Hobbiting Afterthoughts: A Wise Simon Morrisism: Yes, Good, Well-developed and Enacted Characterization Is What Really Matters, or: It's (the) Character, Stupid! (As one ex-U.S. President Might Have Put It)

"Character's more important than plot...[in Linda Bower's Rubber-Neckers] they make character so interesting, that you go on the journey with them...[as I said before], it's the characters that really hold you."

In a sense technical awards like the one - undoubtedly for special CGI effects et al - the Hobbit secured at the tail-end of last week's Baftas, alongside the three, similarly technical, others for which it had been nominated - these latter three, still unconfirmed, interestingly enough being very similar to the three for which the first instalment in Andrew Adamson's Narnia series, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - in which Yours Truly starred as a(n obscure, unacknowledged, uncredited - and possibly, ultimately, even unscreened!) faun, won Academy Awards in, I believe, the year following, are, in my view - though clearly and understandably not in the estimate of those intimately involved in the securing of those prestigious enough, and certainly not to be snuffed at awards - almost damning with faint praise the best characteristics of such films which seemingly should be being rewarded; though clearly that is hardly the intention of awarders.

Perhaps a noted film reviewer, as he said the other day, is indeed correct in emphasizing that such awards are way overrated, and, as I would put it, the very best films need no such glitz and glamour to sustain them much less rivet a memorable place in the minds and hearts of their devotees. Much as I somehow doubt that my own favourite film of all time - I think, though such 'scorecard' designations, as with those for one's fave songs, ever can be personally problematic if like me one happens to have a lot of really beloved movies - *David Wolper's Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory - the one starring Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson and Peter Ostrum, Roy Kinnear et al, not Johnny Depp's much overrated debut, foray into a similar realm - won any such awards - at all - in its own day. Certainly in our own politically correct to a fault day and age it simply wouldn't stand a chance, 'a hope in hell'.

(*Interestingly enough I now see, apparently produced by good 'ole Warner Brothers, the film company financing the Hobbit films.)

This time I'll let the above alluded to film critic, New Zealand's National Radio's Simon Morris, have the last word. As he put it so succinctly and well as he signed off on his latest week's film review, with a bit of ad libbing on my part - keeping completely with the sense and meaning of his own words: "[Really good] movies don't last because they [simply] win awards, but because they win a place in peoples' hearts...and on that note [we'd all, and especially filmmakers and crew, be advised] not to take awards too seriously."