Post Oscar thoughts

[gervase_fen]

Best Acceptance speeches - George Clooney, who didn't thank anybody, but instead sung the praises of the best liberal traditions of Hollywood, and Nick Park, for highlighting the contribution of Peter Sallis.

Most Embarassing moment - Lauren Bacall struggling with the autocue, to introduce a meh montage of film noir. It hardly seemed worth putting her through the ordeal for just a few clips from the 40s and 50s.

Least deserved award - I'm sorry, but "The Moon and the Sun" was one of the most painfully tedious animated shorts I've ever sat through at the London Film Festival, and, at 28 minutes, barely qualifies as a short.

Pleasant surprises - "Crash" winning best film, "Six Shooter" winning best live action short, and Jon Stewart's fluent, flippant links. We particularly liked "For those keeping score... Martin Scorsese, no Oscars. 3 6 Mafia, one Oscar. "

Comments

[pyotr-stolypin.livejournal.com]

He can praise liberal values until he's blue in the face, but Syriana will never represent them. Childish agitprop at its worst. (Well, not quite at its worst; that Turkish film of 2005 featuring Jewish doctors in Iraq harvesting the internal organs of Moslems killed by US troops to feed the American medical market is worse, but that's because it's an even more egregious play to paranoia and conspiracy theory - before we get onto it's rehash of the ancient Blood Libel). Credit to Clooney for not using his acceptance speech for making cheap political points. For all that, Clooney's "Hollywood is out of touch with America and that's probably a good thing" comment is no more than an update of nineteenth century class-based criticisms of the idea of universal suffrage, but I don't think he's smart enough to parse his own words into "democracy is good only so long as we get the results we want, and if we don't, something sinister is going on". I'm reminded of the Bloomsburys, really, another wealthy and creative set of people who thought themselves such modern, liberal, free, enlightened types and ever so much more so than those smelly, excitable common types who simply don't know what's good for them, dear.