The last first word on the Oscar nominations, and much, much more
I'm ahead of schedule in my film viewings of 2005 releases, but it's still several months until the CMFAs will be announced. It won't be difficult to pick my horses on March 5th, though. I'm pulling for thrice-nominated and overall good guy George Clooney and his masterful "Good Night, and Good Luck." They should be a cinch in the cinematography and art direction categories. "Crash" was so contrived and incredulous to be rendered meaningless (a writer on Slate.com called it-- the movie for white people who use the expression, "Some of my best friends are black,") but Matt Dillon has been the best thing in just about everything he's ever done. I also have soft spots, generally, for Reese Witherspoon and Catherine Keener.This year's nominations were even more devoid of comedic films and performances than usual. Of the major awards, I would classify only Judi Dench's role in "Mrs. Henderson Presents" as comedic, and since the film is British, it hardly counts. Woody Allen was rewarded with his first screenwriting nomination in quite some time for making serious with year's end "Match Point." I hope you'll join me in rooting for Noah Baumbach and "The Squid and the Whale" in that original screenplay category. I took some perverse laughs out of that flick. Maybe we should count Felicity Huffman's performance in "Transamerica" as well. No one has actually seen that movie yet, so it's obvious she's being rewarded for her work on the TV satire "Desperate Housewives." For shame, academy voters!
Things have changed quite a bit since 1977. Woody still won't show up at the ceremony, as he likewise neglected to do when "Annie Hall" topped "Star Wars" for Best Pic three decades ago, but things have changed for "Star Wars" creator George Lucas. His sixth and final Jedi installment now failed to muster a nod for special effects. Hard to fathom, in a way.
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Have any of you watched "TV Land" recently? It has gradually become the most socially-conscious network on the satellite spectrum-- short of only C-Span or C-Span II, or as I call it, The Deuce. This morning I watched a panel discussion show on African-Americans on television called "That's What I'm Talking About," hosted by Wayne Brady and featuring Harry Belafonte, Diahann Carroll, Paul Mooney, and Aaron McCruder, creator of the "Boondocks" comic strip. The network has aired a series of documentaries on the history of political and social-oriented programs, and the night-time lineup is peppered with Bunkers, Sanfords, and Evanses. Three cheers to Nick and Co. over at Viacom, but what does it say about the rest of our non-premium channels, as well as our corporate programming guardians, that a network committed to nostalgia leads the way in promoting socially-provocative entertainment?
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Here's a heading on today's Washington Post website: "Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key To Pentagon Plan." This is why you should always read the newspaper on Saturdays. Politicians notoriously choose Fridays to reveal unpopular information to the public. (An official commitment to two decades of war operation being only one example.) The idea is that people don't pay attention to the news during the weekend, and the media will have moved on to something else by Monday morning. But I caught you, Rumsfeld! The truth about perpetual war will be blogged!
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It seems to me that ole' Grandpa Munster lived life to its fullest.
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I had an interesting afternoon. I visited the Iowa Historical Museum near the state capitol. They had a Black History Month display recalling the old Center Street African-American community in Des Moines. The area, it turns out, was right in my backyard. From the 1920s until the mid-60s, there was a jazz club called the Billiken six blocks away from my apartment building, at 1200 Center. In 1939, Josephine Baker performed there as part of a U.S. tour of her Paris stage act, and Louis Armstrong brought his band through the place two years later. When I got home from the museum, I found these two related web links. If you're familiar with Des Moines, the site now claims the northeast corner of Iowa Methodist Hospital's parking lot. Cool stuff, huh?
posted by CM @ 5:58 PM
1 Comments:
"Crash" was a bit contrived and a few of the characters were less than three-dimensional, but it was hardly meaningless. It could have been better with less Ryan Phillipe and Sandra Bullock and more Terence Howard, Don Cheadle, and the Latino guy.
I'm with you in thinking that it's time the academy lightened up. I saw some great movies this year such as The Matador, Broken Flowers, and Kung-Fu Hustle. But since they weren't grand, sweeping, emotional greek tragedies, they weren't even given the time of day. It's well past time to include a comedy category. And, although I don't know how it would work, an indie category as well.
Speaking of contrived, these European films get far too much attention at Oscar time. Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea are where all the daring, interesting films are being made.
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