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kermelbar (Kermie)
Cinematographer
Username: Kermie
Post Number: 1615
Registered: 06-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 07, 2006 - 02:22 pm: | 
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quote:The Archie Bunker racism he claims is gone is very much alive and flourishing in the South, up to rural Ohio, and over to Montana.
Ah, and here's another example of how LA and NYC are out of touch with the rest of the country -- your post suggests that racism is alive and flourishing only in rural/southern areas. I'm not sure where you are, but based on that part of your post, I'd guess a major metropolitan area, possibly LA or NYC.
It seems people in LA and NYC like to think the country's problems are only in the Deep South, some BFE state, or some other place they have no connection to, that their city is far too superior, worldly and educated to still have problems with racism. Certainly, some places are farther along than others, but while racism may not be flourishing everywhere, I feel quite confident it is alive everywhere.
I think "the rest of the country" gets tired of being looked down on by the superior, worldly and educated people in LA and NYC. Actually, I know we do. If the people in LA and NYC would stop looking down their noses at us and tried to present our lives realistically every once in a while, the divide might not be so great.
Michael's back in March.
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Tim (Tim)
Key Grip
Username: Tim
Post Number: 933
Registered: 06-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 07, 2006 - 03:19 pm: |
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Kermel, I'm currently in Tempe, AZ (basically Phoenix).
My references were not made in judgment of those who live in certain areas, or from a holier-than-thou perspective of a city slicker. However, I am saying with a fair amount of confidence that the attitudes about racism I experienced in the San Francisco Bay Area were measurably different than that of my experiences in Ohio and Montana (for example). Not better or worse necessarily, but absolutely different. Which brings me to my main point that...
This Seitz fellow has hinged his argument against CRASH on a Unified Theory of Racism that is bogus in my opinion. Furthermore that a fairly loud and vocal group will deconstruct and vilify this film because it got in the way of serving a larger purpose. |
Kathy (Kk1024)
Cinematographer
Username: Kk1024
Post Number: 1520
Registered: 12-2002
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 07, 2006 - 03:51 pm: |
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There's even a difference between New Jersey and rural Pennsylvania.
I am the first person who gets mildly irritated with the NYC is the center of the universe and Jersey is its armpit attitude, but I agree that there is not a Unified Theory of Racism. |
Jeff Vorndam (Jeff)
Key Grip
Username: Jeff
Post Number: 865
Registered: 12-2002
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 07, 2006 - 07:40 pm: |
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quote:Whether CRASH succeeds or fails as a film is obviously open to debate and discussion, but the notion it failed because it presents a false interpretation of racism in this country is horse $hit.
All Seitz is saying is that the movie dumbs-down a complex issue that has its roots in years of societal-structural propogation. His reference to Archie Bunker is the notion that the country needed the jolt of hearing about racism expressed in a blunt, heretofore obscured manner that supposedly raises consciousness. I don't think the film even accomplishes that very well; it reduces the problem rather than illuminates it. On top of that, I don't feel the obligation to praise a movie on behalf of a (supposed) less sophisticated audience for whom this is allegedly edifying. To me, the movie was insulting, plain and simple. |
AboutFilm host (Carlo)
Moderator
Username: Carlo
Post Number: 6414
Registered: 07-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 07, 2006 - 10:30 pm: |
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And maybe the film wasn't really about race. Yes, people say explicitly things that most people only think. But the film's strength was how it dealt with the ambiguities and contradictions of people themselves... How characters are ALL racist, and yet all heroes as well... It's not just saying the capacity for both resides within us all, but that the reality of both resides within us all.
Does the film have problems? Yes. But I'm not jumping on the Bash Crash bandwagon.
AboutFilm President and Sugar Daddy (www.aboutfilm.com); OFCS Member (www.ofcs.org)
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Oh yeah? (Thezookieman)
Cinematographer
Username: Thezookieman
Post Number: 3119
Registered: 06-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 07, 2006 - 11:39 pm: |
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I think one of the main points of the film Crash was, Angelenos do not connect on a person-to-person basis that much, and the only way that they do is if they meet by accident, and that the meetings are usually done via the automobile. (I often joke that in LA, you drive everywhere -- even to the bathroom!) The next point is the race thing. The "NY is the center of the universe" mindset is to be expected, since it was the root of the then-nascent technologies of radio and television, as well as the entire industry of book and magazine publishing. You make tea for a living, and every bush is a tea plant, simple as that.
