Languish.org

This is should not will according to you.

As for who *will* win, I think it's going to be a movie about either a black man, a gay man or a disabled man, because Oscars. :P

Admittedly, I have only seen the Grand Budapest Hotel so far, but plan to see at least the Imitation Game, the Theory of Everything, Birdman and Whiplash.

Where is Habs? :(

Quote from: Martinus on February 22, 2015, 09:00:10 AM
This is should not will according to you.

Marti cannot into thread.

Of the ones I've seen (not many) I think Whiplash should win.

I think Boyhood or Birdman probably will. Which, from what I've heard, will be good.

I voted for the one movie I've seen from that list. It happens to be a really good one too, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Voted for Whiplash, but I wouldn't be too bothered if Grand Budapest/Birdman/Boyhood won. There's isn't a film that's head and shoulders above all others. Personally I think this year's harvest is worse than last year's, too.

Quote from: Liep on February 22, 2015, 10:01:10 AM
I voted for the one movie I've seen from that list. It happens to be a really good one too, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

It seems to be the case for most people.  :lol:

It is the only one (except I think Salma) which wasn't released during the last couple of months.

Quote from: grumbler on February 22, 2015, 09:25:10 AM

Quote from: Martinus on February 22, 2015, 09:00:10 AM
This is should not will according to you.

Marti cannot into thread.

It is not bad grammar. I just should have put quotation marks around "should" and "will".

Quote from: Martinus on February 22, 2015, 10:10:25 AM

Quote from: grumbler on February 22, 2015, 09:25:10 AM

Quote from: Martinus on February 22, 2015, 09:00:10 AM
This is should not will according to you.

Marti cannot into thread.

It is not bad grammar. I just should have put quotation marks around "should" and "will".

:lol:

It is good not bad according to you grammar.

Isn't this just swell?

Quote from: garbon on February 22, 2015, 10:20:51 AM
Isn't this just swell?

Meh, the Grand Budapest is the movie that should not will according to us win.

What else to talk about according to us there is.

Boyhood!

Only movie on the list I've seen was Selma, which was really good so I'll vote for that. :)

Birdman.

Interesting that an Oscar nominee has already made it to cable.

Glad that Arquette won it; her character and performance were the single most compelling thing in Boyhood.

I think the awards were allright; can't think of any egregious snub.

I wish Cumberbatch won instead of Redmayne but this is mainly based on personal preference, as I haven't watched either movie yet.

All gaysphere is aflutter with the acceptance speech of the Imitation Game writer. :P

And of course POLSKA POLSKA POLSKA.

Ok, I still feel silly rooting for a movie based on nationality. :P

Quote from: Barrister on February 22, 2015, 11:52:17 AM
Only movie on the list I've seen was Selma, which was really good so I'll vote for that. :)

Funnily, it's the only movie on the list that didn't win an Oscar for anything. :P

Quote from: Martinus on February 23, 2015, 06:23:34 AM

And of course POLSKA POLSKA POLSKA.

Ok, I still feel silly rooting for a movie based on nationality. :P

It was slightly sillier here where they were rooting for Ida because it had a Danish producer. :P

Quote from: Liep on February 23, 2015, 06:39:59 AM

Quote from: Martinus on February 23, 2015, 06:23:34 AM

And of course POLSKA POLSKA POLSKA.

Ok, I still feel silly rooting for a movie based on nationality. :P

It was slightly sillier here where they were rooting for Ida because it had a Danish producer. :P

:lol:

That, and we beat Russians. :P

Then again, the Russian movie is a cry against the creeping authoritarianism of the country and the crushing of the common man by the authorities, with its author being now denounced by Putin's ministers, so maybe it wouldn't have been a terrible thing if it won.

No Oscar for best posting of fripperies on Languish.  :(

So Birdman won.  Any thoughts?  I didn't see it.

I have heard people say NPH was painful to watch as a host.  He is kind of a dork off-script so I could see that.

Quote from: Valmy on February 23, 2015, 08:46:00 AM
So Birdman won.  Any thoughts?  I didn't see it.

Haven't seen it either, but it's winning fits perfectly in the Academy Awards winner hierarchy.

QuoteI have heard people say NPH was painful to watch as a host.  He is kind of a dork off-script so I could see that.

He didn't fuck up.  Best you could say.

I blame Bruce Villanche.

Quote from: Valmy on February 23, 2015, 08:46:00 AM
So Birdman won.  Any thoughts?  I didn't see it.

I have heard people say NPH was painful to watch as a host.  He is kind of a dork off-script so I could see that.

No real laughs, though I did chuckle at that balls joke. Bad timing though, as it came right after a story about a winner's son who committed suicide and the joke was on the expense of the winner's dress.

