REVIEW: 2011 Critic's Choice Movie Awards - The Cultute of Pop, DVD, Movie, TV, Pop Culture Review

REVIEW: 2011 Critic's Choice Movie Awards

Posted: Tue, 25 Jan 2011 0:14:03 PST

SOCIAL NETWORK TAKES 5 AWARDS,

FIRTH, PORTMAN ALSO HONORED

 

PROLOGUE

Editor's Note: While going thru my writing folder, I noticed that I had not posted this overview/review of the Critic's Choice Movie Awards, held the weekend before the Golden Globes. In a way, it's kind of like the lost, forgotten or abandoned awards show, sandwiched in between the Hollywood Foreign Press' yearly gathering and the People's Choice Awards...not to mention the fact that it's on a cable channel that only plays the likes of Grease, Rocky and Cribs marathons...sometimes up to 78 times a month.

So since I have a soft spot in my heart for orphans, I belatedly, but proudly present a look back at the 2011 Critic's Choice Movie Awards.

MAIN ARTICLE

It doesn't rank as a prestige event like the Oscars, but the Critic's Choice Movie Awards has grown into a rather respectable television event over the years with a little help from VH-1. No, not star studded as the Golden Globes, but a little wine flows freely about, making it sort of a loosey goosey warm up to that soiree, just one day away on this occasion,

Though predictable, the 16^th annual edition of kudos served by broadcast film critics offered up a fun two hours of stars 'n' fashion gawking, some decent speeches and even some better than usual musical entertainment courtesy of house band Maroon 5. But if only the increasingly hit and miss traditional film parody pieces hadn't been mostly....blech...

Speaking of which, this is where we go off the red carpet...and come in.

Deception (Inception parody): I admit my dislike of the Jackass style of humor colors my opinion of the three pieces Johnny Knoxville and company did for the program...and minus the obligatory pain props, their Godawful acting makes the cast of an Ed Wood movie look positively Shakespearean..In fairness, the special effects were pretty cool...too bad the likes of Industrial Light And Magic can't auto tune horrible acting.

The Schwarzenegger Formerly Known As Governator-Yeah, the lines may have been corny, but as a fan, it was cool to see Arnie back in witticism mode, particularly his line on wishing he could have been cast as the title character in The King's Speech (now THAT would've been a hell of a parody to kick the night off...take note, future award show writers).

Now, let's give out some awards, with this trophy looking like a bad meshing of the People's Choice award and that crystal football thingy they give to college football teams following the national championship game...But hey, like Christmas presents from your ill informed Aunt Flo who gives you awful smelling after shave year in, year out, it's the thought that counts.

Also, I'll throw in some jabs and commentary for no extra charge....

Best Ensemble, The Fighter-Good evening, Mark Wahlberg has the night off (i.e. he didn't show up) ... Cool to see long time character actor fave Jack McGee (Rescue Ne) getting a chance to accept an award...Not a bad thing surrounded by the likes of Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Melissa Leo...and again, the wonderful Mark Wahlberg who had the night off.

Emma Stone-May your red locks return with the coming of spring..But for now, I'd give anything to cast you in a Joan Blondell-esque role for a retro-screwball comedy.

Hailee Steinfeld-Winner, Best Performance By A Young Performer: True Grit:

Beyond cutie patootie. Based on the clips I've seen from the Cohen Brothers reboot of True Grit, this young lady has great promise ahead of her...as long as she stays the hell away from Lindsay Lohan.

Eva Mendes-The Raquel Welch of the new millennium, I'll tell you..

Christian Bale-Best Supporting Actor: The Fighter: No need to ride the specially designed 1 minute delay tonight, Bernie; Batbale was on his best behavior delivering a quite generous speech. I think he thanked the equivalent of a small town...but the highlight had to be his mention of The Fighter's real life Alice who has something in common with Congresswoman Gaby Giffords this week...After being declared dead, she too, is fighting back.

Best Action Movie: Inception-Nobody apparently came close in a pretty glum year for the genre.

Kim and Khloe Kardashian-Kim's lighter fluid hot as usual, but when did Khloe suddenly morph into Wynonna Judd?

Best Documentary Feature: Waiting For Superman-Highly controversial film, but one that should be shown to every educational system in this country until all problems (teacher salaries on up) are addressed and taken care of.

Best TV Movie-The Pacific: (Sardonic Johnny Carson Voice: Surprise)- Another awards show, another mantlepiece offering for Steven Spielberg's ever expanding kudos displays. Way to keep that speech short and sweet, Stevie...Backstage crew just loves ya. 

Joan Rivers and Silver Silverman-Funniest presenters of the night; no doubt they deviated from the script (e.g. Sarah proudly plugging Joan's documentary, A Piece of S***). Somebody get these two to pull off a Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road movie extravaganza..and have Justin Beiber in the re-gendered Dorothy Lamour role.End result? Goodbye Avatar's box office championship.

You're welcome in advance, Hollywood

Best Comedy: Easy A-Not such a surprise, but a bit of a one anyway. The public's loss for not recognizing a well reviewed comedy in a year that lacked well constructed laughs according to critics.

