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Oscars miniscreed
Jan. 25th, 2005 04:45 pmPaul Giamatti doesn't get nominated for Best Actor, but Clint Eastwood does? Wow- if I needed an excuse to blow off the Oscars this year, that would pretty much do it.
Edit: How much do you want to bet that this results in next year's being another year like 1998, where four out of five of the Best Picture nominees were (nominally) independents? (I say "nominally" because, well, Miramax hasn't been anything like independent since about 1994. That, however, is a rant of another color, as is my feeling towards the treatment of, say, Kinsey or I *Heart* Huckabee's or, well, any particularly adventurous movie by the Oscars this year. If this keeps up, we're gonna see Kevin Costner on the podium again- and who wants that on their hands?)
Also- while I do indeed think Scorsese is one of the most adventurous of American directors, isn't all this adulation happening about 25 years too late? Where were all these backslappers when Redford won for Ordinary People against Scorsese's Raging Bull? Not, mind you, that I think Scorsese has too much to complain about vis a vis his treatment at Hollywood's hands; if you want to know about Hollywood's tendancy to gladhand auteur directors with honorary awards while simultaneously leaving them off of ballots (or simply refusing to back their work), just ask, say, Orson Welles (who did win one award for Kane- best screenplay, which he shared with Herman J. Manckiewicz. Given that Welles himself was up for three other Oscars, and that the film itself was up for nine {for example, Bernard Herrmann's brilliant score lost to... The Devil and Daniel Webster, a much more conventional-sounding Herrmann score} Oscars {best screenplay was Kane's only win}, it's hard not to see this as a reward for Hollywood insider Manckiewicz, and a slap in the face to perceived upstart Welles... okay, okay; I'm stopping now.)
Edit: How much do you want to bet that this results in next year's being another year like 1998, where four out of five of the Best Picture nominees were (nominally) independents? (I say "nominally" because, well, Miramax hasn't been anything like independent since about 1994. That, however, is a rant of another color, as is my feeling towards the treatment of, say, Kinsey or I *Heart* Huckabee's or, well, any particularly adventurous movie by the Oscars this year. If this keeps up, we're gonna see Kevin Costner on the podium again- and who wants that on their hands?)
Also- while I do indeed think Scorsese is one of the most adventurous of American directors, isn't all this adulation happening about 25 years too late? Where were all these backslappers when Redford won for Ordinary People against Scorsese's Raging Bull? Not, mind you, that I think Scorsese has too much to complain about vis a vis his treatment at Hollywood's hands; if you want to know about Hollywood's tendancy to gladhand auteur directors with honorary awards while simultaneously leaving them off of ballots (or simply refusing to back their work), just ask, say, Orson Welles (who did win one award for Kane- best screenplay, which he shared with Herman J. Manckiewicz. Given that Welles himself was up for three other Oscars, and that the film itself was up for nine {for example, Bernard Herrmann's brilliant score lost to... The Devil and Daniel Webster, a much more conventional-sounding Herrmann score} Oscars {best screenplay was Kane's only win}, it's hard not to see this as a reward for Hollywood insider Manckiewicz, and a slap in the face to perceived upstart Welles... okay, okay; I'm stopping now.)