Quote from: Liep on February 23, 2015, 09:02:03 AM

Quote from: Valmy on February 23, 2015, 08:46:00 AM
So Birdman won.  Any thoughts?  I didn't see it.

I have heard people say NPH was painful to watch as a host.  He is kind of a dork off-script so I could see that.

No real laughs, though I did chuckle at that balls joke. Bad timing though, as it came right after a story about a winner's son who committed suicide and the joke was on the expense of the winner's dress.

:bleeding:

And the sudden halt in play off music when that Pole mentioned his dead wife was also funny.

By the way, with BAFTA being hosted by Stephen Fry and Oscars by NPH, can we safely say film making industry proves once again that it is so conservative, only a married white man can host it?  :(

NPH won't host again, so no.

Quote from: Liep on February 23, 2015, 09:05:00 AM
NPH won't host again, so no.

I think you missed the joke.

Quote from: Valmy on February 23, 2015, 09:11:38 AM

Quote from: Liep on February 23, 2015, 09:05:00 AM
NPH won't host again, so no.

I think you missed the joke.

Possibly, I didn't see the Bafta so I don't know if Fry bombed. :(

Can we all agree that Lego won the Oscars though?

Quote from: Liep on February 23, 2015, 09:42:53 AM
Possibly, I didn't see the Bafta so I don't know if Fry bombed. :(

The joke was that they are both white men and are (gay) married.  So they represent a return to old fashioned values.

Heh, wasn't aware of that. Greg Berlanti, of Arrow and Flash fame, was the head writer of the show.

Quote from: Martinus on February 23, 2015, 09:03:46 AM
By the way, with BAFTA being hosted by Stephen Fry and Oscars by NPH, can we safely say film making industry proves once again that it is so conservative, only a married white man can host it?  :(

Ellen DeGeneres hosted last year and in 2007.

Quote from: The Larch on February 23, 2015, 10:29:46 AM

Quote from: Martinus on February 23, 2015, 09:03:46 AM
By the way, with BAFTA being hosted by Stephen Fry and Oscars by NPH, can we safely say film making industry proves once again that it is so conservative, only a married white man can host it?  :(

Ellen DeGeneres hosted last year and in 2007.

She's also white & married. Marti is only 1/3 wrong here.

Quote from: Valmy on February 23, 2015, 09:55:20 AM

Quote from: Liep on February 23, 2015, 09:42:53 AM
Possibly, I didn't see the Bafta so I don't know if Fry bombed. :(

The joke was that they are both white men and are (gay) married.  So they represent a return to old fashioned values.

Oh I see now that he changed his post. What I commented on was about gays cornering the market on hosting.

Selma should win, because the Democrats need it to maintain the race baiting going.

Quote from: Siege on February 23, 2015, 11:10:53 AM
Selma should win, because the Democrats need it to maintain the race baiting going.

Shall we put some money on it?  Because I am feeling Birdman.

Quote from: Valmy on February 23, 2015, 11:13:46 AM

Quote from: Siege on February 23, 2015, 11:10:53 AM
Selma should win, because the Democrats need it to maintain the race baiting going.

Shall we put some money on it?  Because I am feeling Birdman.

You got it. I predict Selma will win.
What do you want to bet?
And when is the Oscars thing?

I got it now, Siege is a time traveler from the past.

Quote from: Siege on February 23, 2015, 11:21:25 AM
You got it. I predict Selma will win.
What do you want to bet?
And when is the Oscars thing?

:lol:

Just playing with you Siege.  The Oscars were last night and Birdman won.

Quote from: Valmy on February 23, 2015, 08:46:00 AM
So Birdman won.  Any thoughts?  I didn't see it.

One of the few times I've agreed with the Best Picture winner of the year.  :cheers:

Quote from: Valmy on February 23, 2015, 11:22:52 AM

Quote from: Siege on February 23, 2015, 11:21:25 AM
You got it. I predict Selma will win.
What do you want to bet?
And when is the Oscars thing?

:lol:

Just playing with you Siege.  The Oscars were last night and Birdman won.

:mad:

You got the movement conservative racism down, but you are supposed to be subtle with it.

I voted 'Murican Sniper USA! USA!, but the only other one I've seen is Birdman and I think that one will win.  ;)

i havent seen American sniper.

Last sniper movie I saw was Shooter, and it was so full of lies and mistakes, and tactical errors, that I aint going to watch another hollywood sniper.

I think you'll end up seeing this one.

Quote from: Siege on February 23, 2015, 12:23:01 PM
i havent seen American sniper.

Last sniper movie I saw was Shooter, and it was so full of lies and mistakes, and tactical errors, that I aint going to watch another hollywood sniper.

:mad: Unamerican!

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 23, 2015, 12:23:40 PM
I think you'll end up seeing this one.

Eventually.
Then I am going to post here all the crap they got wrong, and if they got any tiny bit right.
I wouldn't hold my breath.

