MTV Movie Awards: Most Relevant Awards Ever

Tonight, Live at 9:00 pm EST we'll all get to watch the greatest Award Show ever conceived, the MTV Movie Awards. Clearly superior to the Oscars, Golden Globes or the Crying Monkeys, the MTV Movie Awards award mostly excellence in getting popular. It's pretty insane. What I like best is that in ten, twenty years time, there's a chance the Academy Awards results tell us what our genuine best films and actors were, but only the MTV Movie Awards will tell us what idiots thought our best films and actors were. Just look at these nominees.

It kind of baffles the mind. I mean, when the best actor in your Best Male Performance Category might actually be Channing Tatum, we've got some issues. I feel like the nominees are chosen by some MTV intern skimming BoxOfficeMojo for the past year's worth of biggest grossers, then picking everyone from there. At least in 2009 Slumdog Millionaire (2008) got a nomination, even if it were a heavy underdog to The Dark Knight (2008) (although Twilight [2008] beat them all). But complaints about nominees in this case should be obvious. There are a few things about the awards that I actually enjoy without irony:

First is the categories themselves. Though the nominees may be shit, classics like Best Kiss and Best Fight are cool to see acknowledged in a big awards show (ambiguity in determining what a "Best Kiss" means aside). They also switch around award categories, for good or ill. It doesn't build up a lot of tradition (what does this generation know about tradition anyway?), but it keeps things that could get stale (Best Summer Movie So Far? Seriously?) pretty fresh. As an alternative to stiff Award Ceremonies, The MTV Movie Awards can be pretty pleasant.

It's also been the source of some great parodies in the past decade. These two from 2002 are awesome, in fact I think the latter is better than Panic Room (2002). There is also hardly a better criticism for the insane dialogue of Revenge of the Sith (2005) than this, one of only two or three funny things that Jimmy Fallon has ever done:



Ho ho ho. So basically I guess what we've boiled down to is possibly interesting award categories and maybe a good spoof. Well, that's not really worth watching, but the show used to have a good history of hilarity. The show works best when celebrities use it as a platform for their own little sketches or jokes that have no other place (although now the Internet is largely that place). A guy like Jim Carrey at the peak of his career dressing up and delivering one of the greatest acceptance speeches of all time is not really Oscar Fodder. But it works here:



Of course, it goes without saying that we haven't seen anything of this caliber at the Awards show for a long time. The Tropic Thunder (2008) promotion comes pretty close, but you kind of get the feeling that this somehow exists in a pre-Twilight time, a time we may never get back to. As MTV itself shifted its demographics, so did its credentials as a cool place for Hollywood Stars to joke around. The MTV Movie Awards was always that outlet. I'm afraid that while we might be in store for some good goofiness tonight, it's likely to be the same crap we've seen churned out of this station and our culture the past two years.

The only thing redemptive of this year's ceremony is host Aziz Ansari, who has an uncanny knack of making fun of pop zeitgeist while simultaneously reveling in it. A series of promotions that have come out the past couple weeks also hints at something that could be pretty awesome, including a great bit of Les Grossman screaming at Robert Pattinson. It's actually interesting to see both these actors playing against type. Also this is the only pretty good Hurt Locker (2008) spoof I've seen:

MTV Shows

Outrageous. Again, this is the most zeitgeist-filled clip I've seen in a while. Go vote for your shit here.

Here's to Hawkeye.