Trust me, I know how this is going to sound.
cleolinda on overwrought reactions to Oscar nominations:I don't know--I'm to a point where I find snubs and shocks more entertaining than anything. Remember when Brokeback Mountain lost Best Picture to Crash? And the world didn't end, and all the copies of Brokeback Mountain weren't chucked into a landfill so you could never enjoy it ever again, and it's still a major modern cultural touchstone? And no one really cares or talks about Crash anymore? Awards and nominations are nice in the way they ripple into the future and give people new opportunities, but that's about it. The greatness of something speaks for itself, whether it wins or loses, and a lack of actual greatness overwrites undeserved places in history, really. Let nature take its course in terms of how legacies are decided, and enjoy the circus for the silliness it is, I guess.
Excellent points all around, very sensible, and for the most part I agree with her. However, I cannot laugh or smile at her hyperbole because I DO remember quite vividly when Brokeback Mountain lost to Crash and, even after all these years, it still hurts. Believe me, I wish I didn't feel this way, but I don't know how to make it stop.
I know exactly how this sounds. I know very well that it is foolish, petty, childish, etc. to care so much about something that, in the grand scheme of things, really doesn't matter that much at all. I also know that it is really quite pathetic to STILL care so much about something like this 5+ years after the fact. I know that the more prudent and sensible course of action would be to not take things like this personally. But here's the thing: I don't know how to stop taking things personally. Is this a teachable skill? Is there some course one could take, a simple, step-by-step method by which one can learn to depersonalize things? If so, sign me up!
So, I'm just going to say this one thing that I've been wanting to say for a while and then, hopefully, I can just suffer in silence from here on out:
Congratulations, Paul Haggis, on your Academy Award for Best Short Film. Because that's really what you won. There was literally one good scene in the entire movie. It was an absolutely brilliant short film surrounded by a whole lot marshmallow fluff pretending to be something substantial.
It starts when Matt Dillon and Ryan Phillipe pull over Terence Howard and Thandie Newton for a traffic violation, and ends when Thandie Newton and Terence Howard are back in their car and she shies away from his comforting gesture. I am not being sarcastic when I tell you that I love that scene. I hate the rest of the movie, but I love that scene because, unlike the rest of the movie, it had irony and it had subtext and it had people behaving in believable ways. The rest of the movie had some of those things in other places, but only that scene had all three of them together. Most of all, the actors were allowed to actually communicate their thoughts and feelings without words which, as the communication experts say, is the way that most human communication actually takes place.
So, Paul Haggis...you think you know what you won? You have no idea.
Excellent points all around, very sensible, and for the most part I agree with her. However, I cannot laugh or smile at her hyperbole because I DO remember quite vividly when Brokeback Mountain lost to Crash and, even after all these years, it still hurts. Believe me, I wish I didn't feel this way, but I don't know how to make it stop.
I know exactly how this sounds. I know very well that it is foolish, petty, childish, etc. to care so much about something that, in the grand scheme of things, really doesn't matter that much at all. I also know that it is really quite pathetic to STILL care so much about something like this 5+ years after the fact. I know that the more prudent and sensible course of action would be to not take things like this personally. But here's the thing: I don't know how to stop taking things personally. Is this a teachable skill? Is there some course one could take, a simple, step-by-step method by which one can learn to depersonalize things? If so, sign me up!
So, I'm just going to say this one thing that I've been wanting to say for a while and then, hopefully, I can just suffer in silence from here on out:
Congratulations, Paul Haggis, on your Academy Award for Best Short Film. Because that's really what you won. There was literally one good scene in the entire movie. It was an absolutely brilliant short film surrounded by a whole lot marshmallow fluff pretending to be something substantial.
It starts when Matt Dillon and Ryan Phillipe pull over Terence Howard and Thandie Newton for a traffic violation, and ends when Thandie Newton and Terence Howard are back in their car and she shies away from his comforting gesture. I am not being sarcastic when I tell you that I love that scene. I hate the rest of the movie, but I love that scene because, unlike the rest of the movie, it had irony and it had subtext and it had people behaving in believable ways. The rest of the movie had some of those things in other places, but only that scene had all three of them together. Most of all, the actors were allowed to actually communicate their thoughts and feelings without words which, as the communication experts say, is the way that most human communication actually takes place.
So, Paul Haggis...you think you know what you won? You have no idea.