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MTV Movie Awards expand with new categories

Courtesy of Murray Close/the associated press and LIONSGATE

Jennifer Lawrence plays Katniss Everdeen, left, and Liam Hemsworth plays Gale Hawthorne in a scene from “The Hunger Games,” which was nominated for eight MTV Movie Awards.

By Andrea Seikaly

May 7, 2012 1:11 a.m.

Hollywood award season may technically have ended a few months ago with the Academy Awards, but the 2012 MTV Movie Awards will recognize one more set of winners in less traditional categories.

The official nominees were announced last Monday, with “Bridesmaids” and “The Hunger Games” tied for the lead at eight nominations each. One significant change in this year’s nomination process is that the nominees were selected by an anonymous panel of actors, producers, agents and other industry figures rather than by a popular online vote.

The MTV Movie Awards will represent a range of films that often go unrecognized by other award shows as well as movies that have come out since award season ended.

Of 12 total categories, five were introduced this year: Best Music, Best On-Screen Transformation, Best Gut-Wrenching Performance, Best Cast and Best On-Screen Dirtbag.

While Best Music and Best Cast are reminiscent of categories featured on other movie award shows, their inclusion could just be a move to broaden the show’s scope.

It seems strange that the MTV Movie Awards is trying to expand its popular appeal by adding new categories, while also excluding the audience from the nomination process. The question is: Does this send a contradictory message to viewers, many of whom gravitate to the MTV Movie Awards for the very fact that it is less stuffy than, say, the Oscars?

While these might be questions on the viewers’ minds, I think that the new categories have a lot of potential.

While I agree that nominees for Best On-Screen Transformation such as Elizabeth Banks and Michelle Williams definitely underwent significant transformations in their respective on-screen roles in “The Hunger Games” and “My Week with Marilyn,” I think audiences may be even more intrigued in the past year by the transformation of Ralph Fiennes into Lord Voldemort or even Taylor Lautner’s transition into a werewolf ““ neither of which received nominations for this category. Is excluding popular films one of MTV’s attempts to make the award show more credible?

The new category that I found most amusing is Best On-Screen Dirtbag. These are those characters that we love to hate, and I think that the nominees are pretty spot-on given the performances throughout the past year. While her performance didn’t strike me right away as that of a “dirtbag” per se, Bryce Dallas Howard, who was a nominee for her interpretation of Hilly Holbrook in “The Help”, definitely deserves to win. This category will add a degree of enjoyable irony to the show by turning the tables on audiences and getting them to root for the characters who made them cringe.

I don’t know if these new additions will necessarily boost credibility, but I still think it will be interesting to see who takes the Golden Popcorn at the end of the night. In the end, MTV still preserves public online voting (which began last Wednesday) putting the power in our hands.

What do you think of the new additions to the MTV Movie Awards? Email Seikaly at

[email protected]. “That’s A Wrap” runs every Monday.

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Andrea Seikaly
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