Sofia Vergaria-If that's even a fifth of how glamorous she's gonna look on Sunday, I'd better have my heart medicine ready...and oh yeah, Hank Azaria helped her present 

Best Animated Feature-Toy Story 3:Time to do my Carson voice again (Surprise...), but so well deserved...and the only film I had a chance to see last year. Best ever trilogy. Yep, even including the Indy and Star Wars franchises.

And now a quickie interlude with awards “presented earlier this evening”...the part of the show that thoroughly pisses off those enduring uncomfortable monkey suits and heel torture...for NOTHING!

Best Score-The Social Network

Foreign Film-Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Best Song From A Film -If I Rise (from 127 Hours)

Best Make Up--Alice In Wonderland

Best Costumes-Alice In Wonderland

Best Editing-Inception

Best Sound-Inception

Best Sound Effects-Inception

Best Art Direction-Get Him To The Greek...just kidding. Inception

You Know You're Getting Old(er) Moment-When the show's backstage announcer refers to the director of Pulp Fiction as “the legendary Quentin Tarrentino”...

Ice Cube-How perfect a presenter for Quentin than the Cube admonishing an schmoozing audience to sit your asses down...sounds like a line like QT might jot down...and what a memory inducing clip reel that makes me realize that many of the most memorable afternoons and evenings in a theater with his movies...and dare I say that not even the legendary Martin Scorsese has mixed music and visuals so effectively...(but he's VERY, very close...and he'll prolly end up with this award next year).

Big thumbs up to Maroon 5's Adam Levine for a killer acoustic take/tribute to Gerry Rafferty and Stealer's Wheel (Stuck In The Middle With You) along with Keri Hilson doing the memory of Dusty Springfield proud on the seminal Song Of A Preacher Man...

QT Gives “Head”-Another genuine QT speech delivered with fan boy passion and sincerity...and how about the mention of HEAD from my pre-teen faves The Monkees....and how cool was it of him to talk about sitting in his room with his records formulating scenes in his mind for that music to accompany them..

That's how dreams come true, kiddies, if you follow up those kind of dreams by actually FOLLOWING them, working hard to make them come true.

Best Supporting Actress-Melissa Leo, The Fighter: What a list of incredibly, widely hailed performances in this category...perhaps the best in many, many years...and the deserving Leo just vanished into the character based on the clips I've seen...and how lovely to see all her nominees applauding sincerely which is another testament to her performance...in other words, most times, nominees just come to these deals mainly for the food and mingling. So when you get a major round of applause and beaming faces at an event where people can't wait to stop sitting for 3 hours, anxious to party, you've accomplished something.

Best Adapted Screenplay-Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network: Anything with The West Wing creator's thumbprints on it wins an award 99 our of 100 times...and his speech also offered the general public one of the first instances of discovering Keven Spacey was one of the producers of this film.

Best Original Screenplay-The King's Speech, David Seidler: Congrats to David Seidler whom I couldn't find anything witty to say about. Which may be a good thing.

Black Swan Parody-Best of the three parodies...and I think Knoxville and his overgrown delinquents knew it had to be with the legendary Rip Taylor playing a role...gut bustingly funny as always,

Best Directot-David Fincher, The Social Network: Presented by a most likely still smarting Greg “There Goes The Kennedy Mini-Series Back End Profits” Kinnear only to find David Fincher not in attendance (he was probably hanging out with Mark Wahlberg)...

Matt Damon, Winner: The Joel Siegel Award-How funny was it to see Jimmy “I'm sorry we've run out of time” Kimmel co presenting the Joel Seigel Award to Matthew (along with Emily “Lose The Glasses, Please” Blunt)...and I was very proud to have him pay tribute to one of my favorite television personalities who wasn't just an excellent film reviewer, but a credit to the human race...and I don't think anyone who was ever touched by Joel Siegel has forgotten him.

Julianne Moore-Is it the lighting or has Juliane Moore's skin never met the sun save for exterior film shoots? But hey, if this keeps up, she'll never need plastic surgery or lipo.

Colin Firth, Winner: The King's Speech -Looks like this chap is on his way to a busy next month and a half...No one has a bad word to say about his performance or this film...Classy guy, classy speech. Good on 'im.

Kevin Spacey-God bless him for throwing a damn good Bill Clinton impersonation.. 

Best Actress: Natalie Portman, Black Swan-Same song, different verse...keep the designers and bedpans on stand-by for the next month, love.

Jane Fonda-If I were a more daring man, I would've stripped down to my skivvies backstage for her, too. Growl. Still gorgeous and sexy into her 70's. 

The Social Network, Winner: Best Picture-I think Columbia advertising execs would've bought a ton of Grey Goose had their film now won after the one minute commercial that aired earlier with the graphics “The Best Film OF The Year” plastered about 50 gazillion times throughout.

...and now the most awkward transition out of an awards show award goes to: The Critics Choice Movie Awards/VH-1! – What, no credits, no good nights, no slo-mo montage of the winners?

Oh, well. It was a fun two hours anyhow....

J.R.

Jeffrey Rosado is a pop culture historian, writer, performer, and all around nice guy until television producers cut crediting him and his hard working broadcast buddies at the end of a broadcast(eveniftheyrunveryveryfastwitthasstupidvh1promosplayingbesidethemallcribsmarathoncomingup next).......

Follow Jeff On Twitter: marquee_man