MTV Movie Award nominees: hip or hype?

I have to admit that I usually love the MTV Movie Awards,mainly due to the mock serious way they celebrate film like catagories like Best Fight,Best Kiss and this year,Best Frightened Performance(which should go to anyone doing an interview with Tom Cruise at this point). They're also best known for having cool hosts,such as Chris Rock,Ben Stiller and Jack Black with Sarah Michelle Geller. Jessica Alba is this year's host which makes sense,given that she's in most of the nominated films and will draw in a huge male audience,many of whom will place bets on whether she'll be clad in her Sin City cowgirl stripper duds.

You can argue about the crass commericalism of it but then again,that's sort of the point here. True,the MTV movie awards started off as more of a joke,with great parodies(one of the best ones was the Carol & Greg Brady reenactment of Basic Instinct's classic interrogation scene)and tributes to such film greats as Chewbacca and Jason from the Friday the 13th series. Nowadays,it's abit more streamlined and studio friendly but still fun.



For one thing,some of these nominees are hard to choose from. In the Best Villian slot,we have Cillian Murphy,Ralph Finnes,Tilda Swinton,Tobin Bell and Hayden Christenson. Putting HC aside(he should be up for Best Wuss,IMO),the other four gave some pretty sweet onscreen performances. I caught up with the Chronicles of Narnia on DVD and Tilda was totally badass,especially in the battlefield scenes where she did this double sword action after her wand was destroyed. The woman could've given Beatrix Kiddo a run for her money,I swear! I wound up voting for Tobin Bell-he really makes the Saw films soar with his downplayed but electric antics.



Another good thing about the Movie Awards is the online voting;unlike other awards shows that pretend it's not a popularity contest,MTV doesn't shy away from that notion one little bit. They're not the most subtle of programmers after all,with shows like Yo Mamma,Pimp My Ride,My Super Sweet 16 and Date my Mom on their roster.





The Movie awards also highlight alot of movies that get ignored by the major honorariums but did deserve to be acknowledged-granted,some of the picks were Oscar contenders(Brokeback Mountain,Walk the Line)but up for Best Movie are the likes of Sin City,The 40 Year Old Virgin and Batman Begins,which recieved many positive reviews and big box office. Then again,Wedding Crashers and King Kong are up for that,too(I didn't see either one of them and will probaly not do so,unless I'm that bored out of my skull that the choices are down to:pound my head against the wall or see WC/KK). Atleast we know that if something like House of Wax or the Dukes of Hazzard get an award,it's due to overt fanboy rallying and not some pretenious notion about making a social statement-"Crash",anyone?




If you like them or you can lump'em,the MTV Movie awards show is usually somewhat entertaining and the acceptance speeches are actually worth listening to,so come this June,I'll be watching with a bowl of popcorn and some snark on the side. Hopefully,Steve Carell will be there(he's got several noms)because between this movie and The Office,I'm getting to be a devotee of his,not to mention that the ad slogan for 40 YOV"Better late than never" certainly applies here.