Tomorrow on FX they are going to show the debut of the reality TV show Black. White. Two families, one white, one black, undergo three hours of makeup a day to switch races, and then the cameras follow them as they go out in the world. Do they encounter racist people, and how do they react? Does the white guy turned black get followed around when he walks around a store? Does the black boy turned white get more or less attention on the baseball diamond or the basketball court? Is the "South Pacific" song ("You've Got To Be Taught") still true with kids of the MTV Generation? And how do the two families interpret the same situations, whether they are in makeup or not?
Check your local listings but in our area the show should be on at 10 pm EST Wednesday March 7, on FX.
Standing in the shadow of the One True City...
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Son Of... (Docscribe)
Studio Mogul
Username: Docscribe
Post Number: 7024
Registered: 05-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 07, 2006 - 11:48 pm: |
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Tim re:
quote:"Above Doc references this upset in context of the "Bush years".
That was merely acknowledging my general agreement with Dana's post further up the thread about the Academy's sorry string of Best Pic choices so far this millennium. If anything, I was just expressing amusement over how closely this enshrinement of artistic 'half-assedness' has seemed to parallel the political climate. Being neither social scientist nor sage, read any more into that at your peril. I was just head-scratching and shrugging over sorry state of the American zeitgeist. I know you know you can do better than this. I don't get this settling for second best on so many fronts.
quote:"Is this really about CRASH, or is it about BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN not winning?"
If you think my general disdain for Crash (apart from some creditable elements in it*) is anything new here, then you simply haven't been paying close enough attention these past months. And besides, what an insulting thing to suggest, as if my love for this medium could be that mindlessly reactionary (the same nonsense that industry milk-cow Ebert has been projectile squirting since this debate started). I mean, do you really believe I form my opinions about works that narrowly? Rallying around particular films like celluloid maypoles?
The easiest way for me to refute that claim is to simply restate something I've been saying from the get-go about Brokeback Mountain...it's not a political film, or at least not in narrowest sense of the word (although all human choices and actions are, on some level, political). But even more to the point Tim, Brokeback was a film that had such a stink of polite, coffee-table, PC-safe artsiness about it that I had to be dragged practically kicking and screaming to even see it...fearing most of all, 2 hours of gay soft porn, uneasily mixed with social apologia and political polemic. To my own disbelief, it floored me - rocked me where I live - and I haven't stopped yacking about the damn thing ever since. Even after a third viewing, that story and its larger themes - all that universal stuff about desire, and duty, and denial, and loss, and picking up the pieces and carrying on, expressed by those wonderful, memorable characters, both male and female - has continued to amaze me as a story in images and sounds. It wasn't an arty-art work like Mulholland Drive, or Magnolia, or other form-bending films...it felt more like the cinematic equivalent of folk-blues-art, like the music of Robert Johnson, or Woody Guthrie, or heck, even Joni Mitchell during her Hejira period. Brokeback had that same kind of bittersweet and elegigac 'time & place', 'nothing & everything' feel, playing like some quirky little half-forgotten melody hummed only to yourself because you can't imagine anyone else caring to hear it. I mean, this was a movie where no one got what they wanted...nothing in their lives turned out like they imagined...no choice was the absolutely correct and satisfying thing to do. There was no hero, no villain, no winner...Brokeback Mountain was as confounding, mysterious, and quietly passionate in its celebration of 'playing with the cards dealt' as anything I have ever seen on screen.
quote:"My sense is that had Brokeback Mountain won it have been applauded as a shot at the religous right and George Bush, who regularly crusade against homosexuals"
No...it would have just been relief over the Academy honouring the significantly better film...a more original, authentic, and disciplined narrative...expressed with less blubbering stridency...about a subject so rarely dealt with at all, much less on this intimate-epic scale. And Brokeback was such a crackerjack production. And it's still making a pile of dough worldwide. And you know what, those two shirts Ennis and Jack wore just sold for $100,000 on eBay. Movie product merely blowing through the 'plexes doesn't touch people that deeply...mattering enough that such iconic artifacts somehow must be permanently preserved (FTR, the proceeds went to Variety Kids). Although for a good cause, sure, that's kinda nuts, but it demonstrates how much this film has meant to some folks who never thought such a story would ever be told, or told this well, or cross-over within the culture as it has.
