2014 Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards
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SLIP-ME-A-MICKEY AWARDS
The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are a tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year. Again, the qualifying rules are simple, I just had to have seen the film for it to be eligible. This means that at one point I had an interest in the film, and put the effort in to see it, which may explain why I am so angry about it being awful. So any vitriol I may spew during this awards presentation shouldn't be taken personally by the people mentioned, it is really anger at myself for getting duped into watching.
The prizes are also pretty simple. The winners/losers receive nothing but my temporary scorn. If you are a winner/loser don't fret, because this years Slip-A-Mickey™® loser/winner could always be next years Mickey™® winner!! Remember…you are only as good as your last film!!
Now…onto the awards!!
WORST FILM
The nominees are….
Noah : I had very high hopes for Noah. The films director, Darren Aronofsky, is one of my favorite directors. The films star, Russell Crowe, is one of my favorite actors. I figured with the two of these men involved, Noah would be a success. I could not have been more wrong. Noah is an absolute atrocity of a film. I do not know how it is possible, but somehow, they spent $200 million to make this film and yet it looks unconscionably cheap. There are these 'fallen angels' characters called The Watchers in the film, which are really nothing but talking rocks, and they look like something that was discarded from a "Land of the Lost" episode from the mid-70's. We are supposed to have some sort of emotional connection with one of these rocks, the problem of course is…IT'S A ROCK. Also, not to be a "rockist", but all the rocks look the same. I haven't even gotten into how they distorted the story of Noah from the bible for no apparent reason at all other than they just felt like it. This was a weird, useless, and awful film. How they were able to screw up one of the slam dunk stories of all time is beyond me. Awful, brutal, atrocious. This movie was so bad that I was unable to write a review of it. I just could not put words to my loathing.
Transcendence : Oh dear, oh dear…Transcendence. Let's start with the…positive?This movie had a whole bunch of interesting ideas that I am all into. The singularity + the evolution of man + the creation of gods + technology run amok = I am on board. Throw in a pretty stellar cast, which includes Johnny Depp and I am in line for tickets. Well, I went and saw this in the theaters. This movie brings up all sorts of questions involving my equation above, but then it just drops them for no apparent reason and wanders around the desert waiting to die of dehydration or disinterest, whichever comes first. Disinterest comes first. A total waste of a film. And not only did it blow, it looked really awful. A criminally boring and utterly moronic film. I saw this film a week or so after I saw Noah last April…I was so scarred by that doubly horrific experience I have been rendered completely unable to write a single word about either film until now.
Gone Girl : What frightens me most about Gone Girl…is that there are people out there who loved it. What is wrong with people? This film is an unadulterated disaster area. I am a huge David Fincher fan, love his work, but this movie is just horrendously terrible. I would rather smash myself in the face with a hammer than watch this movie again. See my review here. Gone Girl .
Godzilla : I love Godzilla. As a kid, Godzilla and Planet of the Apes were my things. I am always on board with Godzilla. I will watch any piece of crap Godzilla movie no matter how absurd and poorly made just because I love Godzilla. You know why I hated this Godzilla movie? Because Godzilla is barely in it. If you are gonna title your film Godzilla, you better make damn sure that Godzilla gets a whole lot of screen time. There is nothing worse than a Godzilla tease. What a piece of crap. I pray Godzilla rises from the depths of the Pacific to kill us all so we don't have to watch the sequel to this dog. My full review is here. Godzilla .
And the loser is…NOAH. What a pile of steaming poop. This movie was so bad I was praying for God to flood the earth as I sat in the theatre because I would rather have all of humanity drowned than watched another moment of this movie. Sadly, both God…and Darren Aronofsky let me down.
WORST PERFROMANCE OF THE YEAR
Baby - American Sniper : There have been articles written about this fake baby. I find the whole thing hysterically funny. But here is the thing…this fake baby incident is symbolic of what is wrong with the film. The reason they used a stupid doll is because the baby they had lined up was sick, and the backup baby never showed. So…in order to stay on schedule and budget…they just shot it with a doll. So it was more important to Clint Eastwood to "get it done" than it was to "get it done RIGHT". And hence we have the overwhelming problem with American Sniper and it's very bad acting, it's very bad cinematography, and it being a really rushed and cheap looking film. Regardless…congrats to fake baby for doing an awful job!! But just between me and you Fake Baby, you were more lifelike than most of the actual human actors in the film.
MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR
Boyhood : Here is the thing, ever since Boyhood came out, all I have heard from critics and the like is how it is so truly amazing. They say over and over that Boyhood is such "a glorious and intimate portrait". Hogwash. It is none of those things. Boyhood is getting praise only because it was shot over twelve years…which, admittedly, is quite an achievement. I mean, it is hard to shoot a film over twelve weeks, never mind twelve years. But here is the problem…even if it was shot over twelve years…it still has to be good, right? The problem with Boyhood is...that the movie is just not good. There is actually no story there. The main character never responds or reacts to anything that happens in his life. Nothing ever really actually happens in the whole movie. The acting is also…and lets be honest…not good. I love Patricia Arquette, I really do, she is one of my favorite actresses, but not only does she not deserve awards consideration, she is actually distractingly bad in the movie. Same with the two kids…sorry to say that…I mean they are, or were, kids after all, but they seem to get progressivley worse at acting as the years went by. Ethan Hawke is the only actor who fares well and I think that is because he is so comfortable in front of Linklater's camera and with his style of work. I am a fan of Linklater, I really like most of his films, but at the end of the day Boyhood is nothing more than a 'novelty' or a 'gimmick' or a 'parlor trick' due to it's extended twelve year shoot. However you describe Boyhood, you cannot describe it as a good movie. That is my Boyhood rant!!
P.O.S. HALL OF FAME
The inductees are….
Bill Cosby : A bunch of years ago I saw Bill Cosby on some talk show telling kids to stop acting like fools and pull your pants up etc. It didn't really register with me since I wear my pants at the 'correct' level around my waist. But what did bother me was that Cosby was preaching to people without giving the slightest nod to his own checkered past. I am not talking about these current rape allegations, or should I say current allegations of past rapes, but rather the well known fact that he had a cheated on his wife and had an illegitimate child with the woman. I found it strange because I thought he would be more credible and more effective if his approach was to say , "hey, I've done dumb things, we all have…but you can turn it around and make better decisions". Cosby's approach was the exact opposite of that. It seemed so strange to me that Cosby was telling people how awful and stupid they were while never acknowledging his own faults which were public knowledge!! It was like he was so willfully blind to his own transgressions that he assumed everyone else was blind too. Then all of these rape allegations came out and I thought…hmmm…Cosby really is as big a self-absorbed, delusional asshole as I thought he was back then. So…since Cosby has not been found guilty of anything, I cannot officially call him a rapist…but I can induct him into the Piece of Shit Hall of Fame. Congrats Bill…you gigantic piece of shit. And yes, it is purely coincidental that Bill Cosby is mentioned for the first time on my blog in a posting about the "Slip-Me-A Mickey" awards.
Stephen Collins : It is the height of irony that Stephen Collins came to fame playing a pure as the driven snow preacher on "Seventh Heaven". Now he has been caught on tape confessing to molesting underage girls. Reverend Camden has got some serious 'splainin' to do. Stephen Collins strikes me as someone who created a character in order to balance out his psyche. Reverend Camden was so thoroughly good, a spiritual and soulful man, because deep down Stephen Collins was so very bad, with a malignant cancer eating away at his tortured soul. Just more proof that nothing is ever really what it appears to be. So…a tip of the cap and a firm extension of the middle finger to Stephen Collins for his induction into the Piece of Shit Hall of Fame. You are in good company, you useless piece of shit.
Thus ends the first annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards!! To the winner/losers…don't take it personally…and hope I don't see you again next year!! To my readers…thanks for tuning in…see you again next year!!
In case you missed all the merriment at the actual Mickey™® awards…click here to find all the nominees and winners…THE MICKEY™® AWARDS