I didn't see a single one of these movies. :blush:

Quote from: Siege on February 23, 2015, 12:26:46 PM
Eventually.
Then I am going to post here all the crap they got wrong, and if they got any tiny bit right.
I wouldn't hold my breath.

I haven't seen it, and everything I know about sniping comes from one show on the Military Channel, but my hunch is you will be impressed by the accuracy.  It is after all based on the true story of a SEAL sniper, and I'm sure they had expert input.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 23, 2015, 12:28:32 PM

Quote from: Siege on February 23, 2015, 12:26:46 PM
Eventually.
Then I am going to post here all the crap they got wrong, and if they got any tiny bit right.
I wouldn't hold my breath.

I haven't seen it, and everything I know about sniping comes from one show on the Military Channel, but my hunch is you will be impressed by the accuracy.  It is after all based on the true story of a SEAL sniper, and I'm sure they had expert input.

Bobby Lee Swager in Shooter was based on marine sniper Carlos Hathcock. They had ex-marine snipers as consultants for the movie, yet choose to go with what the director thought was screen friendly. Everything in Shooter was wrong, from camouflage to tactics to everything. In the opening shot, they had the worst sniper hide selection ever. First thing about sniper hides, do not choose the top of an elevation because you will be skylining yourself. Second, select the location for your hide with a covered exfill route. Both of these very basic requirements were available in the general location they shot the movie, a serie of hills overlooking a road, yet they choose not to because, well, shooting from the top of the hill looks cool.

As i said, I aint expecting much from American sniper.

Quote from: Caliga on February 23, 2015, 12:27:07 PM
I didn't see a single one of these movies. :blush:

You should see the Grand Budapest Hotel.

Quote from: Siege on February 23, 2015, 12:41:46 PM
They had ex-marine snipers as consultants for the movie, yet choose to go with what the director thought was screen friendly.

Holy Chinese spy rings, Batman.  A director of a film goes with what the director thinks will work for the film.  Bet that's the fuck why he's called a "director".

Quote from: Siege on February 23, 2015, 12:41:46 PM
Bobby Lee Swager in Shooter was based on marine sniper Carlos Hathcock. They had ex-marine snipers as consultants for the movie, yet choose to go with what the director thought was screen friendly. Everything in Shooter was wrong, from camouflage to tactics to everything. In the opening shot, they had the worst sniper hide selection ever. First thing about sniper hides, do not choose the top of an elevation because you will be skylining yourself. Second, select the location for your hide with a covered exfill route. Both of these very basic requirements were available in the general location they shot the movie, a serie of hills overlooking a road, yet they choose not to because, well, shooting from the top of the hill looks cool.

As i said, I aint expecting much from American sniper.

Are there not tactical situations in which concealment is not a pressing issue?  I've seen still photos and video of snipers operating in Iraq from rooftops.

Quote from: Martinus on February 23, 2015, 12:46:37 PM
You should see the Grand Budapest Hotel.

Elaborate.

Quote from: Siege on February 23, 2015, 12:41:46 PM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 23, 2015, 12:28:32 PM

Quote from: Siege on February 23, 2015, 12:26:46 PM
Eventually.
Then I am going to post here all the crap they got wrong, and if they got any tiny bit right.
I wouldn't hold my breath.

I haven't seen it, and everything I know about sniping comes from one show on the Military Channel, but my hunch is you will be impressed by the accuracy.  It is after all based on the true story of a SEAL sniper, and I'm sure they had expert input.

Bobby Lee Swager in Shooter was based on marine sniper Carlos Hathcock. They had ex-marine snipers as consultants for the movie, yet choose to go with what the director thought was screen friendly. Everything in Shooter was wrong, from camouflage to tactics to everything. In the opening shot, they had the worst sniper hide selection ever. First thing about sniper hides, do not choose the top of an elevation because you will be skylining yourself. Second, select the location for your hide with a covered exfill route. Both of these very basic requirements were available in the general location they shot the movie, a serie of hills overlooking a road, yet they choose not to because, well, shooting from the top of the hill looks cool.

As i said, I aint expecting much from American sniper.

When I think of snipers in movies, I only really think of this scene...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4xO0k9LcIU

I think of that absurd part in Saving Private Ryan where the American Sniper shoots the German Sniper through his scope.

Quote from: Caliga on February 23, 2015, 01:24:46 PM

Quote from: Martinus on February 23, 2015, 12:46:37 PM
You should see the Grand Budapest Hotel.

Elaborate.

It's good.

What, no love for Tom Berenger's trigger finger declawing?  Fags.

Quote from: Caliga on February 23, 2015, 01:24:46 PM

Quote from: Martinus on February 23, 2015, 12:46:37 PM
You should see the Grand Budapest Hotel.

Elaborate.

