* If you want a vision of the future, imagine a black person getting in your face – forever.
* America is a great country that we can all have our own tastes and be completely comfortable not knowing jack about other people’s tastes, while dismissing them with an air of superiority.
* Who pays any attention to the Oscars?
Who actually cares at all?
I’ve never met anyone who pays any attention to this in my entire life. Never.
Nobody I’ve ever spoken to has ever mentioned the Oscars ever in my life. Ever.
What am I missing here? I don’t get it.
Aren’t the Oscars especially really queer? Isn’t Hollywood glib and sociopathic, like a charming serial killer?
Wouldn’t you have to have the mental age of a naive 10-year-old to be taken in by the “Oscars”?
* From an interview with a director of Slow West:
“The good thing about calling the film Slow West is that all of the action has to go from right to left. All of the characters are moving physically West on the screen otherwise it feels like they’re going backwards. Once I realised that it was quite handy, and it was hard to get it wrong when I kept all of the characters moving right to left.”
In setting this principle where West is on the left, were you quite confident we would ‘feel that’ as Westward?
Yeah. When you look at a compass, West is on the left. It felt that the audience would feel the characters going right to left were going to the West. I think that if we’d started going the other way the audience would either feel they had turned around and were going backwards or that they were somehow going East.
* Ah, what the director said may explain why the movie feels a bit odd.
http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/how-to-read-a-movie
“In simplistic terms: Right is more positive, left more negative. Movement to the right seems more favorable; to the left, less so. The future seems to live on the right, the past on the left.”
Movies favor rightward movement in general than leftward movement.
So a film that always goes leftwards breaks with film-making conventions.
I felt something was odd about the film but only subliminally. Now, I know why.
* I’m only about a half hour into “Slow West,” but it’s kind of like a primitive video game in that everything keeps moving from right to left across the screen as the main character treks West.
* Practically none of the acting nominees have been Chicano or Asian American, at least not since the 1980s, but nobody notices that.
* Funny how the all-white supremist academy awarded the last three best director oscars to two Mexicans and a Chinese man. And Alexandro is favorited again for this year.
* People are complaining movies are too white. Great.
Is anyone going to have the guts to complain that movies are too Jewish?
After all, if we want movies to “look like America” having 3% of the population head up 100% of the studios, looks bad.
* Will Smith was not going to get a nomination for the same reason Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg were not going to get nominated. They are movie stars, for better and worse, not actors.
Idris Elba was not going to get a nomination, because the Upper Class White people of the Academy only like movies where they feel superior to OTHER WHITE PEOPLE particularly lower class Whites, in relation to treatment of Black people as sacred objects, credit to Larry Auster. Elba plays a horrific African monster victimizing African children, no White people involved. The movie, “Beasts of No Nation,” makes Africans look very, very bad. Because well, child soldiers. So no, that movie was not going to get nominated.
Straight Outta Compton was not going to get major nominations, because it too made Black people look bad. There were no noble GoodWhites standing up for Blacks against BadWhites. Thus, the key elements of White People Crack: Status Competition, was not triggered.
Really, how hard is this to explain to Black People?
* Hollywood is a country club – “write a good script, get some A list actors…we’ll have lunch and discuss.” I mean, it’s not Harvard as far as admissions (Harvard for money & investments, yes) ..but you have to have a “wow” factor, and, know, really know, that YOU ARE IN ART SCHOOL, and yeah it’s all subjective. Your film is either great (that day) or meh..that’s the reality in the arts, any art.
Hollywood is not fair…hiccup, egalitarian….the idea of the starving artist is not a myth. Oscars are really just a love-fest of the industry, and, in no way, will “the academy” bestow any Brownie points to minority individuals, or at times, even the most breathtaking film of all time – the real deal. I mean, I’m kinda’ amused that we are all sort of swooning over “Rocky” again!
When I think about it, I always thought Ingmar Bergman, and his producer, Jorn Donner, should have won some Oscars way, way back, if Hollywood had taken ethnic groups into account – didn’t happen then; never gonna happen…just write and create amazing stuff. Stop whining…art is not fair, never was, never will be.
* “There generally aren’t any Hispanic or Asian actors to begin with, whereas there seem to be lots of black characters in movies these days”
There are a lot of Blacks in universities these days. Why are they not being awarded Nobel Prizes for Physics?
