Thursday, February 4, 2010

are you really upset about the oscar nominations? then you're an idiot. sorry.


blah blah blah, 'citizen kane'. understand? no? (sighing). ok, when they gave out academy awards honoring the best work done by the motion picture industry in 1941, orson welles' monumental and historic masterpiece 'citizen kane' was overlooked for best picture. in 1951 marlon brando was nominated for portraying stanley kowalski in 'a streetcar named desire' but did not win for one of the greatest performances any actor has ever given. and so on and so forth.

get it? the academy awards aren't about fairness or quality or merit. they're about popularity, industry politics and the perception of quality as it applies to (primarily) mainstream films. so relax. yes, sandra bullock got nominated for best actress. it doesn't mean anything. yes, 'avatar' was nominated for best picture. stop shrieking. yes, 'blind side', the sandra bullock vehicle about a sassy white lady who adopts a black kid and teaches us all a lesson about racism while he plays football, also got nominated for best picture. wha-at? hey, waitaminnit: that's fucked up. that movie really does sound like a piece of shit. we have to do something about this. call your congressman. let's have a march on hollywood or do sit-ins at theaters or something!

nah, i'm kidding. i love movies, but find it impossible to take the oscars seriously. not long ago, nic cage won for best actor. nic cage, for fuck's sake! i'm honestly surprised that previous winners didn't just throw their oscars out after that. i'm kidding again. sure, most sane people think nic cage is awful, but some people like the guy. and there's the crux: even if hollywood obliged you serious movie lovers by making more good movies, you'd still bitch and moan the day after the nominations were announced because something you thought was worthy got overlooked by those douchebag members of the academy. maybe some of you just like bitching and moaning? visiting some comment boards and chat sites after this year's nominations were announced, i had that thought. it was especially amazing to see the same folks who've been screaming about the awfulness of 'avatar' for 2 long months get a second wind and start screaming about how awful it is that 'avatar' got nominated for best picture. aren't you guys tired yet? it's only a movie. i saw it and found it fairly entertaining. was it 400 million dollars (the reported budget of 'avatar') worth of entertaining? i don't think so, but that's just my shitty opinion. nearly 2 billion dollars worth of paying customers pretty much squash any mild criticisms i may have about 'avatar's lack of originality. kids don't even know what the hell 'dances with wolves' is anyway. and they should get the hell off my lawn, now that i think of it.

i'd like it if hollywood made better movies too. but there's no reason to believe that the large number of people who go to the movies on a regular basis are all that disappointed by what they're getting, so don't expect the producers in hollywood to go the "if we make better pictures, the audience will come" route anytime soon. commercial filmmaking produces a lot of crap, and for people who really love movies, a little bit of good stuff. that's how it's always been, really. film historians will tell you that back in the fabled old days they were making classic movies with the same dependable regularity that general motors was pumping out cars. but they really did have an assembly line for movies and a fair amount of the "product" from any of hollywood's so-called golden years has an oddly anonymous quality. the craftsmanship is exactly that: uninspired labor by people who were just doing their jobs. and there are a lot of horrible movies from "ye olden days of glory" too. they don't seem so gratingly awful to us because of the somewhat reliquary quality time has bestowed on them. i'm simply not among those who think that movies are really and truly worse now than they once were. studio moguls were selling something different once upon a time: a genteel america that was as much a product of their imagination as the films themselves. strip away the classy veneer of many old films and there's little worth half a damn left. that's my long-winded way of telling you to shut the fuck up about how great it once was and how 'avatar' would never have gotten nominated for best picture in 1939. build yourself a goddamned time machine and go marry 1939 if you like it so goddamned much.

much as i like complaining about the complaints other people make, i still have an objective interest in the academy awards. on the morning the nominations are announced i check to see who made the cut and who was excluded. and while i haven't been able to stomach the show itself in years, i always check first thing the next day to see who won. so i don't want to come off as "mister holier than thou" on the subject because the oscars do interest me. just not to the degree that i'd expend much energy debating their importance as a calculus of the real artistic merit or worth of any film. many cinephiles out there will make the point that they're only concerned about what gets nominated because they love movies and they hate to see mediocre or substandard work elevated by the academy, but i don't buy that argument, in spite of the intense sincerity with which it is often delivered. these are the same people who rant about the shitty taste and general stupidity of the lumpen masses so frequently that the obvious contempt they feel for those same lumpen masses is impossible to ignore. these people don't want "better movies for everyone", they simply want their own aesthetic preferences confirmed by the imprimaturs of the general public, the awards circuit and a consensus of the critical establishment. ie; a new status quo imposed on everyone just as arbitrarily as the old one, only this time following a set of guidelines they approve of. which is supposed to be ok, y'know?-because they have better taste than the rest of us. it doesn't make sense for them to get upset about what other people choose go to see or who and what wins at the oscars, yet they do it anyway, as it represents a real injustice in their minds when the things they love aren't embraced with the same intensity by the rest of the public. friggin' boneheads.