No, I think this one is the reel deal, and any politicking that has occurred on either side of the fence has essentially missed the whole darn point! I don't support it like I would a political platform; I love it as a story and form of cinematic expression.
quote:I wasn't all that inspired by any of the nominated films this year and frankly didn't care which film won. To me this isn't even in the same league as Rocky vs. Taxi Driver, Dances With Wolves vs. Goodfellas, English Patient vs. Fargo, or Forrest Gump vs. Pulp Fiction.
Well, this isn't about you...or me...or for that matter, anyone's personal preferences regarding movie entertainment...or shouldn't be. If the Academy was doing its collective job better - which obviously I don't believe they are - then more often (heck, I'd settle for occasionally) they would take the longer view and ask themselves the harder questions before voting: "Which film honoured the medium best? "Which film used and expanded the language most?", "Which film has a better chance of standing?"
Of course there aren't any purely objective standards for judging that, but if more Academy members were truly being honest with themselves about honouring their chosen art, there would be some less-than-noble subjective impulses they would catch before taking the credibility of this award down closer to addled, popularity contest irrelevancy.
* Dillon was one of my Pearls Before Swine choices. Terence Howard and Ryan Phillipe were both interesting as well. I even liked Don Cheadle amd Thandie Newton, but Haggis just kept putting those gawdawful words in their mouths. And Crash looked okay too...it was just Haggis' unrelenting ball-peen hammer to the skull, his too-coincidental-even-for-irony story structure, plus that shrill, one-note pitch to the whole thing. It was like bigot porn or something.
"I'll take Bengali Folk Songs for a 100 Alex."
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Chris Marti (Cmarti)
Movie Star
Username: Cmarti
Post Number: 5295
Registered: 12-2002
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 08, 2006 - 08:14 am: |
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If I were looking for a new nickname to use here I would choose "Industry Milk Cow." |
AdamL (Adaml)
Cinematographer
Username: Adaml
Post Number: 1632
Registered: 08-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 08, 2006 - 08:27 am: |
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quote:Someone should have realized that the TelePrompTer font was too small for Lauren Bacall to read from that distance. I can't stand such insensitivity. Why should you have a screen legend made to look like a doddering old woman?
Why couldn't she just remember her lines. Its her job after all. If she cant she shouldn't have volunteered. |
kermelbar (Kermie)
Cinematographer
Username: Kermie
Post Number: 1618
Registered: 06-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 08, 2006 - 08:43 am: |
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I figured that she was too vain to wear glasses.
Michael's back in March.
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Tim (Tim)
Key Grip
Username: Tim
Post Number: 934
Registered: 06-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 08, 2006 - 11:20 am: |
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Doc to be clear I only referenced your Bush comment because I think in a round-about way it ties into the larger commentary in the media about the Oscar's this year. I was very clear in my post that what I was primarily challenging was the Seitz article Jeff posted, and the general tone of the discussion about CRASH and BBM. It feels different to me this year than it has in the past when cinephiles were disappointed in the films(artists) that won. It seems more political than I ever recall. Maybe I'm imagining it, but I doubt it.
Your last paragraph hits the proverbial nail on the head and one I completely agree with, but how is this a new revelation? Going back to the Seitz essay it seems to be suggested this is current trend, and that the Academy used to get it right. If it isn't/wasn't a popularity contest how in hell did ROCKY beat TAXI DRIVER 30 years ago? But to also play the devils advocate the most popular film a few years ago (RETURNS OF THE KING) I fully supported to win (since I can't vote "fully supporting means squat!).
And despite the fact it isn't about me, I'm going to make my post about me...I think the three OTHER films will actually hold up better 10, 20, 30 years from now...especially CAPOTE, but what do I know.
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AboutFilm host (Carlo)
Moderator
Username: Carlo
Post Number: 6415
Registered: 07-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 08, 2006 - 04:28 pm: |
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Like I said, I liked Crash, but I suspect Brokeback will hold up better. I also fail to see how the Best Picture could not be the Best Directed Picture in any but the most exceptional circumstances.
AboutFilm President and Sugar Daddy (www.aboutfilm.com); OFCS Member (www.ofcs.org)
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AdamL (Adaml)
Cinematographer
Username: Adaml
Post Number: 1633
Registered: 08-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 08, 2006 - 04:40 pm: |
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Haven't posted m thoughts yet as I only saw the show last night. Tried to avoid the results for two days but heard "there's a big shock" and knew that meant Crash had won.
Anyway...
1, What was the point of going on and on and on and on about piracy. Surely they were preaching to the converted.
2, Stewart started dreadfully (that Angelina Jolie adoption gag was cringeworthy) but got better. An improvement on Rock but not as good as Martin.
