Straight off of the bat, I'm going to go ahead and say that I love Martin Scorsese. The man is a film genius. Goodfellas, Casino, and The Departed are three of my favorite movies.
Now onto Hugo, the cute, young tale of an orphan boy who takes a wild adventure through Paris and the golden age of film. I saw it in 3D with my parents. It was just precious.
It was not worthy of a nomination for Best Picture.
I'm not going to argue about all of the other awards it's honored for because frankly, that is much more technical than I feel the need to be. Let's just look at the Best Picture field for a sec:
Midnight in Paris (2011): Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum
War Horse (2011): Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy
As you can tell, there are some questionable choices (cough cough War Horse cough cough Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close cough cough). So maybe in this field, Hugo isn't such a stretch.
But at the same time...why? What does Hugo achieve to make it better than all of the other films this year?
It appeals to older voters. It is a retrospective of the golden age of film. And when you think that these older voters grew up on the films Hugo references, you can see why it got a nomination. Same with The Artist (which I haven't seen, but it is a black and white silent film about sound coming into the industry).
Hugo, aside from this, is nothing spectacular. The plot is extremely ehh. No major moral inquisitions or themes. Just old movies. It's probably the reason neither 50/50, Shame, nor Drive got a nomination.
It's a sad day, indeed.
As you can tell, there are some questionable choices (cough cough War Horse cough cough Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close cough cough). So maybe in this field, Hugo isn't such a stretch.
But at the same time...why? What does Hugo achieve to make it better than all of the other films this year?
It appeals to older voters. It is a retrospective of the golden age of film. And when you think that these older voters grew up on the films Hugo references, you can see why it got a nomination. Same with The Artist (which I haven't seen, but it is a black and white silent film about sound coming into the industry).
Hugo, aside from this, is nothing spectacular. The plot is extremely ehh. No major moral inquisitions or themes. Just old movies. It's probably the reason neither 50/50, Shame, nor Drive got a nomination.
It's a sad day, indeed.
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