It's a Wes Anderson movie for people into obscure European history. :P

Quote from: Caliga on February 23, 2015, 01:24:46 PM

Quote from: Martinus on February 23, 2015, 12:46:37 PM
You should see the Grand Budapest Hotel.

Elaborate.

It has old people fucking.

Quote from: Caliga on February 23, 2015, 01:24:46 PM

Quote from: Martinus on February 23, 2015, 12:46:37 PM
You should see the Grand Budapest Hotel.

Elaborate.

It's overrated garbage, like all of Wes Anderson's movies.

 :rolleyes:

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 23, 2015, 01:03:32 PM

Quote from: Siege on February 23, 2015, 12:41:46 PM
Bobby Lee Swager in Shooter was based on marine sniper Carlos Hathcock. They had ex-marine snipers as consultants for the movie, yet choose to go with what the director thought was screen friendly. Everything in Shooter was wrong, from camouflage to tactics to everything. In the opening shot, they had the worst sniper hide selection ever. First thing about sniper hides, do not choose the top of an elevation because you will be skylining yourself. Second, select the location for your hide with a covered exfill route. Both of these very basic requirements were available in the general location they shot the movie, a serie of hills overlooking a road, yet they choose not to because, well, shooting from the top of the hill looks cool.

As i said, I aint expecting much from American sniper.

Are there not tactical situations in which concealment is not a pressing issue?  I've seen still photos and video of snipers operating in Iraq from rooftops.

Snipers on rooftops are proving support for friendly forces moving on the streets. Its a missuse of snipers as a resource available to commanders as a force modifier. In sniper doctrine dominating the high ground is a move you only do when you got line infantry on the ground to support your position the moment the moment the enemy tries to move on you. Also, its most effective when you combine an overt OP (the team on the roof) with a covert OP (a team in hide to react to enemy sniper fire). Still is a bad move because the overt position will eventually get hit with indirect (mortars) because the enemy is not stupid and will know that engaging sniper with direct fires is a negative due to snipers ability to accuaretely locate the source of enemy direct fires and either engage with their organic weapon systems, call for indirect fires on the enemy, or direct another sniper team on the enemy position.

Botom line, overt positions are bad for snipers, because the enemy will mortar your ass, and you are not going to be able to return fire.

Also, infantry platoons have two or three designated marksmen, who are not real snipers but trained by snipers, and they sometimes get confused with snipers, something they strive for, even though they are taught to NOT look like snipers because that makes them a target.
I can tell who is and who isn't based on equipment and tactics employed.

Am I a sniper?

Quote from: Valmy on February 23, 2015, 08:46:00 AM
So Birdman won.  Any thoughts?  I didn't see it.

I have heard people say NPH was painful to watch as a host.  He is kind of a dork off-script so I could see that.

The opening musical number he did was pretty good.

Well, I'm not really unhappy about Birdman's victory, even though it's a film I've cooled very slightly on since seeing it back in October, because it means that the merely good didn't rule the day.  The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game, and Selma (despite the baffling hype) have no business being discussed in the same conversation.  (Now, I did call Imitation "very good," and gave it a B+ and I think that's right, but it only barely reaches that level and I suspect it's partly out of differentiation with the emphatically just-fine Theory of Everything.  I've never called it great and I don't think anyone else has either, except as a collective body reaching a consensus by way of similar third or fourth choices. :lol: )  Noyhood deserved recognition for its gimmick, I guess, but I didn't love that picture either.

Anyway, like most I'd have preferred if Grand Budapest Hotel had won--failing that, Whiplash.  But Birdman was the third best movie of the eight nominated--or, rather, of the seven I saw--so that's a much better for the Academy Awards than usual.  At least GBH won best costume and production design! :)

I do still need to see American Sniper.

I'm surprised they didn't split Picture/Director with Boyhood :mellow:

Also, my favourite moment last night:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-fvmGmIUAAqOVA.jpg:large)

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 24, 2015, 12:44:14 AM
I'm surprised they didn't split Picture/Director with Boyhood :mellow:

Despite not having seen it yet, I'm kinda relieved Boyhood didn't win. Sounds too gimmicky to be the best picture of any year.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on February 24, 2015, 12:49:33 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 24, 2015, 12:44:14 AM
I'm surprised they didn't split Picture/Director with Boyhood :mellow:

Despite not having seen it yet, I'm kinda relieved Boyhood didn't win. Sounds too gimmicky to be the best picture of any year.

Yeah that's my take on it too. I know some people are saying it is good, but I have no interest seeing Boyhood (unlike, say, Birdman, Whiplash and Imitation Game). It sounds too much like a "we took a photo of this man's face every day for 10 years" clickbait gimmick. :P

Boyhood has some good stuff in it besides the gimmick, but I can't see why it would win "best director". The directing of the film is pretty functional, nothing else.

