Sunday, February 22, 2015

The statuettes are out tonight

So tonight is the night that Hollywood is actually giving away those Oscar statuettes. I have to admit that once again, I haven't seen the nominated movies. I live in the middle of nowhere, and my personal life means that I rarely get to go to the movies. The one thing I notice, though, is that neither Selma nor American Sniper seem to be getting the sort of buzz which indicates that they'd be big winners. I suppose that's not a bad thing since both of the movies seemed to have politicized kerfuffles surrounding them. Selma, of course is an Important Movie about The Black Experience, so to say anything bad about it is to commit the horrible sin of racism, just like it was a sin not to like Philadelphia because of the gay lead. In fact, I've found Philadelphia to be a movie that makes Guess Who's Coming to Dinner look subtle, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is a movie I don't particularly care for. I'm not a huge Katharine Hepburn fan, remember.

As for American Sniper ZOMG it's not didactically anti-war!!!111!!! Or something like that. And it was directed by Clint Eastwood, who had the audacity to speak against St. Obama at the 2012 Republican National Convention! And there are a lot of people happy that it's pissing the Right People off. (Not that I voted for either Romney or Obama.) I only saw the commercials for American Sniper, and the impression I got from the commercials is that it looks tedious and mawkish. But of course, I'm not the biggest fan of war movies. The other caveat is that I got the same impression from the commercials for Steven Spielberg's War Horse (another film I'll admit I haven't seen). I don't remember any rending of garments over the politics of that movie.

For those who enjoy watching the Oscar telecast, have fun staying up past midnight. I've probably pointed it out before, but I've long not been a fan of the actual awards shows, what with the constant breaks for things like the Oscar-nominated songs, or people who clap during the Parade of the Dead. Or the unfunny jokes.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh Ted. You haven't seen any of the films but you have all these opinions about them anyway? Whose bias confirmations are you parroting, Ted? Do you check under your bed at night for "progs"?