Cinemarati Awards Begin Their Countdown Today
Not another critics' group awards? Yup. Cinemarati, an organization that I helped found back in 2000, will begin to announce its seventh annual awards today.
That's right: I said "begin to announce."
See, unlike other critics' groups, who just dump the names of their winners out in the world, Cinemarati has always dealt with bestowing yearly honors in a fresher way. One of the things Cinemarati has striven to do is engage movie lovers in conversation about movies -- Cinemarati has never been about speaking cinematic "truth" from on high or handing down critical wisdom to the lowly moviegoing masses. So we've been approaching awards from a variety of nontraditional angles. Some years, we let our readers participate in our awards lobbying, allowing them to suggest which films and performances and so on were worthy of notice, and letting them argue for their favorites. In other years, we ran a playoff-style voting system that happened right out in public, so that everyone could see how each round of voting played out.
For the last several years, Cinemarati has voted in private but then treated the revelation of winners like -- ironically enough for a newfangled, web-only organization -- an old-fashioned awards show. In order to create a little suspense, we don't name all our winners all at once. Here's what'll happen this year:
On Friday, January 19th, we'll start counting down our top 20 films of the year, starting with #20 and #19. We'll name two more films on each of the next 9 days, ending with #2 and #1 on January 28th. Some days will also feature the naming of other awards -- Best Cinematography, Best Supporting Actor, Best Screenplay, and so on. You won't find any simple lists here; you'll also get an explanation of why we chose each honoree, and for some films, you'll even see a dissent by a Cinemarati member critic who doesn't think the film deserves top-20 honors. And we welcome open discussion about each choice, so come and join the conversation.
Want a tease? Cinemarati's #20 Best Film is Volver, and #19 is Dreamgirls. The rest you'll have to wait for. It's all way more fun than the National Board of Review's awards.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
MaryAnn Johanson
minder of FlickFilosopher.com
