Oscar

[unclenikolai]

I'm a little tired from it being late and having walked around SF and the Fruitvale BART station, but I'll try to keep this tight

Comments

[dot_codotzid_a]

Once more, I couldn't agree more. To paraphrase Curtis White, American culture has learned to satisfy the American public, giving it what it wants and nothing more. Culture is about what is entertaining, and the only words in our popular vocabulary for criticizing film today is "entertaining" and "not entertaining." Criticism itself, reduced to sound bites and short phrases in the back section of a newspaper are given an exclusively monetarial value: all they are supposed to tell one is if the film is worth coughing over eight bucks for or not. Shame on us. Film should challenge, push the boundaries, and refute and all costs the possibility of reducing itself to cliché and trite rehashed plots, overloading stories with overpaid actors and CG. Fuck CG. Fuck hackneyed slip-in's about civil rights and overcoming obstacles, and all that shit. Fuck Project Greenlight and Paris Hilton's ass as she shows up at Sundance for disgracing independent film and making it fodder for the industry to suck in for itself like Karl Rove on an undecided

[ndmonroey]

It's almost as if we're talking about an industry built with the express purpose of entertaining the public.

[dot_codotzid_a]

fuckin christ nathan, that's not the point. the fact that film has been industrialized in the first place is a damn shame. Just because its there doesn't make me feel the slightest affection for its doings, or its purpose.

[kerala_jane]

oh my shit nathan... really? an industry just for that?! thats CRAZY

[unclenikolai]

so are the book industry or the comic book industry, but they still manage to turn out a higher amount of quality product and when the get together to heap praise, its usually toward those who deserve it.
The Oscars are not the fucking Billboard awards, they are susposadly about honoring those who are making achievments in cinema.

[unclenikolai]

you lost me a little bit with Lucy Liu and the guy from the Grand Lake, but I see where you going with this. Sure movies are a mainly capitalist endevour, bu certainly in our time period they seem to have become the most contrived, manipulative that they ever were. But I think the real problem is that shlock like Ray and The Aviator is so easily passed on as Art in today's movie arena. That are vision has been clouded enough to fall for any two-bit attempt at emotion. I'm not saying it was ever perfect ,but we've gotten kinda stuck in the shit recently.

[dot_codotzid_a]

but the thing is, were stuck in the shit, were getting pushed into the shit.. the shit is all over us and its being honored with gold coated statuettes. This is what sells, and its what's considered great film... and people just keep sucking it up. The Aviator, ok, whatever.. bad, calculated, and shit, But Ray and Hotel Rwanda.. there was something so connived there. Its worse than before not just because there's so much of it and its so mainstream, but also because its just so bad.. and pushes this post politically-correct vision of the world in ways not seen before. Maybe i'm just paranoid, but I have good reason to be. those are just two examples.

As for lucy liu, if you go up the stairs to the baystreet theater you'll see what i mean.

[morrthran]

i agree. the industry has de-evolved into a crass pit of shit intended for entertaining the base masses with banal advertisment infested bullshit. film in this regard can no longer be considered as art.. its all just as bad as tv. maybe worse. ...and the sad thing is, the masses elevate this shit to the status of art, out of their own ignorance. fuck they would not know art if it bit them on the ass. on occasion there are abnormalities to this norm.. but such occurances are rare.. ah well.