Not having seen the movie, I can't comment, but I agree that "best director" seems too often to go to the "best picture" even if it is not fully justified. I can see that one movie could win best picture but another best director - for example, a movie like Grand Budapest Hotel could be a good contender for best director, even if there are better movies out there.

A director "directs" everything in the film. In theory - although that's highly dependent on your personal power - you decide everything that goes in the film, using the "proposals" of all the other professionals. You correct the actors' performances, you ask the screenwriter to change things in the script and approve them, you sit besides the editor and give him instructions, you talk with the DoP to have this or this kind of photography for a given scene, etc... You don't supplant them or their work, but you certainly direct them. So in a way, it's hard to have the best picture without the best director.

However, I'm a believer that "best director" awards should focus only on the only exclusive competence a director has: deciding shots and mise en scène, and then include the director among the recipients of "best picture" awards (nowadays only the producers are awarded).

So there are people actually whining that because Selma did not win the best picture, it proves Oscars are a racist affair?  :huh:

Quote from: Martinus on February 24, 2015, 06:29:18 AM
So there are people actually whining that because Selma did not win the best picture, it proves Oscars are a racist affair?  :huh:

I haven't seen it, but it was heavily criticised here as trivial and a missed opportunity for a great biopic. But discussions about racism is what America does.

Selma's promotion strategy was also considered to be all kinds of wrong. It opened too late, didn't compete for the other awards, and so on.

Quote from: Martinus on February 24, 2015, 06:29:18 AM
So there are people actually whining that because Selma did not win the best picture, it proves Oscars are a racist affair?  :huh:

I don't think anybody is whining more about that movie than any of the others; I think the bigger issue was that there was a real lack of diversity in this years' films.

Other than some gay shit, it was a relatively boring year.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on February 24, 2015, 08:04:30 AM

Quote from: Martinus on February 24, 2015, 06:29:18 AM
So there are people actually whining that because Selma did not win the best picture, it proves Oscars are a racist affair?  :huh:

I don't think anybody is whining more about that movie than any of the others; I think the bigger issue was that there was a real lack of diversity in this years' films.

Other than some gay shit, it was a relatively boring year.

I personally don't think the issue is with the awards. When there's quality films with black people in them or doing them, they get recognized. The problem is that not many get made due to lack of diversity in the industry as a whole.

If you want to read the outraged, oh so outraged, opinion of an unhinged Guardian columnist on this year's Oscars regarding race, sexuality, politics and more, here you have it!

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/23/academy-strange-relationship-with-race-on-display-oscars-2015 (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/23/academy-strange-relationship-with-race-on-display-oscars-2015)

QuoteThis year's Oscars unmasked Hollywood's most dubious views

Despite stirring support for the spirit of Selma, and big prizes for Hispanic film-makers, it was the unfortunate throwaway remarks which will linger longest after the 87th Academy Awards

"Who gave this sonofabitch his green card?" Sean Penn demanded before presenting Mexican film-maker Alejandro González Iñárritu the best picture Oscar for Birdman, giving a whole new political dimension to the racism of the 87th Annual Academy Awards.

Penn, who starred in Iñárritu's 21 Grams all the way back in 2003, probably thought it was a funny joke with an old friend. But racism from friends assumed to be benign can be the worst kind, especially at an awards show: just ask black author Jackie Woodson, whose "friend" used presenting her with a National Book Award to make a watermelon joke.

The incident highlighted Oscar's uneasy relationship with race, which was on full display throughout last night's ceremony. Along with Tinseltown's fraught relationship with American militarism, Penn bookended a politically awkward and often uncomfortable evening, which started with host Neil Patrick Harris making a joke about Hollywood celebrating its "best and whitest".

Four hours later, Penn reminded the world that white supremacy is never far away in America, and it's at its most insidious and powerful when wielded by self-proclaimed Hollywood liberals – like Penn.

Right before Birdman won, it seemed as if some of the racial tension I had anticipated going into the evening would be muted. Selma, the biopic of Martin Luther King, had been snubbed for its director Ava DuVernay and star David Oyelowo. But, it had won for Glory, its politically charged theme song (which beat out the vapid Everything Is Awesome) and gave John Legend the chance to say: "We live in the most incarcerated country in the world." Legend then excoriated America for allowing incarceration to be more prevalent for black men now than slavery was in 1850. As Deray McKesson, one of the main organizers in Ferguson, tweeted: "@johnlegend tonight gave us a one-person protest. And I'm all for it."

The Academy honored the black, pacifist film for its aspect which most directly linked the civil rights movement of 1965 to Black Lives Matter movement of 2015. Meanwhile, American Sniper, the incredibly jingoistic bio pic of Navy Seal Chris Kyle (which has appealed to America's most base prejudices as a box-office hit) only one won Oscar. As did Boyhood, a film I had a lot of white supremacist reservations about, even though I loved it.