Why do Asians get more Nobel Prizes than them?
* “Leave the Blacks alone and let them have some harmless fun. You surely don’t want them sitting near you at your local art theater, yelling at the screen.”
I saw a pretentious, art house movie with some black main characters: “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” The main character was a black girl, all of about 5-years-old, who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance. There weren’t any black people in the audience.
* Hold up a second. Why are folks complaining? I thought that Grand Bargain was that Hollywood would cast blacks into roles like Genius Scientist, Wise Judge, Efficient Police Captain, Heroic Military Officer and in return the actual contest of rewarding people for their talent would remain free from racial bean counting.
Did I miss the memo and is the Grand Bargain no longer upheld?
* Innaritu or however his name is spelled looks a lot like my Hungarian friend Lester. The great Lubezki is a Jewish Mexican. In the U.S., there aren’t that many Jewish cinematographers. My guess is that the Jewish Americans who would make good cameramen wind up being directors. Spielberg, for example, would be a hell of a cinematographer.
For a long time, you could tell a cinematographer in Hollywood was good by how unpronounceable his name was: e.g., Vilmos Zsigmond who died on January 1. He and his pal Laslzo Kovacs got their start filming the Soviets invading their Hungary in 1956 then fled West with their film. They caught on in the late 1960s as Hollywood realized that Europeans had gotten out ahead of America in cinematography.
* Women and minorities think that they deserve a percentage of any numerically limited set. Once they get one of a set, they believe that it belongs to them. For example, one of the Supreme Court seats was given to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In women’s minds, this is now a female seat on the Supreme Court. Woe unto the president who fails to nominate a woman to that seat.
Progress consists of getting one, then another, then all of a limited set. Because reparations must be paid owing to the Original Sin of White Masculinity.
* Not giving best picture to a film in which every other word is the F-word is clearly racist and sexist. A future majority black Academy would not see anything offensive about this because it would reflect their “embodied experience”.
Seriously, the Academy needs to learn how to play the AA game a little better. You don’t have to give a black film Best Picture every year (just like you don’t make a black woman CEO of your Fortune 500 – you make her head of HR where she won’t damage your bottom line (as much)) but you should at least nominate one. Mad Max: Fury Road (not to mention Room and Brooklyn) has zero chance of actually winning Best Picture so it could have been pushed aside for Compton without disturbing the order of the universe.
* I tuned into NPR this morning and there was some black activist going on about intolerably white Oscars. She gave a long list of black actors who, according to her, deserved an Oscar this year. The host was very sympathetic, of course. I really wanted him to ask the activist this question: Who of the current Oscar nominees should be dropped to make room for black?
This is really the key question. I would really like to hear what the woman would say. But of course, this question was not asked, because neither the interviewer, nor the activist, nor anyone else in the NPR building is even capable of thinking in these terms.
* “Granted, comparing Straight Outta Compton to Love & Mercy on aesthetics is like contrasting “F*** tha Police” and “No Vaseline” to “God Only Knows” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”
You overlooked gangsta classics as ‘Lick my ***hole’; as well as ‘doublin’ up’(reference to after viewing a lesbian porn vid, the homie decides to attempt to ‘doublin’ up’ at home with comical results.
I mean, come on, Steve. These classics helped go a long way toward defining the entire gangsta misogynist aspect of rap. It was there at the foundation and can’t be overlooked.
It’s okay, it’s all good. After all, according to the NYTimes reporters covering this controversy, white people simply can’t expect to understand the black experience of everyday life.
A question of a more relevant nature: Let’s be honest. During the late 60s/early70′s with Civil Rights in vogue and all the rage, it appeared that black films or at least black actors were being either nominated or placed in more Alist budgeted films.
The parallel is with Obama. In light of Obama becoming president in 2009, during the last 8 yrs there seems to be a prevalence of black oriented films that have been nominated for major Oscar categories. When Obama is out of office, who’s to say that this spate of black films won’t decline, just as they did when the late 60s/early 70s were over?
