Announcement: Expansion of The Dellies

The 2014 Dellies are tomorrow.

As usual, while you guys are trying to figure out what the best and brightest this year in the world of cinema, I'm just getting around to last year. There were a couple of reasons for the delay. First and foremost are my self-imposed rules. I've decided that before I start handing out my precious awards I must watch at least 100 of the movies released that year. I flew by that number a couple months ago and now sit comfortably at about 130, give or take a few. Just an FYI, I'll have to revisit that rule if I ever decide to start handing out awards for any year before about 2005, or so. The other rule is that I must have watched all of the films that the Academy saw fit to nominate for Best Picture. For some strange reason, that took an unusually long time. It's only been a couple of weeks since I've seen the last of them, The Imitation Game. 

Another reason it's taken me so long is that I did a good deal of expanding to The Dellies. I more than doubled the number of awards I'm handing out. I had a blast doing last year's Dellies, but it felt incomplete to me. The awards I gave out only represented part of who I am as a movie buff. All the artsy-fartsy, high-falutin' stuff is great, but I love junk-food, too. In the movie world, there's lots of junk-food and I try as much of it as possible to balance out those healthy meals. And hey, why not award the junk? What all this means is that I've added a bunch of new categories. I'm keeping the traditional Oscar-type fare, but adding in things that are more MTV Movie Awards, too. Here is a complete list of all the categories:

Best Actor

Best Actress

Best Supporting Actor

Best Supporting Actress

Best Action Hero

Best Scream Queen

Best Villain

Best Ensemble

Best Animated Feature

Best Voice-Over Performance

Best Documentary Feature

Best Foreign Language Feature

Best Action Sequence*

Best Fight Scene*

Funniest Scene

Most So Bad It's Awesome!

Best Technical Achievement**

Best Director***

* - I fully recognize there could be lots of overlap between the two. However, I'm defining "Fight Scene" as scenes solely focused on hand-to-hand combat (yes, having weapons is perfectly acceptable), and "Action Sequence" as broader in scope, incorporating much more of the setting and it may or may not include fighting.

** - In the past, I fully declined to hand out any technical awards since I don't feel comfortable in my knowledge of any one category. I think I can recognize a film that is just overall great in those technical areas. This will serve as an umbrella award encompassing all of those categories: Visual and Sound effects, hair and make-up, costumes, the whole shabang.

*** - For me, this is The Big One. I try not to just nominate the same five people who directed my top five films. I look for the people that even a layperson like me can tell did some masterful and creative things behind the camera.

You might be saying, but what about the real BIG One? The answer is simple. In lieu of giving out a Best Picture award, I will rank my top movies of 2014 and post that later in the week. I will also rank my bottom movies and post those, too. 

Anyhoo, I've got work to do. Come back tomorrow and check out The Dellies.