This week, it’s the third annual Dionysus Awards Show. The Dionysus Awards are presented to the most philosophically interesting movies of the year. And sometimes, when we feel like it, we also honor philosophically notable movies from the past. Now unlike your average awards show, we accept spontaneous nominations from the floor. So we’ll be talking to some of our listeners who wrote in with nominations and to some of our past guests as well. But since John and I are the ultimate judges, we reserve the right to either grant or refuse awards to nominated movies.

We’re in the thick of award season – that time of year when just about everybody and her brother is honoring and celebrating the film industry. But besides the fact that movies are fun to watch and fun to talk about, we should we here at Philosophy Talk jump on the already overcrowded Awards bandwagon? It starts with the fact that movies, at their best, are really cool things. They can make you laugh or make you cry. They can frighten you out of your wits, transport you to far off places and times, take you deep inside the hidden reaches of the mind. Movies are kind of magical in that way. But there’s something else that movies can do, something moviemakers aren’t always rewarded for doing. In the right hands, movies can be amazing vehicles for expressing and exploring philosophically significant ideas. And that’s precisely why we inaugurated the Dionysus Awards. Our aim is to reward and encourage movies that make us think.

Of course, it’s not an either or thing. We’re looking for movies that effectively explore ideas at the same time as they do all the other things that the best movies do. So in order to win a Dionysus Award, a movie really does have to be something pretty special. It’s got to be a good movie – a movie that tells a compelling story and works on the heart and imagination in the way that the finest films do. But it’s got to work on the intellect just as effectively.

In fact many movies that rack up awards in other places are often also-rans in the stiff competition for a Dionysus Award. Think of Slumdog Millionaire, a nominee for our First Dionysus Award. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture – and that award was well-deserved. But we decided it just didn’t measure up to the high standards of Dionysus. Or think of last year’s hard-fought contest between District Nine and Avatar, for Most Philosophically Compelling Movie About Man’s Inhumanity to Crustaceans. It was the little-seen and lightly-promoted District Nine in a landslide.

现在好莱坞成名的主要原因显然不是它炮制出一部又一部让我们认真思考的电影。因此，每年，在一群影评人、过去的嘉宾和我们的听众的帮助下，我们都会发掘出一个真正值得考虑的电影宝库。其中有些是大电影，会赢得很多其他奖项。但其中一些是几乎没人看过的小电影。去年的狄俄尼索斯奖得主不仅包括第九区，还包括奥斯卡奖得主《拆弹部队》。但也有一些几乎不被注意到的珍宝，比如《我和奥森·威尔斯》，一部精彩而有趣的电影，在影院转瞬之间就上映了。今年的提名也涵盖了方方面面。来自一部伪纪录片《我还在这里》，讲述了我们名人文化的黑暗面。《黑天鹅》和《盗梦空间》这两部超越现实边界的奇幻电影。

You should definitely tune in. It is a fun and entertaining hour. Unlike most of our episodes, this one was pre-produced. That fact enables us to do two things that we can’t normally do. First, we were able to make it extra-ordinarily sound-rich. Second, we are able to give a “stand-alone” sort of character. The latter enables us to offer it to public radio stations everywhere, even those who don’t normally carry philosophy talk, as a stand-alone special. Given that it’s award season, and that the Oscars will be fast upon us, it would make a perfect compliment to the regular programming to any public radio station that wants to help their listeners think more reflectively about the movies.

So far, a dozen or so additional stations have expressed interest in our Dionysus Special. We’d love your help in signing up even more stations to carry this special episode. Contact a public radio station near you, and urge them to carry our special for the movie season.

Photo byDenise JansonUnsplash