Letters to the Editor
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That "woman" from Once
It would be nice if the author of this snarky but amusing commentary would mention the name of the co-winner of the Oscar for Best Song. Especially since it was one of the finer moments of this year's Oscar ceremony, as Ms. Wilson herself says.
The "woman" is Marketa Irglova, of the Swell Season, and her partner in creativity is Glen Hansard, himself the leader of a great Irish band I only recently discovered called
The Frames.
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Stupid Sexy Dyslexia
Lovely!
But the link did produce a wonderful description of Nicholson.
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From heaven's sake to god's ears
From heavens' sake if you haven't liked Oscar telecasts in the past -- whether it's because they don't pick your favorite movies, or you have the format or the production numbers, or the montages -- don't watch.
-zmulls
I absolutely love this. You read this line all the time here, but now people are actually using this absurd refrain to complain to professional critics "if you don't like it, just don't watch!"
Yes, that's a good work ethic for a journalist/critic: "If you have nothing nice to say about a subject, just don't write anything!"
The Academy Awards, an event once a year wherein we get to be reminded that whatever you may think of Hollywood's movies, it's far, far, worse at producing live theater.
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Can anyone remember....
....many moons ago, a movie critic watched some Andy Warhol thing. Observing one particular horror starring in it, he included in his review a quotation with the words '...an asses head in paradise'. I never could find out the source of that quote - a novel? a poem? But I thought of it instantly the moment Cameron Diaz strolled out on stage last night, her hair looked so insultingly, deliberately ghastly. If she's too drugged up to comb her own hair, shouldn't the stylist she pays have done something with it?
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Maybe a foreign film should have been the best picture too
Just sayin' - if "No Country" is the best we could come up with this year, the best picture award should have gone to a foreigner too. What a pathetic piece of drivel and mindless violence that movie was, and it shows how low the bar is these days for top shelf movies. Ahhh, but I always forget what a couple geniuses the Coen bros are.
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Towel off, lame critics
Wilson's bouncy/delicious piece of criticism really made my day. Phooey on the nay-sayers who pooh-pooh this kind of writing: energized writing they will likely never come close to replicating. I laughed, I cried. Great job, Clintra!
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Salon is angry
That a movie called "Fuck Bush" which is just a screaming head shouting "Fuck Bush" for 150 minutes, didn't win. Maybe next year.
Honestly though, Michael Clayton was pretty good, Tilda Swinton was good, she wasn't THAT good. Tom Wilkinson stole the show, as always.
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Did anyone else notice
that, during the yearly who-died-since-Oscar-was-last-telecast montage, Brad Renfro was missing?
Renfro, though an untrained youngster, was far more talented than he was generally allowed to demonstrate in his films; but he was also a known junkie and therefore a poor advertisement for the movie biz, which perhaps accounts for his exclusion. I can't think of any other reason, except that the producers either weren't aware of his death or just assumed that no one cared.
It's always a cringe-making bit, anyway, having to listen to the applause swell as favorites flash on the screen, and very little applause when the forgotten are cited. But, then, the whole enterprise is cringe-making. Curious that it continues to fascinate.
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it's called parody
Did the author of this article not realize that the first Enchanted song (A Happy Working Song) is in fact a parody of every similar song in a Disney movie? It makes fun of the notion that women should be happy about working hard. In the movie, the Enchanted character works with rats, pigeons and cockroaches to clean the place.... and it's hilarious.
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self-loathing
Hey, you know what's a terrible idea? Saying this: "Hollywood executives were firmly convinced for the past several months that writers were worthless."
And then immediately proving the mettle of writers by following it up with this: "a frictionless battle between the Montage-Yous and the Crapulets."
And this: "Even though the event was way more lame than lamé, it feels wrong even taking potshots at the Oscars now. It's like picking on Britney Spears, at this point -- it's so easy, it's not even sporting."
And then saying fuck it and totally not even trying and slotting in one of these less than sporting epic metaphors: "After shaving its head and driving drunk around the globe with no panties, calling itself the Antichrist, and finally abandoning its children, totaling its SUV and getting its ass kicked in the parking lot of the Persian Gulf, America is..."
All that is a terrible idea. And I'm only halfway through so far.
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censored
flowbear wrote:
And then saying fuck it and totally not even trying and slotting in one of these less than sporting epic metaphors: "After shaving its head and driving drunk around the globe with no panties, calling itself the Antichrist, and finally abandoning its children, totaling its SUV and getting its ass kicked in the parking lot of the Persian Gulf, America is..."
All that is a terrible idea. And I'm only halfway through so far.
-- flowbear
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I dunno, flowbear, I kinda liked the metaphor...it's pretty much right-on target, far as I can tell.
and I did like the insight that Disney sanitized the thing within an inch of its life..although they couldn't do the job entirely, with a film like "Taxi to the Dark Side" winning, could they?
Nice job Cintra.
Among the five flicks up for best picture I'd have picked "There Will be Blood"--and I would have removed "Atonement" altogether.. but reasonable people can disagree.
I'm guessing, just guessing, that if the "Michael Clayton" crew had settled on a darker, much more ambiguous ending, it might have had a better shot. The ending of that movie was a total hollywood sell-out.
Did anyone notice some of the best-picture nominees from years past on one of the montages and wonder "yer tellin' me THAT was the best picture that year? there was nothing better??"
the oscars have ALWAYS been like this. If anything, they've probably improved when it comes to recognizing quality.