In fact, as the evening wore in, it became apparent that neither white nor black but Hispanic film-makers behind the camera for Birdman were the breakout stars of the night. Mexican director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki won for Birdman (after winning last year for Gravity), and Iñárritu won for writing, directing and producing Birdman (following up Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón winning for Gravity).

It was a big moment when Birdman won best picture – and Sean Penn took a big dump on it when he said: "Who gave this sonofabitch his green card?"

Iñárritu was gracious in saving the moment, making light of two Mexicans winning back to back as meaning the Academy needed to look at its immigration policy. He then championed political reforms for Mexicans in Mexico and immigration reform for Mexican Americans in the United States.

Iñárritu later called the joke "hilarious". But as a Hollywood director, he isn't likely to feel the fallout of increased racism Americans will wage against more vulnerable Hispanics, armed with justification from the likes of a good liberal like Penn. And it was only the final slight of presenters treating artists of color poorly. Neil Patrick Harris made an odd joke about Oprah being as big as American Sniper's profits (though he tried to say he was talking about the size of her wealth) at the top of the night, before engaging Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer in a cringeworthy and unfunny bit about why she needed to keep watch over his Oscar predictions; he even went so far as to tell her she couldn't eat or go to the bathroom to watch his stuff. In those predictions, he made a joke about mispronouncing Chiwetel Ejiofor's name – when he mispronounced it again! And he also weirdly referred to David Oyelowo as a nominee when he wasn't, before involving him in an unfunny bit.

And, despite having a black woman, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, as its president, and no shortage of black performers, the Academy has a long history of having an overwhelmingly white membership, having few minorities in positions of power, and for only rewarding black actors for playing subservient roles.

The Academy's relationship with gay rights had a couple of interesting moments. Though the host, Harris, is openly gay, he is as tall, blond and heterosexually oriented as any Hollywood leading man ever has been – whether he's singing opposite Cinderella, starring in How I Met Your Mother, or parodying himself with Harold and Kumar. The evening's interesting gay moment was when screenwriter Graham Moore, who wrote the biopic The Imitation Game about gay mathematician Alan Turing, won and said: "When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself ... And now I'm standing here ... for that kid out there who thinks she's weird or she's different or she doesn't fit in anywhere. Yes you do."

The role of militarism in the US, and how both Hollywood and the American news media facilitate through both mindless and deliberate propaganda, was tensely played out. On the red carpet, I was kind of appalled at how Taya Kyle, widow of Chris Kyle (the subject of American Sniper) was attending the Oscars, as if Hollywood was wrapping itself in war as shamelessly as politicians do.

But Hollywood's ambivalence about the military was a bit more nuanced. Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 won the documentary short award, and Harris chose to follow up the film-maker's touching speech about her veteran son committing suicide by making a joke about her dress. (Patricia Arquette's call for women's civil rights was enough to bring Meryl Streep to her feet, but I guess Reese Witherspoon's call to #AskHerMore and not reduce women to their clothes wasn't enough to keep Harris from reducing a mom talking about her dead son to her dress.) Then, Citizenfour won best documentary feature. As Guardian alumnus Glenn Greenwald took the stage, it was hard not to think the Academy wasn't embracing a critique of US militarism at least as probing as when it award Moore his Oscar.

The politically conscious high point of the night to me was when Selma's song Glory won. Everything is Awesome is still the year's most memorable movie song. But despite its original mission to critique if everything is awesome, it's became as bland a ballad as last year's most memorable nominated song (Happy) to maintain the status quo. Hollywood likes to think it is cutting-edge on social issues, but it's usually very conservative. So it was good to see Glory's musicians provide at least reference to what the hell has been happening in America between Happy and Everything is Awesome.

And Penn's penultimate moment of the broadcast was its lowest point, when he brought to the fore not just the simmering, weird way race was near at hand with several African Americans who weren't nominated. He showed that white supremacy in Hollywood needs to assert itself even in the face of minority exceptionalists who are nominated and actually win – that it needs to remind a brown film-maker receiving the Academy's highest honor that he is still a sonofabitch with a green card, ostensibly stealing work from good white folk.

In a way, Penn did us a favor: he exposed Hollywood's faux liberalism for what it truly is. Hollywood has an uneasy relationship with racism, feminism and militarism because it will exploit all of them to keep making money. It is not concerned with diversity or economic justice, except to the extent it can feign interest in any of them to perpetuate its own power.

• This article was amended on 23 February 2015. An earlier version said that Chris Cooper was the Navy Seal in American Sniper. It was further corrected on 24 February 2015 to remove an incorrect statement that Michael Moore won an Oscar in 2005 for his anti-Iraq war documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.

QuoteSteven W Thrasher is a weekly columnist for Guardian US. He was named Journalist of the Year 2012 by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, the Advocate and more.

