Posts Tagged ‘ Academy Awards ’

This Year’s Oscar Theme: Self-Aggrandizement (As Usual)

February 28, 2011
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This Year’s Oscar Theme: Self-Aggrandizement (As Usual)

By Ilana Mercer If Kirk Douglas stole the show, you have got to know that there was not much to steal. So blared an MTV online headline describing the 2011 Academy Awards. (Headline here.) Earlier this year, I watched the Grammys and came away with the conclusion that the winner was Auto-Tune, “the ‘holy grail of recording,’ that ‘corrects intonation problems in vocals or solo instruments in real time,” and without which the tartlets I watched ‘sing’ would have been even more inaudible and tuneless. (Here.) The Oscar’s self-aggrandizing crowd proved too much for me. Stutterers are the cause célèbre (because of The King’s Speech). Helen Mirren, full of airs and graces, really does believe she’s a queen, and so does everyone else. When I see Mirren’s name paired with that of Simon Schama in the Financial Times, I ask myself what a well-known historian (and superb writer) like Schama is doing interviewing a woman who makes a living imitating other people? (Here) Shouldn’t she be interviewing him? I’m not in sync with the times, I know. The unfunny shtick, the specter of the poor, palsied Kirk Douglas spluttering incoherently while the pretentious onlookers cooed: You get the picture. The

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James Cameron vs. Glenn Beck

March 25, 2010
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James Cameron vs. Glenn Beck

“King of the World” director James Cameron is holding a grudge over Glenn Beck making a joke about him when Beck had a show over on the unwatched CNN Headline News network three years ago. Beck said the man who foisted “Titanic” on the world — especially Celine Dion’s awful “My Heart Will Go On” upon the culture — must be at least in the running for election to become the Anti-Christ. It was a joke. Did I mention it was three years ago? But, apparently, a mantle full of Oscars and a few billion dollars worth of box office receipts can’t heal the wounds Beck inflicted in jest. Cameron unleashed a profanity-laced tirade Tuesday against Beck, and even The Hollywood Reporter is too dense, biased, or lazy to correctly place the easily discerned reason for Beck’s “offensive” quote. Hint: It has nothing to do with Cameron’s 2007 documentary, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” which (1) no one has heard of, (2) didn’t air until March of 2007, and (3) aired after Beck’s comments of February 26, 2007. We’ll let the rest of the story be filled in by Beck’s reaction to the flap on his show Wednesday night: Why is

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Academy Awards a Pleasant, Depoliticized Surprise

March 8, 2010
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Academy Awards a Pleasant, Depoliticized Surprise

‘Hurt Locker’ director Kathryn Bigelow, co-producers, and stars at 82nd Academy Awards The Academy Award choices revealed last night were in general a pleasant surprise. They indicated a welcome, if but nascent and imperfect, movement toward an appreciation of quality as opposed to politics. Most prominent, of course, was the number of awards for The Hurt Locker, which nabbed six of them, including Best Picture and Best Director. Those who found Avatar insufferably addlepated and didactic surely were pleased that it didn’t get the nod for either of those awards, winning just in plausible categories: cinematography, art direction, and visual effects. In addition, those annoyed or offended by Avatar producer-director James Cameron’s many public pronouncements affirming and further arguing the expensive and technically advanced film’s message against technology and modern civilization were undoubtedly pleased by the fact that his ex-wife won Best Director and Best Picture. That had to sting Cameron and provide a good dose of schadenfreuede to his detractors, but it’s only fair to observe that The Hurt Locker is more deserving of honor than Avatar and is the type of film Hollywood likes to present as representing the industry’s aims. Whereas Cameron’s film is a loony, ambitious,

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Academy Awards, Meh

March 7, 2010
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The Academy Awards are tonight on ABC, but even with the expanded Best Picture field, they have been so insular and politicized for several decades that it’s extremely difficult to care. Feel free to comment here:

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‘Big Hollywood’ Relieves Academy Awards’ Emetic Qualities

February 23, 2009
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‘Big Hollywood’ Relieves Academy Awards’ Emetic Qualities

          Reading the ‘Big Hollywood’ live blog during the televised Academy Awards ceremony made it possible to get through the program without experiencing too strong a bout of flulike symptoms, S. T. Karnick writes.  

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Oscars Draw Record-Low TV Audience

February 26, 2008
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Oscars Draw Record-Low TV Audience

In addition to the low box office numbers for most of the films nominated for Academy Awards and those that won, perhaps the strongest evidence that Hollywood—like the U.S. cultural elite in general—has become very distant from its audience is the fact that the TV ratings for Sunday’s Academy Awards show were the lowest ever.  

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Oscar Nominations Favor Gloom, Doom

January 22, 2008
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Oscar Nominations Favor Gloom, Doom

Two grim, bleak films about the dark side of American life led the nominations for this year’s Academy Awards.

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Why the Oscars Don’t Matter at All

February 26, 2007
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The AP story recounting last night’s Oscar ceremony goes right to the heart of why the Academy Awards no longer matter the industry has become so insular, complacent, and distant from its audience that it regularly nominates for award mostly movies that hardly anyone has seen. The AP story mentions only the Best Picture nominations in this regard, and does so only at the end of the article, a destination to which few people will persevere, but this fact is, if anything, even more true of the other major awards, for performances, directing, screenwriting, etc. The message to the audience: we’re smarter and better than you. AP writes, Collectively, the five best-picture nominees had drawn a total domestic theatrical audience of about 38.5 million people, about a third the number of fans who have gone to see the contenders in recent peak years when such blockbusters as "Gladiator" or "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" have won. The day when Hollywood and its audiences largely agreed on what is good is long gone. Hollywood is still humming along because it continues to make audience-pleasing films while its best and brightest talents fool about with their arrogant,

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Important Notice About the Academy Awards

February 23, 2007
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The movie industry’s most important annual moment, the Academy Awards ceremony, will be shown on television around the world, witnessed by over a billion people, this Sunday night. It is the night when Hollywood honors the films and performances that best represent the industry’s self-image as the most decent, thoughtful, intelligent, talented, and beautiful people on the earth—and powerfully confirms the public’s astute perception of them as the world’s most amazing collection of disturbingly charismatic circus freaks.

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Academy Award Nominations Reflect Cultural Shibboleths

January 23, 2007
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Academy Award Nominations Reflect Cultural Shibboleths

The nominations for this year’s Motion Picture Academy Awards were announced today, and they basically repeated those made earlier this year by the Golden Globes. Dreamgirls was left out of the Best Picture nominations, rather surprisingly according to Hollywood insiders, and Sacha Baron Cohen was not nominated for his performance in Borat, which was not a surprise. (The Academy seldom honors broad comic performances, except those that are intended as serious. . . .) The AP story noted that ethnicity appeared to be a plus this year: With five blacks, two Hispanics and an Asian, it was the most ethnically diverse lineup ever among the 20 acting nominees. After decades in which the Oscars were a virtual whites-only club, with minority actors only occasionally breaking into the field, the awards have featured a much broader mix of nominees in the last few years. The nominations are indeed much more "diverse" ethnically than in prior years, and in fact much more so than the population of the country. A non-caucasian is now decidedly more likely to receive an Academy Award nomination than a caucasian is. Can affirmative action for caucasian actors be on the way?  Peter O’Toole was nominated for Best

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