Okay, people! As I suggested as part of the #fucktherazzies initiative, I plan on running alternative film awards this year. In a nutshell, the Sparklies will be awards dedicated to celebrating the films that fill our hearts with joy and make our souls that bit lighter. I would like to propose the following categories, and I explain the kind of factors you should be basing your picks on below:
1. Best Picture
In this context, ‘best’ means your favourites. So we’re talking about the films that fired your imagination, the films that delighted and inspired you. Your picks should be those movies that you could go back to over and over again without tiring of them. They should leave you wanting to return to them, and each new viewing should remind you why you came to love it in the first place.
2. Best Moment
This is the scene – or perhaps even the shot – you want to endlessly re-blog in gif form. The scene that leaves a lump in your throat, makes you cheer aloud or sends chills down your spine. It can be any kind of moment – it just needs to have left a serious impact, becoming a defining moment in the film that you always find yourself going back to.
3. Best Heroic Performance
This one’s pretty self-explanatory – nominate your favourite heroines and heroes. The actor should be able to sell you on their character and their heroism, making you buy into their journey and root for them to succeed.
4. Best Villainous Performance
It’s what it says on the tin! I want to see all of your favourites baddies nominated – they can be subtle and calculating, or hysterical and exaggerated. The type of performance doesn’t matter as long as the actor goes all in and commits. You should be nominating performances that delight and amuse as much as they inspire terror.
5. Best Double Act
‘Double act’ basically means any two characters sharing a significant amount of screentime and bouncing off each other in a delightful way. Double acts can be traditional romantic pairings, straight-up bromances or anything in between – they just need to have a fun relationship that you loved watching play out on screen.
6. Best Visuals
This is essentially a mash-up of the cinematography, VFX, costume design and production design categories. What we’re looking for here are beautiful films, films that take advantage of the vast canvas offered by the cinema screen to present exquisite and carefully constructed environments that transport us to other places, times and worlds.
n.b. All nominees must be films that were released theatrically in the United States in 2015.
While there will, of course, be bias when it comes to these ‘awards’ because this is a flag-waving Jupiter Ascending fan account, I still absolutely think it’s worth running them and I can’t wait to see the nominations that you all come up with! I will attempt to be as democratic as I can when it comes to putting together the nominations lists, and will – wherever possible – select the candidates that voters get behind. The more people participate, the more democratic the selection of the nominees will be.
That means that it’s up to YOU lot to decide who/what you want the nominees to be. You can let me know your picks in one of two ways:
1. By re-blogging this post and adding your nominees.
1. Please only send me your nomination picks once, to avoid double counting.
2. You may put forward up to five nominations per category (if you can’t come up with five picks per category, just name however many you can come up with. To participate, you must be able to nominate at least two different films per category).
3. You must have let me know your picks by Saturday 23rd January, as that’s when the official nominees will be ‘announced’ and rolled out for the voting to begin.
Right, I hope you all find the prospect of this as fun and exciting as I do! I’m really looking forward to running this, and think it should be a great way of celebrating the films that typically get completely ignored (or even derided, as in the case of poor Jupiter Ascending) come awards time – in that sense, it’s as much an antidote to the Oscars as it is an antidote to the Razzies.
Please note that while I’m tagging a number of films, by no means should your picks be limited to the names I’m tagging – I’m tagging various popular 2015 films purely to help get the word out there, since as much as I love my Jupiter Ascending fandom I do want fans of other films to get involved and participate as well.
With all that done and out of the way, there’s not much else to say other than I hope you all take part and help to spread the word about the first-ever Sparklie Film Awards! If there are any other categories people are dying to see, let me know and I’ll consider making an addendum post asking people to nominate for them too.
Oooh this looks fun.
(Even though I don’t really see that many films, alas.)
1. Best Picture -Mad Max: Fury Road -The Martian -The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part 2 -Star Wars: The Force Awakens -Jupiter Ascending
2. Best Moment -BB8 gives the thumbs up to Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens -Nux’s death in Mad Max: Fury Road -Jupiter’s “I’m going to make sure that whatever you do to my family, you’re not able to do to anyone else” in Jupiter Ascending -The black tar pit scene in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -The Helicarrier arriving in Avengers: Age of Ultron
3. Best Heroic Performance -John Boyega as Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens -Daisy Ridley as Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens -Carrie Fisher as Leia in Star Wars: The Force Awakens -Charlize Theron as Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road -Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron
4. Best Villainous Performance -Adam Driver as Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Force Awakens -Hugh Keays-Byrne as Immortan Joe in Mad Max: Fury Road
5. Best Double Act -Max and Furiosa (Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron) in Mad Max: Fury Road -Nux and Capable (Nicholas Hoult and Riley Keough) in Mad Max: Fury Road -Joy and Sadness (Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith) in Inside Out -Susan and Nancy (Melissa McCarthy and Miranda Hart) in Spy -Finn and Rey (John Boyega and Daisy Ridley) in Star Wars: The Force Awakens
6. Best Visuals -Mad Max: Fury Road -Star Wars: The Force Awakens -Jupiter Ascending -Inside Out
