Oscars – as usual – snub genre titles

Well, it wasn’t too bad a night for the Oscars – at least they finally gave a statue to Martin Scorsese. Yet this victory hardly compensates for the continued snubbing of genre titles. In some ways, this year was not as bad as most – you could point to a few winners – but even so, the aversion to honoring fantasy, horror, and sci-fi films in anything other than technical categories was pretty obvious.

Exhibit A in this case is PAN’S LABYRINTH – a foreign-language film that earned both critical cudos and audience acceptance. Guillermo Del Toro’s combo of war story and fantasy won in the categories for Art Direction, Cinematography, and Makeup, so some voters obviously liked it. However, in the foreign language film category, it had to yield to Germany’s THE LIVES OF OTHERS.

The only other genre winners were PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST, which took home the gold for Visual Effects, and HAPPY FEET, which earned the honor in the Animated Film category.

Read the complete list of winners here.

UPDATE: In a post-Oscar round-up at Salon, Choire Sicha mentions something I neglected: “…the continuing willingness to ignore CHILDREN OF MEN – which began with its studio dumping of a release – sits really ill with me. What gives?”