 :lol:

QuoteAs did Boyhood, a film I had a lot of white supremacist reservations about, even though I loved it.

Wat.

QuoteThe Academy's relationship with gay rights had a couple of interesting moments. Though the host, Harris, is openly gay, he is as tall, blond and heterosexually oriented as any Hollywood leading man ever has been – whether he's singing opposite Cinderella, starring in How I Met Your Mother, or parodying himself with Harold and Kumar. The evening's interesting gay moment was when screenwriter Graham Moore, who wrote the biopic The Imitation Game about gay mathematician Alan Turing, won and said: "When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself ... And now I'm standing here ... for that kid out there who thinks she's weird or she's different or she doesn't fit in anywhere. Yes you do."

How is that a gay moment? The screen writer isn't even openly gay - that's another problem with the "stop bullying" campaign - the failure to acknowledge that kids may be bullied or want to commit suicide for reasons other than being gay.  :rolleyes:

Quote from: Martinus on February 24, 2015, 09:32:54 AM

QuoteThe Academy's relationship with gay rights had a couple of interesting moments. Though the host, Harris, is openly gay, he is as tall, blond and heterosexually oriented as any Hollywood leading man ever has been – whether he's singing opposite Cinderella, starring in How I Met Your Mother, or parodying himself with Harold and Kumar. The evening's interesting gay moment was when screenwriter Graham Moore, who wrote the biopic The Imitation Game about gay mathematician Alan Turing, won and said: "When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself ... And now I'm standing here ... for that kid out there who thinks she's weird or she's different or she doesn't fit in anywhere. Yes you do."

How is that a gay moment? The screen writer isn't even openly gay - that's another problem with the "stop bullying" campaign - the failure to acknowledge that kids may be bullied or want to commit suicide for reasons other than being gay.  :rolleyes:

Presumably because everyone assumed he was gay. :D

Anyway, I think the author was trying to do something about NPH being a gay who passes and this "gay" guy at least touching on an issue that isn't so nice and clean as NPH representation of homosexuality. Of course, author comes across as dreadful for essentially judging how gay men act and if they are acting "gay" enough.  Apparently best way to act sufficiently gay is to not be gay!

Quote from: celedhring on February 24, 2015, 09:01:36 AM

QuoteAs did Boyhood, a film I had a lot of white supremacist reservations about, even though I loved it.

Wat.

Look it up, there are a bunch of pages on it featuring on google.

Quote from: garbon on February 24, 2015, 09:37:45 AM

Quote from: Martinus on February 24, 2015, 09:32:54 AM

QuoteThe Academy's relationship with gay rights had a couple of interesting moments. Though the host, Harris, is openly gay, he is as tall, blond and heterosexually oriented as any Hollywood leading man ever has been – whether he's singing opposite Cinderella, starring in How I Met Your Mother, or parodying himself with Harold and Kumar. The evening's interesting gay moment was when screenwriter Graham Moore, who wrote the biopic The Imitation Game about gay mathematician Alan Turing, won and said: "When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself ... And now I'm standing here ... for that kid out there who thinks she's weird or she's different or she doesn't fit in anywhere. Yes you do."

How is that a gay moment? The screen writer isn't even openly gay - that's another problem with the "stop bullying" campaign - the failure to acknowledge that kids may be bullied or want to commit suicide for reasons other than being gay.  :rolleyes:

Presumably because everyone assumed he was gay. :D

Anyway, I think the author was trying to do something about NPH being a gay who passes and this "gay" guy at least touching on an issue that isn't so nice and clean as NPH representation of homosexuality. Of course, author comes across as dreadful for essentially judging how gay men act and if they are acting "gay" enough.  Apparently best way to act sufficiently gay is to not be gay!

The article is awfully misinformed, patronising and filled with faux misplaced outrage.

Or to put it differently, it is typical GUARNIAD.

Also, if NPH is "not gay enough" I don't know what's gay anymore.

Quote from: garbon on February 24, 2015, 09:38:03 AM

Quote from: celedhring on February 24, 2015, 09:01:36 AM

QuoteAs did Boyhood, a film I had a lot of white supremacist reservations about, even though I loved it.

Wat.

Look it up, there are a bunch of pages on it featuring on google.

I bet there are a bunch of pages featuring on google explaining how Obama is an alien lizard. That does not mean it is a valid response to celedhring's question - the statement is clearly bullshit.

The article really is Onion caliber.

Quote from: garbon on February 24, 2015, 09:38:03 AM

Quote from: celedhring on February 24, 2015, 09:01:36 AM

QuoteAs did Boyhood, a film I had a lot of white supremacist reservations about, even though I loved it.

Wat.

Look it up, there are a bunch of pages on it featuring on google.

I see, people take exception at a white cast and the Mexican worker storyline.

