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Worst films get big wet Web raspberry

Hold on to your popcorn, folks: The Razzies are out for justice, as the annual celebration of the year's worst movies and most dreadful performances goes online.

Jim Hu Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Jim Hu
covers home broadband services and the Net's portal giants.
Jim Hu
2 min read
The list is out, and Hollywood is abuzz. Leading the pack with eight nominations is none other than..."Freddy Got Fingered"?

Hold on to your popcorn, folks: The Razzies are out for justice. The annual celebration of the year's worst movies and most dreadful performances hit the Web early Monday in anticipation of Tuesday's glitzy Academy Award nominations.

Sure, the Razzies may not be as popular as the Oscars, nor do they generate as much hype. But the site's Web page is ready to handle any traffic load. As of Monday morning, the list received nearly 2,500 hits from anti-Hollywood cynics from around the world.

"The sad thing this year is that these are just wretched movies," said Head Razzberry John Wilson, who works a day job as a Hollywood publicist. "I like bad movies like 'Showgirls' and 'Battlefield Earth' that are wildly entertaining but not how they're meant to be. This year's nominees are just bad, overlong and tedious."

Wilson said the Razzies were born 22 years ago when Oscar night was postponed after an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. Since then, the group has grown to some 500 members based in several countries.

And now, to the list.

After "Freddy Got Fingered," starring neurotic, bug-eyed comedian Tom Green, "Driven," Sylvester Stallone's exploration of race-car driving, was handed seven nominations. "Glitter," Mariah Carey's acting debut, tied for third with the long-winded action-romance-melodrama "Pearl Harbor" with six nominations. And coming in with five nominations was "3000 Miles to Graceland," another installment in Kevin Costner's wretched box-office track record in which he stars as an Elvis impersonator-slash-casino robber.

The five films filled the list for worst picture.

Meanwhile, some of the notable performance flops included Keanu Reeves for "Hardball" and "Sweet November," and Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie for "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" and "Original Sin."

Stallone, who was nominated for worst screenwriter, worst screen couple (with Burt Reynolds) and worst picture is the all-time Razzie champ, with 29 nominations in the award ceremony's 22-year history.

The awards will be given out March 23 in Santa Monica, Calif. Winners are presented a homemade trophy composed of a raspberry on top of a mangled film reel, mounted on a Lipton Iced Tea jar and spray-painted gold.

In the awards' more than two decades, Wilson said, only two Razzie winners have accepted their awards: Paul Verhoven, the director of the 1995 bomb "Showgirls," and Bill Cosby, who was recognized for his portrayal of a spy in "Leonard, Part VI," a comedy about terrorists who train rabbits and frogs to take over the world.

News.com's Evan Hansen contributed to this report