Didn't watch the Oscars. I generally don't, but you pretty much can't avoid mention of them on the TeeWee this morning.
I'll admit that of the Best Picture nominees last night, I'd only seen Gravity and American Hustle. The former was a great cinema experience, but struck me as a little SFX 'splodey for a Best Picture; everyone knows that if you're having fun and sitting on the edge of your seat, it must not be Art. The latter, however, had a combination of great acting and moral ambiguity that should have been crack for the voters.
In retrospect, it never had a chance, of course.
I've got a script that should be sure-fire Oscar bait. It's just one dude sitting in a chair in an empty room, looking at the floor, and muttering "Racism... Racism... Racism..." for 90 minutes. Not a cracker in Hollywood would vote against that, for fear of appearing... well, you know. If I can get Spike Lee to direct, it'll be a slam dunk.
I considered watching, hoping there would be a terrorist attack. In the end I decided it wasn't worth even that; obviously they didn't either.
ReplyDeleteIt would have to be a woman. And she would have to be tied to the chair. And a gun toting fat white capitalist oppressor pig would have to be forcing her to have a baby. While Mother Gaeia dies.
ReplyDeleteGet Oleg to shoot it and we can retire.
You really didn't think it was about the best picture, or best actors did you?
ReplyDeleteBooo. I think your remarks make sense and might very well be true. But if you haven't seen the movie that one, it's unreasonable to conclude that voting for it was a PC move.
ReplyDeleteA misstep from your usual incisive and amusing commentary.
Didn't see 12 Years a Slave, it's hard to get me to part with $10 for 2 hours unless there's spaceships in it, so...Gravity. Even if I was cringing at the antics pre-Kessler.
ReplyDeleteRead the book for 12 Years, though. Solid stuff, a good read. The later annotated versions are probably the best.
Was it Poehler who said Gravity, "the story of how George Clooney would rather float away into space and die than spend one more minute with a woman his own age."
ReplyDeleteI know nothing of the film that won best picture, but as soon as I saw the title, I knew it was best picture.
I do like the porn parody title someone on twitter through out last night "12 Inches a Slave"
If I can get Spike Lee to direct, it'll be a slam dunk
ReplyDeleteHmm. African-American male and basketball idiom. Stereotype much? Racist!
(But "Mars Blackmon" is totally okay.)
Cracker? Pretty sure there aren't any crackers in Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteEven Ellen figured it out during her opening jokes. After talking about how anything could happen she said, "one thing that could happen is 12 Years a Slave could win best picture, another thing that could happen is that you're all racists." I was surprised her audience laughed at that one.
ReplyDeleteCorey
You mean just one dude standing in a room looking at an empty chair and muttering ...
ReplyDeleteBrendan Riley,
ReplyDelete"Booo. I think your remarks make sense and might very well be true. But if you haven't seen the movie that one, it's unreasonable to conclude that voting for it was a PC move."
True, I haven't yet seen it. It's based on a heck of a story and McQueen assembled a great cast, but...
There's that "but" that kept turning up in all the reviews leading up to Awards Season (this was supposed to be the penultimate paragraph in the post which for some reason I left out this morning) that made me wonder if it's going to go down as the 21st Century equivalent of Shakespeare In Love's puzzling win. "It's a small-budget pic, but..." "The director is still kinda new, but..." "The cast had a lot of unknowns, but..."
"...it was a story that had to be told!"
Thanks, critics. Way to make it sound like you were voting for Eating Your Spinach.
Didn't watch, don't care... It's NOT about art as much as money and 'payback' to certain communities of interest...
ReplyDeleteHow is it that I can't find a link to the scene in Mike Judge's prescient movie The Idiocracy, in which the Academy Award for Best Picture goes to a moving called "Ass", which features a naked buttocks farting for 100 minutes?
ReplyDeleteJudge's only major flaw in that movie is that it won't take 500 years to get to that point; it'll take about 50.
AIDs works for the Academy. 20 years ago for tragedy, this year for laughs.
ReplyDeleteWe're already living-out Plan-9 From Outer Space - it's called Obamacare. Can't wait for Russ Meyer to cast Hillary in, "Faster Diplomat, Kill-Kill."
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed American Hustle - an interesting take on what a Scorsese movie would be like if the story ran out but they kept filming for another 25 minutes. The characters were so enjoyable that I didn't even notice this until the second viewing! I liked it, but I wasn't wowed.
ReplyDeleteWolf of Wall Street was high-speed, hilarious, visually entertaining, and unabashedly hedonistic, and as such, was utterly robbed at the Hairshirt Awards, because as you said, Fun Ain't Art.
Matt G:
ReplyDeleteWould you like me to digitize and upload for you?
It's not like I don't have a disc I pop into the player and cry a bit every now and then.
The Big Three slam-dunk subjects for the Oscars, in my opinion, are:
ReplyDeleteThe Holocaust
Slavery
AIDS
I disagree...Django Unchained did not win best picture last year.
ReplyDeleteAnon: Django didn't wait for white people to rescue him, he used guns, and the film was fun to watch. That's the three politically incorrect sins right there.
ReplyDelete"Django Unchained" is basically a "white" movie, only with a black actor (Kinda like "Crimson Tide" with Denzel). Why would that win an Oscar?
ReplyDelete