You can say that some of these late 2000s/early 2010′s films were probably in the pipeline and perhaps to be slated for production before Obama took office, HOWEVER, with Obama the president since 2009, Hollywood decided to put its best face forward by “look at our best films, and they’re not only black directed but they’re mainly “black” oriented films and they’re winning major Oscar nominations!” Much the way that the Academy invited First Lady Michelle Obama to read aloud the best picture nomination a few yrs back.
But, once Obama leaves office next year, and then given a few years down the road, especially with a Chinese billionaire purchasing a major Hollywood studio (and we all know how much China really cares about African-Americans), who’s to say that the spate of black oriented films will simply dry up during Oscar nomination time? In other words, yes, there will always be the blaxploitation films made a la Ice Cube; Perry what’s his name; etc. but the Oscars will return as before…mostly white.
Also, it was very commendable to the NYT that they didn’t have any white writers to help on the article about Hollywood racism ’cause they’re not nominating more black films in all major categories. That they actually found three somewhat competent writers to do the story is simply amazing. ‘See? We found three black writers who more or less lived up to our standard of quality at the Times. It can be done, and we’ve come a long way since the days of Jayson Blair’ seems to be what they’re saying.
Because if African-Americans wanted to make a stink about alleged racism, why stop at just movies? How about major newspapers proclivities of not hiring very many black writers? How come the NYTimes doesn’t take the lead and hire more black writers for all their stories and not just for race-oriented news?
* Hollywood has given Best Picture noms to black films for the last few years. And the can of worms remains open.
Blacks aren’t going to see it that way. Either all or nothing, and if its nothing then obviously you’re the racist for not doing what you can to help the next generation of African-Americans diversify Hollywood and make it less institutionally racist. For every year that they don’t get a major nomination for one of their products the din will grow louder and louder. However, with Chinese owning a major studio and interested in what works globally which doesn’t usually include African-Americans per se, as well as not having a black in the White House, the noise level will be less front and center in the mainstream and relegated to the Root; World Star Hip Hop; etc. and of course trotted out during Black History Month as a way to guilt trip elite moneyed Hollywood leftists who will bow their heads and simply ignore it.
However, now that they’ve been given a taste of the big time, having a black themed film nominated in a major category for several consecutive years, they now expect it to be always that way.
Perhaps the new Jesse Owens film “RACE” will be nominated at end of ’16. This would help atone for “42″ not being nominated.
I mean, I’m surprised that Black Lives Matter, as well as African-American leaders aren’t pushing the Democrats to nominate a black candidate for president every single election cycle, otherwise they might just accuse the party of institutional racism and decide to stay home in large numbers.
* The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could just start Best Black Motion Picture, Best Black Actor, and Best Black actress categories. Then blacks would win awards every year. Or hold a whole separate ceremony at the Apollo Theater in Harlem called the Whoopies or the Stymies. The statue would be a gold African fertility figure, there could be riots and drive-by shootings on the red carpet, blacks could win all of the awards, talk smack during the award speeches, and the audience could talk, shout, jeer, and dance throughout the performance.
* Hans Fiene nails it in The Accidentally Racist Oscars:
But giving awards to people of color is currently the Academy’s second-favorite thing in the world. Its favorite thing is giving awards for performances in movies about upper-class 1940s lesbian college professors who bravely battled both unjust banking practices and homophobia—bonus points if they were persecuted by political or religious conservatives, double bonus points if they worked in Hollywood, and triple bonus points if they existed in real life….
For example, it’s not that the Academy was trying to exclude “Creed’s” Michael B. Jordan from the best actor race. It’s just that Eddie Redmayne played a kind-of-real-life transgender European artist, and Oscar voters couldn’t possibly have taken that off the menu include someone who played a character as boring as a pretend boxer.
Steve Jobs’ story needed to be told again because the first time it had Ashton Kutcher in it. Similarly, while in a down year Hollywood would gladly have nominated “Concussion’s” Will Smith for playing real-life forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu, Bryan Cranston played an ever-so-terribly-persecuted-in-real life Hollywood Communist in “Trumbo,” and there’s no way the Academy could have overlooked a performance of that historic significance just to bring more diversity to Oscar night.
