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Awards for the films I saw this year…
About
My brother got me started on film criticism. When we were young, we would spend hours talking about films and we would rate them based on four categories: plot, characters, visuals, and personal impression. As we’ve grown older, our discussions now include much more complex ideas about storytelling and craftmaking — we push each other. To think about why we believe certain movies are successful, to think about what the film industry could do better, to think about how our critiques — both the deeply silly and the cursory philosophic — affect our own writings and desire to create new worlds.
The first time I tried writing film reviews was for my undergraduate newspaper. I had a section called the Animation Corner where I featured animated movies and television. For a few years, I also wrote reviews for The Odyssey Online, a crowdsourced media platform of volunteer writers. And what started as a spark of interest bloomed into FoxDragonMedia and this insane commitment to record every single film I’ve watched and provide a rating along with it.
I realized that I wanted to honor the best (and sometimes worst) of what I’ve seen, so in 2018, I created the First Annual Pappie Awards, which handed out awards to celebrate my year in cinema from 2017… And then I realized if I had the gall to call it the “First” that means I should have a Second…and a Third… But it’s taught me a few things — like why it’s important to save all of my screenshots from films and even a tiny amount of HTML coding for Squarespace — and, most importantly, revealed my blind spots when it comes to being a cinema consumer (for example, I am a giant wimp when it comes to horror or needing to be more active in seeking out international films.) Made me open and honest about my relationship to film as a writer, a critic, and as an audience member viewing with and for other audiences.
With each passing Pappie Awards, the categories will change and my thought process behind my nominations will change, but I always hope to keep a few things into consideration:
A film can only be considered for the Pappie Awards once
Any film I watch during a calendar year is eligible for nomination
Every Pappie Awards, the categories should reflect the type of films I watched, as best as possible
Be a kinder critic
Make it fun for myself and viewers
Thank you for your interest in the Pappie Awards and for sharing my love for movies.
~ Ben Kim Paplham