The title of World's Greatest Living Singing Actress isn't a simple one to bestow. You might well think that Zooey Deschanel could make a rightful claim to the crown: Not only is she four albums deep with She & Him, her collabo with respected folkster M. Ward, but those albums were put out by freakin' Merge Records, which is really, very, quite indie-rock of her. I mean, there might actually be people out there who don't even know that the chick with the bangs from She & Him has a day job, and who else is bringing that kind of cred to the Singing Actress game? But, see, then you'd be overvaluing the Singing side of things. Right now Zooey Deschanel is part of an ensemble cast on one of the best shows on TV; she does a very good job, but is regularly, just about on a weekly basis, outshone by her cast mates. The Singing credibility is therefore mitigated by the lack of Actor star power (why, yes, this whole thing does hinge on quite a delicate, mysterious formula), which then opens the door for Scarlett Johansson — the one true beholder of the title World's Greatest Living Singing Actress.
Holy Effing Ess!!! It is only four days until the 2012 Golden Raspberry nominations are released in Hollywood, California! Even as we write, Head RAZZberry John Wilson is collecting ballots (including our own!) and tallying votes for the world’s greatest and most important awards show. You know what that means: It’s time for our final predictions.
A lot has changed since we made our first forecast way back in July. Back then we had a bottom five of The Hangover Part II, Jack and Jill, Real Steel, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1, and Zookeeper — but at that point, only two of those movies had even come out. How many of those stinkers made it into our final predictions? Read on and see!
What do Stanley Kubrick, John Huston, Sylvester Stallone, and Prince have in common? They’ve all been nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director! The Razzies have always prided themselves on nominating a mix of directors for the industry’s biggest prize. Sure, actors (Kevin Costner, Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy) who step behind the camera are always favorites. But the Razzies voters seem to enjoy taking auteurs and top-notch pros down a peg, as well; by RazzieWatch’s count, 14 directors have been nominated for the Oscar for Best Director and the Razzie for Worst Director.
In predicting who might be nominated for Worst Actor, first you have to ask: What does the Golden Raspberry look for in its leading men? It’s a question that drives Razzie gurus crazy. Sometimes the winners of the Worst Actor award are megastars like Eddie Murphy, John Travolta, and Adam Sandler. Sometimes the winners barely qualify as actors at all: the Jonas Brothers, George W. Bush, Roberto Benigni.
Occasionally, an actor will dominate an era, as Kevin Costner did the 1990s, a decade in which he was nominated six times (and won three Razzies). But sometimes an actor will leap from obscurity with a performance for the ages, as Tom Green did when he won the Razzie for Freddy Got Fingered in 2001. (He’s still the only Worst Actor winner to accept his award in person at the ceremony.)
It seemed like a sure bet: put Paul Blart star Kevin James in a movie full of celebrity-voiced zoo animals, crank up the air conditioning, and let the money roll in. But in its first weekend, Zookeeper opened to a measly $21 million, barely meeting its studio's lowered-expectations and finishing in third place behind an R-rated comedy starring Kevin Spacey. What happened? Was it the clumsy marketing? A bad release date? Crappy reviews? Maybe. Our best guess, though? The animals were too big.
It’s hard to believe 2011 is already half gone! It seems like just yesterday that the cold of winter had descended upon us as we celebrated The Last Airbender and its five Razzie wins. But now we’ve finished off our Fourth of July hot dogs and legally purchased fireworks, and just as all the finest Oscar blogs are rolling out their early-bird 2011 predictions, so too is it time for RazzieWatch to step out on a limb and make some bold guesses. Which films will achieve Razzie glory come January 23?
In the coming weeks we’ll predict the acting awards and other categories. But today we'll start with the big kahuna: Worst Picture!
That’s right: For veteran bad-movie watchers like us, the biennial arrival of Bay Day is as good as Christmas. Whenever gleefully profane auteur Michael Bay sets another bombastic crapterpiece loose on the American public, we know what we’re in for: gigantic explosions, gleaming machines, perfect asses, great actors delivering terrible dialogue, sweat glistening on the brows of he-men whose chiseled perfection is rivaled only by that of the master, Bay himself.
It’s June, which means that Hollywood is readying another buffet of crap. Endless superhero sagas, pointless remakes, a third Transformers movie — 2011 just might be the worst summer movie season ever. But a lousy summer for movie-watchers is a great summer for Razzie-watchers, because everyone knows that summer is Razzie season.
The Razzies, of course, are the coveted Golden Raspberry awards, the brainchild of Los Angeles PR man John Wilson, who turned an Oscar-party roast of bad movies into a 30-year cottage industry celebrating the worst Tinseltown has to offer. The Razzies (dis)honor Hollywood the day before the Academy Awards in a ceremony that has even occasionally attracted some star power. (Two years ago Sandra Bullock accepted her Worst Actress Razzie for All About Steve in person, her good sportsmanship aided, no doubt, by the fact that she was a lock to win an Oscar for The Blind Side the next day.)
