'Belfast' and 'King Richard' win big at "Movies for Grownups" Awards

by Nathaniel R

Alan Cumming hosts the Movies For Grownups Award © PBS

The AARP 'Movies For Grownups' Awards aired as a special on PBS last night to celebrate their 20th anniversary. Alan Cumming hosted the audience-absent virtual awards with disturbing laugh and applause track.  You can watch it on the PBS site through April 15th. Belfast which had led their nominations won the top prize but they spread the wealth. The only film to win more than one prize was King Richard (Actor & Supporting Actress). You have to be 50+ to be eligible for their prizes which is why some of the biggest Oscar contenders are absent.

Winners and comments and a few pics from acceptance speeches are after the jump...

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"Movies for Grownups" Awards - 20th Anniversary

by Nathaniel R

Dame Judi Dench as "Granny" in Belfast

The AARP 'Movies For Grownups' Awards is now 20 years old. They'll be airing a PBS special on March 18th to celebrate their 20th anniversary. This year their favourites were Belfast with 8 nominations and West Side Story with 6. Their awards specifically honor filmmakers and actors over 50 which is why their acting lineups are generally a combination of actors with genuine Oscar buzz paired with random celebrity fillers. Though let's just say in their supporting categories they largely have no excuse for their lapses of taste since plenty of great roles / performances come from the over 50 set each year...

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AARP "Movies for Grownups" Nominations & Winners

by Nathaniel R

George Clooney is the Career Achievement Honoree this year at the Movies for Grownups Awards

The AARP's "Movie for Grown-Ups" dont get much press. That's probably because the media in general is populated with younger people or in competition to snag as many young eyeballs as possible. But the groups nominations are interesting primarily because their very raison d'etre forces them to be different from the norm. They advocate for the 50+ crowd and fight ageism in the film industry so their nominations naturally can't be copied and pasted from other prizes. This directive frees them from the restraints that shackle a lot of critics and industry groups (who all want to predict or influence the Oscars on some level, even if they vehemently claim to be above that).

Unfortunately it doesn't free them from all the other standard awards show problems like recency bias, prizing dramas and message movies above other genres, and questionable taste. You'll see the recency bias in raging force this time, in that most of the movies they're honoring either aren't released yet or are just starting to let non-festivalgoers see them. In fact, the only pre-awards season title that receives multiple nominations is Da 5 Bloods though there are a few single nominations in specialty categories for other early birds (Emma, Bacurau, A Secret Love, Bad Boys for Life)

UPDATD 3/8 Their awards will be broadcast on March 28th on PBS but they've already announced their winners which you can see below...

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AARP "Grown-Up" Nominations

by Nathaniel R

 

The Two Popes leads the nominations for the 19th annual AARP "Movies for Grown-ups" Awards . The ceremony, which will also honor Annette Bening with the Career Achievement Award will be held on January 11th in Beverly Hills with Tony Danza hosting. These awards don't get much attention but we think they're worth noting each year since a good chunk of Oscar voters are in their target demographic as a magazine...

Best Picture/Best Movie for Grownups

• A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
• Bombshell
• The Farewell
• The Irishman
• Little Women
• Marriage Story
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
• The Two Popes

Bombshell sticks out in this crowd as 'one of these things is not like the others', doesn't it?

Best Actress

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AARP Deems Loving The Most Grownup Movie of the Year

by Daniel Crooke

As Paul Ryan and his conference of House Republicans noodle over whether to raise the national retirement age, it’s more important than ever to stand with the AARP – even in Oscar season, when they honor their annual favorites in film. You can rely upon their Movies for Grownups Awards to serve up some fresh names in the same-old stale category line-ups and this year’s idiosyncratic nominations were no different: Molly Shannon! Tilda Swinton! Stephen McKinley Henderson! The ballots have been collected, the final winners tabulated, and this year the AARP Movies for Grownups selected Loving as the Best Picture of 2016. And Character Actress Margo Martindale will host their awards ceremony!

It would be silly to blow these awards out of proportion but as Nathaniel has pointed out, it’s interesting to consider the chief commonality between the Academy and the AARP: age.

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