Dalton Trumbo’s story, after all, needed to be told, as did Lili Elbe’s (“The Danish Girl”). Steve Jobs’ story needed to be told again because the first time it had Ashton Kutcher in it. And it’s hardly the Academy’s fault blacks were too busy not being allowed to be screenwriters in 1950s Hollywood or that Latinos failed to adequately represent themselves in 1920s Scandinavian LGBTQ circles or that no one of Middle Eastern descent would have been believable as the half-German inventor of the iMac. (Unrelated fun fact: Steve Jobs was also half Syrian! Who knew?)
* You are too hard on these black folks.
They don’t want to win awards given by black folks, they want to win awards given by white folks.
They are not running to embrace and celebrate their blackness in black awards ceremonies, they want white folks to embrace and celebrate them.
They need daddy’s approval. And at the same time they hate that they need daddy’s approval so much. They want white daddy to love them, and at the same time they want to rub daddy’s nose in his mess (“Twelve Years a Slave”)
The only healthy black Hollywood type (and he really isn’t “Hollywood”) is Tyler Perry. He loves his people in all their craziness, laughter and love. His movies celebrate regular everyday black folks. They love him back and come to his movies in droves.
But the others–the Spike Lees, the Jada Pinkett Smiths–they are desperate for white daddy’s approval.
The reality is that the Oscars are a celebration of white culture and white sensibilities by and for white people who created a white movie industry to tell white stories to white people.
And the white nation is no more inspired by (or interested in watching) didactic black stories of white sin (Twelve Years) or black stories of black sin (Straight Outta Compton) than Chinese, Koreans, or Japanese are. Those stories are not white (or Chinese, or Korean, or Japanese) stories.
So you can encourage them to create their own black national movie awards, but it will not solve anything. It does not address their deep psychic need to be loved by white folks.
* It might be possible to fix this problem if enough Hollywood people come out as African American. Carol Channing was nominated in 1967 for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and then announced that she was actually African American in her 2002 autobiography. This resulted in her being added retroactively to the list of African American actresses who have been nominated. Channing offered no documented evidence for her claim (no photos, birth certificates of relevant family members destroyed in a fire, etc.)
I’m sure that there are plenty of actors, directors, etc. who would be happy and proud to come forward as African American. We can do this, Hollywood!
* I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent. — Jim Watt, September 1983
* Compton was problematic. Suppose it had been nominated? Dr. Dre is in the news recently, for beating up lots of women. So there’s that. Bullet dodged. Beasts of No Nation? Heck that is a movie that all but shouts that Strom Thurmond was right. No saintly Martin Luther King (and even that will be out when the FBI tapes are released).
Will Smith? Was Will Ferrell nominated for his serious dramatic turn? What about Adam Sandler for Punchdrunk Love? The Academy does not give out Oscar nominations to actors who are big time movie stars, by and large. They prefer Aaaaacccc-torrrrrrrrrrs. Who talk about “the Work” like Jodie Foster and Dustin Hoffman.
I cannot understand why Black people are complaining. If they want awards, make movies where some Noble White Man (or Woman) helps poor, downtrodden Black people against BAD WHITES to the applause of poor, downtrodden Black people. Its that simple.
* Wow, how time flies. I still remember being irked like it was yesterday by how last year’s Oscar black-out was given immediate, high-profile coverage by even serious news outlets like PBS Newshour. And now here we are again, with the outrage even more obstreperous if anything.
Isn’t all this shock and dismay a little disingenuous in January, though? Couldn’t any reasonably intelligent person come to the conclusion by November, if not earlier, that there would be no black-directed or black-themed contenders for Best Picture? It’s like a kid throwing a tantrum at not getting his (Red Ryder) BB-gun on Christmas morning, despite repeated warnings by his parents throughout the year that such a toy was too dangerous.
Since presumably the racism of the studio system is what is preventing all these black CITIZEN KANYE’s from getting made in the first place, can’t we help a brother out and bend the rules so that a set of storyboards (representing a movie aborted by racist White-except-when-they-tell-you-their-people-are-not-really-White studio execs) can be in the running for Best Picture, Director, and Editor?
Realistically I see the solution being nomination of any and every black actor in a halfway decent role (e.g. Tyler Perry in GONE GIRL) for one of the Acting Oscars. Best Director will still remain disgustingly white and male, however- the QB position of the Academy.
* This is another example of the impotence that liberal organizations have when confronting black grievance. Evidently the capitulation of U of Missouri has led to a drop in applications and a declining campus environment.
