Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The 4th Annual Whopper Awards - Winners!

There can only be one final winner in each category, and here are the winners of the 2009 Whopper Awards...


Best Supporting Actress
Christine Rose [Heroes]

While Kathryn Hahn gave an excellent performance as Alice Duff in Step Brothers she was pipped by Christine Rose for her protrayal of Angela Petrelli on Heroes. Christine has come to grips with the multi-faceted character of the Petrelli matriarch and during 2008 she displayed almost ones entire acting range as a protective mother, disgruntled wife and company chairman. She showed her dark cold blooded side expertly while convincing us her questionable deeds were for the greater good.


Best Supporting Dramatic Actor
Heath Ledger [The Dark Knight]

John Noble lends his extraordinary talent portraying the mentally troubled genius Doctor Bishop on Fringe, a character who delivers as much sympathy as he does laughs, but the award here must go to Heath Ledger, for crafting an even more disturbed and psychotic genius, the criminal mastermind - The Joker. It's regrettable that Heath will be the first person to never know he has won a Whopper as he died last January from a drug-overdose. R.I.P.


Best Supporting Comedy Actor
Robert Downey Jnr.

It is not until you see Robert Downey Jnr. portraying an Australian actor who in turn dons blackface to become an African American soldier in Vietnam do you understand how far modern comedy has evolved from the likes of Charlie Chaplin [whom Downey has also portrayed].

Best Score
The Incredible Hulk [Craig Armstrong]

Marvel Comics were so impressed with Armstrong's work on The Incredible Hulk that they authorised a two-disc edition from the first day of release! An unprecedented move that in all my years of collecting scores, I can't recall happening before. When you hear it you'll understand why.


Best Song
It’s A Good Day To Die (from Starship Troopers 3, Written by Bill Meyers, Kevin McCourt & Edward Neumeier, Performed by Stephen Hogan)

This was an easy decision. If only they could all be. Sing along with it after you watch if for the 10th time....


Best Special Effects
Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Despite us believing that Robert Downey Jnr. as Tony Stark could don a suit of high-tech armour and become the superhero Iron Man. Hellboy II had an impressive array of visual effects lending credence to the bizarre mutant creatures, vast otherworldly mythological settings and culminating in an impressive display of CG mechanical combat that has probably sent a few idiots to Co. Antrim looking for a goblin named Alexander.


Best Art Direction
City Of Ember

It was a monumental undertaking for a film, to create an entire subterranean world melding some steam punk elements with evocations of a Victorian era. One can't imagine where to start, let alone being as successful as the Art and Design team for this Northern Irish film.


Best Writing
Frank Military (The Unit) [Segment 4-01 “Sacrafice”]

The fourth season of the CBS Special Forces military show, The Unit, opens with "Sacrafice" where in the pre-credits teaser, Colonel Ryan discovers that the President Elect and Vice-President Elect are the targets of an assassination plot leaving the Vice-President Elect dead and the President Elect missing! It gets even more gripping from then on...


Best Actress For Actually Acting:
Mary McDonnell (Battlestar Galactica)

As President Laura Roslin in the hit Sci-Fi show, Battlestar Galactica; Mary McDonnell has brought her character through the trials and tribulations of leading her people away from home, avoiding annihilation, all while battling a cancer within her threatening to kill her before she accomplishes that which has been prophecised. During 2008 she has portrayed being held at gunpoint, discusses death with a fellow terminally ill cancer patient and survives being taken hostage by Cylons.


Best Action Actress
Angelina Jolie

As the character Fox during the magnificent action-movie Wanted, Angelina Jolie lies on her back, spreadlegged on the bonnet of a fast moving car, in a skimpy white dress threatening to be torn off by her velocity, while firing two pistols an oncoming bad guy and steering the car with her foot! No-one else came close this year.


Hottest Actress
Olga Kurylenko [Quantum of Solace]

Beating off stiff competition from returning hottie Madchen Amick and the current holder of FHM's #1 Hottest Woman - Megan Fox; relative newcomer Olga Kurylenko secures probably the most coveted Whopper Award by women on screen anywhere for her smoking hot protrayal of Bond-babe Camille in Quantum Of Solace.


Best Dramatic Actor
Josh Brolin [W.]

Following a somewhat different path to the one he explored with Nixon, Oliver Stone crafted W., the story of another of the greatest presidents of the United States. The the film failed to achieve the status of Nixon, more due to Stone releasing the movie just before the 2008 US Presidential Election and not due to the near-perfection that John Brolin portrayed the 43rd US President, which deserves the highest of praise.


Best Action Actor
Liam Neeson [Taken]

The big man from Antrim walks away with the Whopper for this category for his portrayal of the loving father, yet brutal ex-CIA "preventer" Bryan Mills who in order to rescue his daughter, single handedly tortures, maims but mostly kills everyone he meets in the putrid cesspool of pure evil known as: ... Paris.


