The Award Show Awards Show

I went into this documentary (on the Trio Channel) with some suspicion. What could it say that hasn't already been said about the glut of Awards Shows?

The answer: plenty.

There's some wonderful history here, some intriguing factoids, and very very funny bits. It's great to hear from both the people that make awards shows, and the people that cover them. The program does a very thorough job of tracing how awards shows have always been intended to paint their sponsoring academies or foundations in a good light, and how the fake prestige of those academies was ignored starting in the 1970s with awards shows designed just to get ratings.

Things I especially liked: It's funny watching Joe Pesci go off on an interviewer at the DGA Awards, and some of the sound-bites from red-carpet celebs are very witty. And the sequence on how publicists control the red carpet was awesome, as was the footage of celebrities hogging gift bags at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards.

Things I didn't like: the title's kind of lame, and it might have been tighter at 60 minutes instead of 90 minutes. But overall, a very good doc.

If you can find this on Trio before it totally goes off the air, watch it. Maybe it'll show up in libraries too.