now a few words about the nominees:

best picture
avatar, blind side, district 9, an education, the hurt locker, inglourious basterds, precious, a serious man, up, up in the air

if i'm rooting for anything this year, i'd have to say it's for 'avatar' to win best picture because it'll really irritate a lot of stupid assholes. that's about what it boils down to for me. sure, i enjoyed 'up' and 'inglourious basterds' more than i enjoyed 'avatar', but there won't be a deluge of anguished posts online the day after the oscar show if those pictures win. i was underwhelmed by katherine bigelow's 'the hurt locker'. something just seemed to be missing. it strikes me as a sort of a tabula rasa of a war film, vague enough in its perspective so that the viewer can project whatever he or she wants onto it. the coen brothers' 'a serious man' was also a disappointment. have i been missing something with the coens? are they really still making movies populated with the same ugly and inhuman caricatures after so long? couldn't they have made 'a serious man' 20 years ago? lastly, 'up in the air' probably wouldn't have been great even if it had worked from start to finish, but jason reitman's film has the most egregious third-act flameout ever committed to celluloid. really, it's embarrassing to watch the wheels spin so conspicuously and fruitlessly in a movie. i have no interest in seeing 'the blind side' or 'precious' and 'district 9' and 'an education' are strictly rental items. eventually.

best actor
jeff bridges-crazy heart, george clooney-up in the air, colin firth-a single man, morgan freeman-invictus, jeremy renner-the hurt locker

i really have no horse in this race, though i'm guessing the oscar will go to jeff bridges for his performance as an aging country musician in 'crazy heart', another picture i hope not to see anytime soon. i'm pretty sure bridges has never won in the past and he seems well-liked and that's about all it really takes. however, if 'the hurt locker' turns out to be "the little war movie that could", bridges may go home empty-handed. actually, even if it loses best picture to 'avatar' academy voters may compensate 'the hurt locker' by giving its star jeremy renner the best actor award. other than those two guys, there's morgan freeman playing nelson mandela in clint eastwood's middlingly received (by both the public and critics, not a good sign) 'invictus'. oscars have gone to a few black men in the last several years and, depressing as it may be to consider, that'll likely have an adverse effect on freeman's chances, along with the fact that he already has a supporting actor oscar for eastwood's 'million dollar baby'. though it's possible academy voters won't even remember freeman's supporting actor oscar, since nobody really gives a flying damn about those anyway. none of that stuff matters as far as colin firth and george clooney are concerned. neither of them has the vaguest chance in hell of winning an oscar this go-round.

best actress
sandra bullock-blind side, helen mirren-the last station, carey mulligan-an education, gabourey sidibe-precious, meryl streep-julie and julia

it's possible that streep could win because she's been nominated without winning so many times in the last few years (her second and most recent oscar victory came for the 1983 film 'sophie's choice') that academy voters may decide she was somehow cheated and now's the time to make amends. gabourey sidibe for 'precious' is also a possibility, as not that many black women have been scooping up oscars since halle berry's freak win a few years ago. then there's the dreaded sandra bullock, known to all as a swell human being who donates loads of money to charitable causes and a total sweetheart to work with. yup, i wouldn't be at all surprised if bullock won. seriously. and nobody should be yelling or hissing as they read that! helen mirren (who just won a best actress oscar about 2 years ago) and carey mulligan (whose rather manly-sounding name will just confuse older academy voters anyway) can go play monopoly with firth and clooney on oscar night, 'cause the only thing they'd be doing at the show is clapping and smiling when other people win awards. which is ok for the most part, until that point in the evening when you find yourself clapping and smiling for some schmuck who's just won what you'd come to think of as your oscar. fuck that.

best supporting whatever
the best supporting actor oscar is a lock for christopher waltz as colonel landa in 'inglourious basterds' and i'd say there's a pretty good chance that mo'nique has BSA locked up for 'precious', but to paraphrase bill murray doing his oscar predictions on SNL's weekend update: who really gives a shit about supporting performers? after winning his oscar, chris waltz will make a couple more appearances as a villain (in movies NOT written by quentin tarantino) and suddenly everyone will notice what an irritating little kraut he is. will chubby black comedienne mo'nique get a lot of movie roles after winning her oscar? crystal ball says "not likely". a syndicated sit-com on one of those channels that cater to (or insult, depending on how you look at it) the black populace is what the future holds for mo'nique. and so it goes.

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