Box Office Prophets proudly announces
...the 2005 Calvin Awards

If it's February, that can mean only one thing to this Web site. Yes, the Calvins have returned for a fourth engagement. This year marks the first BOP voting season where the lazier voters were not able to simply vote for Lord of the Rings in everything...well, except for Best DVD. Instead, the absence of the three year titan left a vacuum to be filled by smaller, craftier productions. The result is a shocking lack of New Zealand-based projects across the various categories, but do not fret. Change is good.

2004 saw a strange dichotomy of the sensational and the villainous in cinema. Independent films were held in such prestige that their Academy Awards recognition is at its highest since 1997-1998. But the quality of these films was counterbalanced by the very existence of Catwoman, Garfield, Scooby-Doo 2...well, pretty much anything that heavily utilized CGI animal husbandry.

While it's not unusual to have such a separation between the good and the bad, 2004 bore witness to this scenario being extended to its logical extremes. The terrible stood side by side with the wonderful, and the 2005 Calvin Awards are the better for it. After all, we laud the noteworthy dreck as well as the finest in film each year. We have not added any new categories this year, meaning that there are 17 awards to be handed out starting with today's four selections. We will post three a day from tomorrow through Thursday then finish up with the final foursome on Friday. After that, we will post your Reader's Choice Awards on Monday so that you can compare the populist tastes of our viewership with the more eclectic tastes of the staff. Individual voter ballots will be posted toward the end of next week if you want to stalk a particular columnist.

2005 Calvin Awards