The way the nominations for the Academy Awards look each year, you wouldn’t think that any movies are released during the first six months.  In the “big six” categories (Best Picture, Director, Leading and Supporting Actor/Actress), all of the nominees are taken from films released in the last three months or so of the year.  It’s as though the people who make the Oscars go into hibernation the day after the awards ceremony, and don’t come out for half a year.

Of course, some films released in the first half of each year are so incredibly good that they capture an audience and keep it captured for long enough to compete with those that are freshly delivered in December.  This is particularly true for films that excel in categories like music, effects and animation.  Nonetheless, studios like Pixar have to base their decisions to release great films in June on a lot of market study.  They’re giving up awards and a ton of free advertising by doing so.

I think there is value in looking at the wasteland that is the first half of a year in film, and making a note of what was great during that time.  For example, at the time of this writing, Kick-Ass has an incredible 8.1 weighted average rating over at IMDB.  While that rating will certainly fall a bit once it is released on DVD, I’ll bet there weren’t 50,000 people in the world who knew that Kick-Ass existed for more than a month before it was released, and this says to me that the film actually is quite good.  It’s reputation is built on results, rather than hype.

There was a lot of disappointment at the movies in the first half of 2010.  Alice In Wonderland was a rare Tim Burton dud, Clash Of The Titans positively stunk, and someone paid Uwe Boll to release a third Bloodrayne movie.  Someone should really put a stop to that guy.  I realize that I’m not among the first billion people to say that.  I often wonder if he watches great films and considers emulating them.  I know of one that everyone should see.

The best film of the first half of 2010 is How To Train Your Dragon.

What a masterpiece!  From the spot-on perfect voice performances by Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson, to the simple and elegant Dreamworks animation, to the pitch-perfect script, How To Train Your Dragon is a joy to behold.  I’ve allowed the film to envelop me three times now, and I doubt I’ll get tired of it any time soon.  I knew I was hooked in the first minute:

This is Berk. It’s twelve days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death. It’s located solidly on the Meridian of Misery. My village.

In a word? Sturdy, and it’s been here for seven generations, but every single building is new. We have fishing, hunting, and a charming view of the sunset. The only problems are the pests. You see, most places have mice or mosquitoes. We have…

Dragons have long been confined in animated films to the stuff of cliche.  If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.  Not this time, though.  The dragons in How To Train Your Dragon don’t conform to any particular shape or size or manner that you’re used to, and it works.  By the same token very little in this film conforms as expected.  The screenplay doesn’t follow the book on which it is based at all.  The characters are called Vikings and look a bit Viking-esque, but don’t sound much like you’d expect Vikings to sound.  They sound more like characters from Torchwood.  The music in this film is way, way beyond your expectation.  Stratospherically good music.  Let me be perfectly clear.

The John Powell music from How To Train Your Dragon will win the Academy Award for best original score at the Oscars 8 months from now.  At a time when composers like Michael Giacchino and Alexandre Desplat have cemented themselves as the newer heavy hitters in the film scoring business, John Powell just did the equivalent of stepping up to the plate and crushing a first pitch into the center field bleachers.  He scored a lob kick over the keeper’s head from midfield.  He got the one-punch knockout in the first round.  I’ll stop with the sports metaphors.

I couldn’t wait to buy the score for this film.  I made that decision in the first five minutes of the movie.  It’s that good.

I hope, if you have not yet seen How To Train Your Dragon, and it is still playing in a theater nearby, that you go do so immediately.  If that is not possible, I hope that you pick it up on blu-ray when it eventually arrives (and at this point, Dreamworks is so utterly surprised at the reception and box office for the film that they have not yet announced a release date for the video).  Furthermore, I hope that when you do see it on blu-ray, you realize that it is even a better film than the version you’re seeing.  It was epic on the big screen.