3, George Clooney is cool.
4, Jack Nicholson is cool.
5, Presenters should be forced to memorise their intro. No reading off the teleprompter.
6, I didn't think too much of any Best Picture nominee (My thoughts ranged from disliked to liked) so am not really that bothered about the winner.
7, I like that there wasn't a juggernaut that won everything it was nominated for. |
Tim (Tim)
Key Grip
Username: Tim
Post Number: 936
Registered: 06-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 08, 2006 - 05:47 pm: |
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Adam, I didn't notice the piracy thing as much as them selling the experience of the "big screen". Clearly they were threatened by the numbers in '05 and are worried home theater is biting into their business (they should be worried!).
George might be TOO cool.
Nicholson WAS cool. (as in 10 years ago!)
I liked Stewart...hope they ask him back.
Carlo, I have to wonder if Brokeback becomes a novelty film over time? Can it escape the "gay cowboy movie" label and ever just be a movie? |
AdamL (Adaml)
Cinematographer
Username: Adaml
Post Number: 1634
Registered: 08-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 08, 2006 - 06:46 pm: |
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quote:Adam, I didn't notice the piracy thing as much as them selling the experience of the "big screen". Clearly they were threatened by the numbers in '05 and are worried home theater is biting into their business (they should be worried!).
I think they were attacking pirate DVDs as well which I guess must impact theatre sales.
And what are you one about, Nicholson is still way cool?! I love how ridiculously laid back he was when other presenters were stiff and trying really hard not to screw up.
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Son Of... (Docscribe)
Studio Mogul
Username: Docscribe
Post Number: 7028
Registered: 05-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, March 09, 2006 - 12:55 am: |
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Tim re:
quote:"Doc to be clear I only referenced your Bush comment because I think in a round-about way it ties into the larger commentary in the media about the Oscar's this year...It feels different to me this year than it has in the past when cinephiles were disappointed in the films(artists) that won. It seems more political than I ever recall. Maybe I'm imagining it, but I doubt it."
Okay, but in other years, even if you disagreed with the Academy's choice(s), you could more often than not at least understand their upscale 'trade award' rationale. Their chosen Best Pic invariably made more money relative to its cost (you can't say that about Crash)...it played equally well or better Internationally (you can't say that about Crash)...it won the lion's share of top Foreign and Guild awards like the BAFTA, PGA, and DGA (you can't say that about Crash), and even if its reviews weren't uniform raves, then at least they were generally good, with few, if any, outright pans (you certainly can't say that about Crash). So even by the Academy's typical 'right up the middle' selection criteria - the best quality (studio) production, with the best (or good enough) intentions, that performed up to (or beyond) commercial expectations - then this particular win makes no sense. Especially since, as you've conceded, Crash wasn't even the second best among the alternatives!
This is why I think the political/social angle has been so rudely interjected into this debate, which it never had any business becoming as a factor in evaluating motion picture achievement (like I said, Brokeback wasn't a political movie - you could even argue that it was the least political among this year's nominees)! So this selection couldn't help appearing exactly as its critics have contended: which film had the best chance of preventing 'Brokeback Mountain' from becoming the Best Picture of the year?' Those tales of Academy members (old and young) so skeeved-out by the subject matter alone that they refused - by their own admission - to even see the film, defacto becomes the most plausible explanation, and thus the 'lightning rod' issue. Wish it were not so, but how else can you explain it? Collective brain fart?
quote:"Your last paragraph hits the proverbial nail on the head and one I completely agree with, but how is this a new revelation?...If it isn't/wasn't a popularity contest how in hell did ROCKY beat TAXI DRIVER 30 years ago?"
Interesting example, because the original Rocky was very well-received critcally, and had the same kind of impressive grassroots b.o. performance as Brokeback. Taxi Driver, on the other hand - although a considerably better piece of art - was a creepy, violent, R-rated film that underperformed commercially outside of major cities (although after the fact it has become a huge 'evergreen' success on home video). Yes, that was a legendary Academy goof, but not made in a vacuum, and not because a major supporting character was an underaged prostitute. Of course, this was also 1976...would Rocky have won if he'd been plaintively screaming "Apollo"? No parallel universe handy where we can test that theory, but I think we both already know the likeliest answer.
quote:"I think the three OTHER films will actually hold up better 10, 20, 30 years from now...especially CAPOTE, but what do I know."