White liberals are going to have to develop a backbone where blacks are concerned or many of the things they hold dear will crumble.
* Idiocracy needs no sequel. It’s perfect as it is. The movie was great, but “Idiocracy” is more the premise and the core idea of dysgenics than the movie itself.
The core idea of dysgenics isn’t new at all, dozens have written about it, but Idiocracy communicated it in an easily digestable mass consumption way that the mass market wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to.
Three funny Idiocracy Stories:
I asked a Biology PhD researcher that I met if she felt that intelligence is inversely correlated with fertility. She took a minute to parse through my question, and exclaimed, “Oh, like Idiocracy!!”. Even for a bio researcher immersed in genetics, the movie Idiocracy is the best way to commnicate that idea.
I overheard another highly educated woman (math masters, doing industry data science work) say that the movie Idiocracy shocked her and she walked away determined to have more kids (she went on to have three). I imagine she wouldn’t have spent two seconds listening to anyone on this forum, but ideas wrapped in entertainment are much more widely communicated. I hear a common belief that birth rates trends are completely inevitable and unalterable. The proof is that some politicians in Europe have tried some obscure tax credit program and had poor results, so case closed. But a movie like Idiocracy broaches a big issue most regular people just don’t think about and actually changes behavior. Birth rate trends are absolutely controllable.
The movie mocks broken grammar. One of the characters in Idiocracy humorously says, “Why Come” instead of “How Come”. If I google “why come” I get Idiocracy as the second link. The daughter of the woman I was dating watched the movie with us, and later started unironically saying, “Why Come”.
* The best African American actor award… it would have all the cachet of “Most Improved” in high school. The black Di Caprio, Will Smith could finally get his, also Don Cheadle and Samuel L. In a slow year, even Wesley Snipes and Ving Rhames might stand a chance.
* Billions quickie review
1- you can watch the premier (free) at the Showtime website though it took me some poking around to find it BUT here it is.
2-Malin Ackerman….very good and precise with a precise hairstyle. Delivers some choice lines. She was born in Sweden.
3-Damien Lewis gives his role a menacing spergy tinge with a choirboys face. Well done!
4- Paul Giamatti the Federal prosecutor- v well done
5- This whole thing is so hi-def it is hyper real. Larger than life. Same as the script. This is hedgie porn.
6- Giamatti’s wife — not gonna spoil this for you. A guilty pleasure.
7- Ripping off Ray Dalio’s operation in Connecticut for Damien Lewis’s hedge fund headquarters. Go look up how much Dalio is worth. “He graduated from Hofstra!” (University) Actually Dalio went to LIU similarly humble.
8-All scenes take place in winter with snow outside the windows. Interesting accent.
9-Observe what the guys wear as far as hoodies and jackets….very slick!
10- A bit like a hedgie version of Mad Men.
* So, whoever the best actor winner is I wonder if he will do a Marlon Brando stunt with the American Indian, Sacheen Littlefeather, accepting not accepting the award on behalf of Brando. Littlefeather said Brando couldn’t accept the award because of the treatment of American Indians by the film industry.
* Who would be the black Meryl Streep?
* Eliminate all categories except Best Documentary. Then give the Oscar to a video from WorldStarHipHop. Do this every year. Problem solved.
* As Steve Harvey is more incompetent than Kanye West he can announce Will Smith as Best Actress in Patty.
* I’ve just invented the Bloscar. It’s a golden Jimmy Walker statue with black enameling over the entire piece. It is awarded for whatever black people did in show business in any given year.
White Man’s Burden.
* I’m tired of seeing the obligatory black person in every movie cast and every commercial.
They even had to have a black main character in the new Star Wars.
You would think 50% of judges were black women if tv’s shows were accurate.
*
Youtube: “This is the Oscar Gold “trailer” scene from American Dad. This appears in the tearjerker episode in season 3. I claim no copyrights for this. I am simply posting this for entertainment purposes.”
Comment: “The comment about Oscar Gold referred to the “American Dad” episode called “Tearjerker,” in which an evil mastermind makes the saddest movie of all time, about a Jewish mentally retarded alcoholic boy during the Holocaust whose puppy dies of cancer. The boy is Oscar Gold.”
