Anyway, MTV's big winner was last year's funniest film, "Wedding Crashers," which gets best movie, onscreen team Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson and breakthrough performance for the deliciously demented Isla Fisher. Academy voters rarely even recognize comedy as a cinematic art form, which means they've ignored half of history's greatest films. WC made my top 10 list last year, and the MTV crowd clearly understands why.
Second biggest winner is "Brokeback Mountain"; MTV's signature trophy for best kiss between Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, and Jake, a little weirdly, for best performance (he's fantastic, but it's generally agreed that Ledger's was the more memorable work). But that's nothing compared to some members of the academy's refusal to even watch the gay Western, resulting in their best picture award going to the contrived "Crash" instead. Like every critics group made up of people WHO ACTUALLY WATCHED THE MOST ACCLAIMED MOVIE OF LAST YEAR, the MTV kids weren't afraid to recognize a great story when they saw it.
I could go on: Our Miss Alba for being the sexiest of them all in "Sin City," Christian Bale's great hero turn in "Batman Begins," the generation award to perennial Oscar blindspot Jim Carrey and - the most astute selection from any movie awards group I've seen in years - the Silver Bucket of Excellence to Spike Lee's brilliant "Do the Right Thing," by far the best film of 1989 (when the academy typically overlooked it).
About the only quibble I have with MTV's slate this year is best frightened performance for that girl who made all of those goofy faces in "The Exorcism of Emily Rose." But that's the silliest of a silly category-filled event anyway. What's amazing is how an irreverent contest that professes not to take film seriously has overwhelmingly recognized greatness in terrific movies that the sclerotic, self-important academy crowd doesn't know how to appreciate.
I say we ignore the Oscars until they wake up and hire Alba to host.