My detailed expert analysis of the Academy Awards presentation show:
First off, did anyone else think it was strange that the best picture award was announced while the best director winner was barely off stage, and without any of the usual stuff that goes along with any given award happening first? Like a commercial, a wind up, a celebrity announcer, etc.? Was this the people who run “The Oscars” (as in the TV show) being pissed at the people who run “The Academy” for upping the number of Best Pic nominations from five to 10?
I had been thinking lately about the fact that there are very very few female movie directors and, at the time I was thinking about this, zero had won the Best Director award. With The Hurt Locker winning both best director and best picture (and 4 other awards) that changes, statistically, a tiny bit. That signals change, but a lot of other things have signaled change in the base and not much change happened.
Support your local female movie director.
I thought I saw “A Kanye Moment at the Oscars” last night but wasn’t sure, but now it is confirmed by this brief report which includes very interesting details. It did look to me like Colonial White Privilege and it turns out it may well have been.
The news is noting that Farrah Fawcett was left out of the annual tribute to those who died the prior year. I missed the tribute section. Well, I missed much of the show because I kept dozing off, but whatever. At least I watched it this year, which is highly unusual (these are every year, right? Or is it every four years?)
And finally, check this out: With ‘The Cove’ Victorious at Oscars, Japanese Village Defends Itself. Screw you, whale killers!
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I couldn’t stomach watching more than 30 minutes of the Oscars last night.
They cram 10 minutes of information down into only 2.5+ hours.
It is the same with any reality show also. There is a few minutes of show within one or 2 hours of nonsense (besides the idiotic premises of reality shows).
My reaction to the Cove flap is nuanced – I am from rural Alaska and some of my friends had actually been part of whaling – it’s explicitly tribal, basically just a couple Inuit villages – and only when the State of Alaska says they can, because there are enough that year.
Nowadays, Alaska is not the place it was when I was born there, and there are an infinity of things I’d rather villagers did to preserve their way of life, culture, etc. which they definitely do not do.
Anyway, I moved to Japan for a couple of years and change, and I had to tell them (although Japan is surprisingly rural, because most people live in the enormous Sprawl in the south part) that I thought their BS about whaling and dolphins was pretty intolerable. I’ve said the same to Norwegians.
It’s not the displaced aborigines in Japan, who would be, at least in some parts, the Ainu, doing the hunting for one thing.
I was a vegetarian from my teens in Alaska, which meant my diet was 99% dependent on shipped-in food (instead of 90% for the hunters, fishermen, etc.).
The real issue is that nature has no legal standing. On what basis do you tell people not to hunt xxx when your society (and the so-called skeptical portion of N. American society is probably worse in this regard than the average) is dedicated to a market fundamentalism that is scouring the planet of life and poisoning the husk?
Farrah Fawcett was a TV and stage star, not a movie star. The only movie I remember her in was “Cannon Ball Run”.
Fawcett was in more than a dozen movies that were not made for television.
And the most famous of those were:
Myra Breckenridge (1970)
Logan’s Run (1976)
Agg! Hit post to soon.
Anyway, a dozen movies in a 30+ year career is not a whole lot of movies.
They also left off Bea Arthur. I think the film industry is turning its back on the little screen just as big screens are shrinking, small screens are growing, and all the lines are being blurred or redrawn.
I imagine the producers sit down with a list of *only* the theatrical movies the dead were involved in and ask themselves, “Did this person make a difference to movies on the silver screen?”
Probably all about branding.
For example, while Tom Hanks got his start on TV, he is mainly known now for his movie work, and it would be a no brainer to include him in such a tribute.
Most of Farrah’s movies are better known to B-Movie afficianados, i.e., “Saturn 3”, “Sunburn”…
I figured Best Picture had to be announced quickly so none of the awards would be announced after 12am EST (it was 11:55 or so on the east coast). I presumed there are some local affiliates that would switch to infomercials promptly at 12am regardless of what the network is doing.
She was in The Apostle, which people made a big deal about at the time. She received an Independent Spirit best actress nomination for it. Considering some of the marginal movie stars that have gotten nods before and the fact that it only takes a second, I’d consider it a slight.
how could avatar not win!!!!????!!!! 🙁
Potenta:
Because it relied on “oooh would you look at that” CGI effects rather than an original storyline, good script and decent acting. If you ignored the CGI (which descended far too often into the “uncanny valley”), “Avatar” was just another B-SF movie.
Hope that helps.
PS Box office success does not mean it’s Oscar material.
I am a little surprised that Avatar did not win, but pleasantly so.
Iâ??m pretty sure they ran out of time at the end so the network was rushing them through it. They definitely did leave out a lot of stars in the remembrance segment which was disappointing. It was definitely an unusual show this year. Hereâ??s an interesting question; If there was a category for best Scientific Journal at the Oscars who would win? You can answer on our blog post. http://cbt20.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/an-oscar-cagegory-for-the-best-proteomics-journal/