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises
25% Matt Damon, The Bourne Ultimatum
12% Cate Blanchett, I’m Not There
7% Bruce Willis, Live Free or Die Hard
Best female bod
 Hard to compete with Hollywood’s reigning hottie Jessica Alba, but a chained and underpants-ed Ricci makes a valiant effort. Once again, our attempt at transgendered hilarity fails to catch on as barely anybody voted for John Travolta.
27% Jessica Alba, Good Luck Chuck
23% Christina Ricci, Black Snake Moan
20% Rose McGowan, Grindhouse
19% Jessica Biel, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
11% John Travolta, Hairspray
Worst performance
So many worthy entries to choose from, but ultimately readers chose en masse  to “reward” Hollywood’s #1 burnout of 2008.
49% Lindsay Lohan, I Know Who Killed Me
16% Dane Cook, Good Luck Chuck
15% Jason Lee, Alvin and the Chipmunks
14% Nicolas Cage, Ghost Rider
6% Catherine Zeta-Jones, No Reservations
Best action sequence
He may have not gotten the nod for bod, but Bruce Willis’s manly assault on a jet won readers’ respect.
33% Bruce Willis vs. a fighter plane, Live Free or Die Hard
23% Josh Brolin vs. a dog, No Country for Old Men
17% Final showdown, Transformers
14% Skydiving shootout, Shoot ’Em Up
13% Bowling alley blowout, There Will Be Blood
Most overrated
 Jive-talking Juno finally gets the backlash we all knew was coming, with a certain critically lauded culinary rodent close behind.
25% Juno
24% Ratatouille
23% Michael Clayton
21% I’m Not There
7% Eastern Promises
Least necessary threequel
It truly was the season of the threeson this year. The limp Ocean’s non-heist gets the unnecessary award, although not many were thrilled by Resident Evil’s third outing, apparently.
26% Ocean’s 13
24% Resident Evil: Extinction
18% Shrek the Third
17% Spider-Man 3
15% Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Best sex scene
With Knocked Up’s drunkenness, flailing limbs and condom mishaps, were Mirror readers voting for the best celluloid coitus, or simply the scene that hit most close to home? A very small, very creepy subset voted for the manimal love of bestiality doc Zoo.
37% Knocked Up
30% Lust, Caution
19% Superbad
13% We Own the Night
1% Zoo
Turkey of the year
The film that may have cost Eddie Murphy his Showgirls Oscar is the overwhelming “favourite” here, followed by the just plain gross antics of the doll-inspired Bratz teens.
30% Norbit
24% Bratz
18% Wild Hogs
16% Mr. Woodcock
12% Hannibal
And now for the real Oscars...
Congratulations to Dominique Lefebvre for guessing each one of the major Oscar categories (Best Picture, Best Director and all the acting categories) correctly. Dominique wins a double pass for every Sony Pictures Releasing film hitting screens through the end of December 2008. That’s pretty sweet. Of the contestants to only get one category wrong, we’ve randomly selected George Ping Sun Lee and Geneviève Bouchard as our second and third-place winners, respectively. Mr. Lee gets 15 DVDs from Alliance Vivafilm and Ms. Bouchard takes home a $100 gift certificate for Barbie’s Bar and Grill.
But now for the real lucky contestant. Kate Hutchison, you were one of the few souls to pick none of the winners correctly, and after a random selection, we can announce that you are the winner of the second-ever Montreal Mirror Alternative Academy Awards Lucky Loser Booby Prize Bonanza! You receive a prize pack consisting of the original Transformers: The Movie soundtrack and these very fine DVDs: Underdog (“A flying, talking canine caped crusader!”), John Wayne’s Tribute to America (“A patriotic and poignant journey through American history”), Scorpion (“It’s not about being in a club, it’s about surviving until the end of the fight”), Home Improvement: The Complete Seventh Season (“Critically acclaimed”), The Real Ghostbusters: Creatures of the Night (“A ghost gets trapped in a pot of molten steel!”) and That’s So Raven: Raven’s Makeover Madness (“It’s fun, it’s fashionable, it’s sooooo Raven!”).
Ballots compiled by Jeffrey Malecki, pithy-ish commentary by Mark Slutsky
|
