Monday, June 7, 2010

MTV Movie Awards

The MTV Movie Awards are basically a waste of time and the worse big budget mainstream films get, the worse these awards get. I won't deny it; when I was an adolescent I used to find them fun but that was when movies were fun and stars were made such because they had talent and personality and things like that. Today's stars seem mostly to be kids involved in trends whose careers will die the moment their current franchise runs out. Nevertheless, Julian Stark from Movies and Other Things has been writing about the awards for some time now (sh'`s efficient like that), covering nominees, predicting winners (as if these awards, voted on by the fans, actually honour the true `best`of anything) and so forth. You can even check out her post-show coverage which is more in depth than it really needs to be. So, maybe because Jillian had them on my mind or maybe because nothing else was on, I watched the show. Here's a few notes on it:
  • The entire pre-show was basically an hour long ad for season two of Jersey Shore as all the cast members show up on the red carpet in limos (reminding me of Seth Meyers` joke on Weekend Update that all you need these days to be considered a celebrity is a pulse). Then the fat annoying one named Snooki co-hosts the event, which ends with a ten minute preview of the upcoming season. It's further proof of MTV`s desire to push popular culture as low as it possibly can before it disappears entirely.
  • Tom Cruise was funny in Tropic Thunder. He wasn't here playing the same character.
  • Host Aziz Ansari is not funny. Not in the least. I have no idea if he wrote any of this material or not but man was it painful. This guy is just a further signal of how stupid, witless and meaningless contemporary stand-up comedy is becoming. Remember when Chris Rock used to host MTV award shows? He was hilarious.
  • Speaking of Chris Rock, he seems to be the only of his four Grown Ups co-stars who knows that their award presentation speech isn't funny. Rob Schneider seems optimistic about it though.
  • P Diddy gets one of the show`s biggest and only laughs alongside Get Him to the Greek co-stars Jonah Hill and Russell Brand. Too bad it comes after the most tasteless as Hill compares the feud between Jacob-loving Twilight fans and Edward-loving Twilight fans to the war between Israel and Palestine. Real classy boys.
  • Katy Perry's songs have a way of getting under your skin. Props to her for actually singing as well.
  • Christina Aguilera is America`s best cover artist. Here's a girl who can actually sing but only pops up every couple of years when there is a trend to latch on to. First she thought she was Britany, then she thought she was black, then she thought she was Marilyn Monro and now she thinks she is Lady Gaga. My hopes of her ever doing something that is an honest reflection of herself quickly evaporates every time she releases a new album.
  • Amanda Seyfried won an award for Jennifer's Body. I didn`t think more than ten people saw that.
  • Rain won for Ninja Assassin. See above.
  • There`s more I could say but I don`t really care anymore. The show was pathetic. New Moon basically won everything to no one`s surprise; nothing was really funny or clever and the only person who actually won an award that was deserved on some sort of serious level was Anna Kendrick for Up in the Air. Until next year.

    9 comments:

    1. If the Oscars skew to far to the safe and calcified, MTV goes to the most shallow and faddish...this week. Can anyone take them seriously? At ALL? It's just an excuse to have a bunch of "stars" at a party for the punters to watch--a crass knock-off of the already crass Oscars. Watching MTV for me, anyway, is like a death of a Thousand Flesh-wounds. Amanda Seyfreid wins for "Jennifer's Body" and not for, say, "Chloe?" A-mazing.

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    2. The value of the MTV awards is that they are voted for by the people so they are an interesting measure of how shallow contemporary tastes are within a given year. I think that Transformers gets next to no nominations is a good sign. The whole Twilight thing though, well, the future still looks bleak with it around.

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    3. Just thinking about the fact that Kristen Stewart won an award for her "acting" makes me want to vomit all over my keyboard.

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    4. I understand that the show is not as professional or realistic as the Oscars. But I understand that, and just watched it for a good time. I didn't agree with any of the wins, but still the comedy bits were fun, and I enjoyed a lot of the curses that went uncensored.

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    5. James- I'm neither a Stewart lover or hater. I hate how she signed on for a franchise that everyone knew was going to be huge and then constantly complains about how she has no privacy and her life sucks blah blah blah. Deal with it. However, she has done good work outside of Twilight like in In the Land of Women or The Cake Eaters.

      CM- I agree with you that they are just for fun, but really, they should be a lot funner than they were. I think the more they concentrate on getting people like the Hills girls and the Jersey Shore people into them, the less they are appealing to respectable actors. Like, where's Jack Black, John C. Reily, Jim Carey, Mike Meyers, all the people who have made this awards so show entertaining in the past. Even Zak Galafanakis didn't show up, and he won an award.

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    6. I think Ansari is kind of amusing in doses. Chris Rock seems to be the only one of the Grown Up cast self-aware at all. Sandra Bullock is charming, I must admit. I saw Jennifer's Body and Ninja Assassin. You all know I dig Rain for the simple association with I'm A Cyborg, But That's OK. I still think of Robert Pattinson as Art from How to Be, so I don't really hate him. Ditto for Kristen Stewart in Catch That Kid. Russell Brand and Katy Perry, for all their (ahem) weirdness, do make a cute couple. Christina Aguilera is, like, super classy. That's why she had a vajeweled GaGa bathing suit. Duh.

      Those were my thoughts.

      Oh, right. Tom Cruise strikes me as desperate to win favor with the public.

      Done.

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    7. @ Mike, I haven't seen either of those. Maybe she's just been hindered by bad writing in the few films I've seen her in. But in Adventureland and Twilight pretty much all she does is stand around glowering at the camera.

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    8. And can you imagine they are going to make a Les Grossman movie when Anchorman 2 can't even get a greenlight?

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    9. I have no heard of this and kind of wish I hadn't.

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