Best Comedy Actor
Will Ferrell [Step Brothers]

Fighting the closest race of this years awards, Will Ferell's Brennan Huff beat Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy for sheer laughs. Ferrell has missed in comparison with most of his comedies since Anchorman but this movie put him back up there.

Best Director
Jon Favreau [Iron Man]

It was a colossal undertaking bringing Iron Man to be big screen for the fist time. Marvel took a big chance on a relatively inexperienced director to create something that they were counting on replacing the Spider-Man franchise in cinemas. They got it, and a whole lot more as Fraveau's attention to detail was all up there on the big screen.


Best Television Show of 2008:
Battlestar Galactica

From strength to strength, so matter how extremely bizarre it may get at times this has proven to exceed all expectations and the mullets, Moppets, pleasure planets and space-Nazi's of the original series have been left all but forgotten. This is unquestionably the benchmark for modern episodic science-fiction television and will be remembered long after it finishes up this year - so say we all!

Best Miniseries or TV Movie of 2008:
Generation Kill

Generation Kill was a series generated from a book written after an article I once read in Rolling Stone magazine about US Marines invading Iraq in 2003. It's fascinating to see the contents of that three part article spread out over hour-long episodes. The acting, military advising and photography is above standard for some of the shit on HBO. This series serves as a testament to the work done over there and it makes me drink to those who never returned. Semper Fi.


Best Video Game of 2008:
Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warefare

Crysis may have had superior graphics and Half Life 2:Episode 2, a better story - but COD4 was just too good not to give it the highest accolade of the year. It's not brimming with innovation but you do get dozens of guns and fight clever enemies. You get to be a member of the SAS and even better: for half the game you get to be a US Marine! And as I was trained by the SAS in the mid '80's then this is the closest any of you of you will get to be like me! [excluding the part where your chopper goes down in a post-nuke EMP blast and you die horribly from the radiation - that's never happened me].


Best Comedy Movie of 2008
Step Brothers

Despite almost vomiting with laughter at the opening "fake trailers", a superb script, monumental acting and the sheer madness of a bizarre dancing sequence from Tom Cruise himself; Tropic Thunder was beaten by Adam McKay's Step Brothers, a superbly paced comedy with a bizarre concept. Step Brothers had you chuckling at the beginning, sniggering about a quarter of the way through which, in turn - became laughter at the half-way point and finished up with me collapsing and hyperventilating on the floor of the cinema.

Best Action Movie of 2008
Iron Man & Rambo

The standard of action movies was extremely high this year making it a daunting task to just whittle down the nominations list to five from over a dozen choices - so you can imagine how near-impossible it was to pick the final winner. Iron Man's big screen début deserved this honour for special-effects sci-fi action but the return of Sylvester Stallone's intense Vietnam war-vet John Rambo made a superb case for the almost forgotten jungle action movie. I must therefore, for the fist time ever - half the Whopper Award and acknowledge them both equally for different reasons.


Best Dramatic Motion Picture of 2008
The Dark Knight

"It is my great hope that the Batman legacy will continue in this fashion for years to come." - Colonel Creedon January 2006 after bestowing the Whopper Award on Batman Begins for Best Picture of 2005. My hope is confirmed. Now I desire a third film to complete a magnificent trilogy and let there be none to follow...


Outstanding Achievement in Costume Design in 2008
Legend of the Seeker

A special Whopper Award for Jane Holland and the Wardrobe department of the Fantasy series Legend Of The Seeker for their outstanding cosuming work, especially on Bridget Regan's character Kahlan Amnell [pictured].


Outstanding Comtribution to Entertainment in 2008

This special Whopper Award goes to Tina Fey for her work as both a writer and star of 30 Rock and for her contribution to the US Presidential Election portraying Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live.

And what Whopper Awards would be complete with out a list of the worst productions and performances of 2008:

Worst Actor: Keanu Reeves [Street Kings]

Worst Actress: Mena Suvari [Day Of The Dead]

Worst Supporting Actor: John Malkovich [The Mutant Chronicles]

Worst Supporting Actress: Maggie Grace [Taken]

Worst Director: Jon Avnet [Righteous Kill]

Worst Video Game: Iron Man [Sega]

Worst TV Show: Sanctuary

Worst Movie: Dragon Wars

And that's it folks. Join me in 2010 for the 5th Whoppers and special awards given for the best work of the first decade of the 21st century.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Join me in 2010 for the 5th Whoppers, You've a time machine now!

Major General Creedon said...

No we'll just wait for the time to come, but I've already started making notes...

Anonymous said...

Wait!?, WTF?, Marine, Your business is not to stand idly by and simply wait, Your business is action.