We will just have to agree to disagree on that one - my left butt cheek is still half-asleep from my Munich experience...I thought Good Night, and Good Luck, although beautifully recreated in terms of period detail, was something of a waxworks...and Capote (the best of these alternatives) kinda/sorta worked - good, and in measure, often very good (certainly remarkable for a first time director), but just didn't feel like the stuff of greatness. No missing gaps in the human tapestry and folklore of America being filled-in with quite the same mastery and verve as Brokeback Mountain...an epic to boot.
IMO, no other way to spin this one...not only did the Best American Picture of '05 lose, but lost to the least defensible alternative. The apparent reason: fear.
"I'll take Bengali Folk Songs for a 100 Alex."
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Tim (Tim)
Key Grip
Username: Tim
Post Number: 937
Registered: 06-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, March 09, 2006 - 05:22 pm: |
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Doc, paragraph 1...very nice. Hard to argue with that.
So we do agree that for right or wrong, politics has entered into the equation (This is why I think the political/social angle has been so rudely interjected into this debate...? Last year The Passion was taken hostage by the political crowd and many on the right said it was shut out of Oscar because it was too right-wing religious. Even though Ang Lee (and the writers) may not have set out to make a political film, I think the last year of hearing debates on homosexual marraige has pushed BBM into the realm of politics.
As for the outright pans of CRASH, one could argue that is a virtue. Kubrick, Lynch, and Stone have been crucified by critics for making horrible movies. I'm NOT saying the Crash director (don't even know who he is) is in the same league as those guys...but being credited as both the best and worst film of the year may suggest it is polarizing, and at least interesting?
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Guynoir (Guynoir)
Cinematographer
Username: Guynoir
Post Number: 1249
Registered: 02-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, March 09, 2006 - 08:30 pm: |
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But who does think Crash was the best film of the year (other than Ebert)? Most (all?) of its fans on these boards aren't agreeing that the movie deserves that Best Pic statuette. Oscar voters thought it worthy of that distinction, perhaps--but many of them may just prefer it to the other nominees (and there's the speculation--likely founded--that many of them didn't even bother watching Brokeback). Gibson's Passion was never going to win major Oscars (whatever you may think of it, it was made outside of H'wood and in Aramaic, not just a foreign language but a dead one).
The main reasons that Crash is an odd choice for Best Pic are:
1. (As Doc noted above), Brokeback pretty much swept all the earlier awards (except the SAGs, whose members were carpet-bombed with Crash DVDs). The Academy is "out of touch" here--and not in the way Clooney was talking about.
2. The flick isn't a safe, middlebrow choice (like too many past winners to name here) but is instead, a mean and ugly confrontational work (Paul Haggis probably thinks he is the second coming of Bertolt Brecht). Maybe if it had been directed by a matinee idol, the Crash win would've had me saying, "Well, alright. Underserved, but probably inevitable." But Haggis was just a struggling screenwriter til a few years ago...now he's scripted the last two Best Pictures. Depressing. |
Oh yeah? (Thezookieman)
Movie Star
Username: Thezookieman
Post Number: 3133
Registered: 06-2001
| | Posted on Friday, March 10, 2006 - 12:05 am: |
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It took SEVEN YEARS for Brokeback Mountain to be made. Most of the delay came from the agents of the two leads, who were afraid that they would forever be scarred from the experience of having played gay characters. I do not think that the current Bush administration climate had much to do with its reception as you would think.
There is an interesting theory that I saw floated by someone on a "Brokeback" fanatics forum. Among other things, this person said the following:
quote:I would advise people here who want to write to AMPAS about the Brokeback Mountain snub to save their energy. You want change? You want validation? Then you had better try and join the Academy and achieve change from within. I have a sneaking suspicion that that is what happened in this case. Follow my logic for a moment: if you are nominated for an Oscar, you become a voting member of AMPAS. The black community in America has been historically pretty homophobic. There has been a recent upsurge of black AMPAS members. So...
Well, it's certainly one explanation!
The only consolation I have is that now "Brokeback" will join the pantheon of films that deserved the Best Picture Oscar and lost.
And I agree with Adam that unless there is really a lot of information to be passed on, the use of TelePrompTers should be abolished. I mean, these are awards given to and presented by actors (for the most part) -- surely, memorizing a three-line bit of banter shouldn't be that hard for them to do? Morgan Freeman showed that even the most consummate professional can mess up on live television, after all, and he survived, so why shouldn't more presenters be willing to rely on their memory?
Standing in the shadow of the One True City...
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