I don't get the whole "white savior" criticism. She just tells the Mexican dude he's too smart to just do menial work, he takes the advice and later we see he's succeeded. How is that a negative portrayal? It's just echoing her whole arc as a white trash mom that ultimately gets a degree and fends for herself. He succeeds by himself, she just gives him advice.

When I read the Guardian, this pops up in my head:

http://youtu.be/ykwqXuMPsoc

It makes more sense.

The Guardian. :wub:

Quote from: celedhring on February 24, 2015, 09:56:10 AM
I don't get the whole "white savior" criticism. She just tells the Mexican dude he's too smart to just do menial work, he takes the advice and later we see he's succeeded. How is that a negative portrayal? It's just echoing her whole arc as a white trash mom that ultimately gets a degree and fends for herself. He succeeds by himself, she just gives him advice.

Is that all it takes to be 'white supremacist'?  Show a white person interacting with a non-white person in someway that is not harmful?  Man it sure takes a lot more effort to not be 'white supremacist' anymore.

So basically NPH acts too straight, Sean Penn said something, and Selma only won for its song so therefore Hollywood is racist?  One would think the fact there are not more movies with non-white leading actors would be more of a thing than that tripe.  Preferably ones where the subject is not slavery or civil rights or something.

QuoteHollywood has an uneasy relationship with racism, feminism and militarism because it will exploit all of them to keep making money. It is not concerned with diversity or economic justice, except to the extent it can feign interest in any of them to perpetuate its own power

Wait you mean corporations with responsibility to their share holders care more about making money than being NGOs?  Next he is going to be outraged there is no Santa Claus.

And here's the New Yorker's Whine:

QuoteFebruary 23, 2015
Oscar's White Night

By Anthony Lane

Do, another opportunity missed. If Lady Gaga can appear in a shimmering silver gown and sing "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," playing it absolutely straight, why can't Julie Andrews come out dressed in lamb chops and raw steak? Didn't Sister Maria have a single tattoo of a trumpet on her underarm? Even a lonely little goatherd, inked on the summit of her butt? That was the story of last night's Oscar ceremony: nice try, but could have been so much sweeter.

In a way, the whole evening misfired before it began, with the omission of "Selma" from many of the nominations. I happen to think that we should wipe the word "snub" from any discussion of awards; it comes loaded with ludicrous hints of conspiracy and cabal, as if folks in the movie industry—or in any industry that likes to pat itself on the back—have the time, the willpower, and the logistical clout to call around and organize a shutout. How can you get fired up about wicked whispers in a smoke-filled room when there aren't enough rooms left in Los Angeles where you can actually smoke? Nonetheless, there remains a grim and galling possibility: Might not some Academy voters be under the vague illusion that, having so lavishly handed out the prizes to "12 Years a Slave" in 2014, they have, you know, done that? Whatever the case, their semi-dismissal of "Selma" is an embarrassment (would anyone have objected, in all honesty, if Ava DuVernay had quietly taken the spot from the guy who directed "The Imitation Game"?), and somehow the shame of it was deepened, not mollified, by the eager atonements of last night. The more that poor David Oyelowo, who played Martin Luther King, Jr., was ogled by the wandering cameras—we were privileged, at one moment, to keep track of his tears—the more egregious his absence from the list of nominees became.

We didn't stop there. Indeed, although Neil Patrick Harris wore the increasingly sombre look of a man who wished he had stayed home and mended that leak behind the dishwasher, the crack in his opening speech, about "the best and whitest," had done its work. Slowly but unstoppably, a breeze of mild radicalization wafted across the audience, blowing through the jasmine of their minds. Some of this was preordained by the producers, but not all of it. They knew that Common would cry, "That's why we walk through Ferguson with our hands up," as he belted out the Oscar-winning song "Glory"—the line is there in the "Selma" soundtrack—but nobody could have predicted his win for sure, nor foreseen that his fellow-composer, John Legend, would seize the moment with this, in the midst of his acceptance: "There are more black men under correctional control today than there were under slavery in 1850." Whether any of yesterday's guests were sufficiently moved by this startling fact to skip the Vanity Fair party, or whether any of the nominees, in the top categories, pledged at once to donate their gift bags, each worth a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, to the cause of prison reform, has not yet been established. We at home were still trying to get our heads around "John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn," as Legend and Common were referred to as they strode up to accept their statuettes. Since when must performers be reminded, before a global public, of their discarded birth names? Did the Best Actor award in 1936, for "The Story of Louis Pasteur," go to Frederich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, rather than plain Paul Muni? I think not.

The "Selma" effect was contagious—probably more so, by a pleasing irony, than if it had earned a higher number of nods. Winners of all kinds struck a campaigning note: Julianne Moore, rightly, spoke of Alzheimer's, and Eddie Redmayne of motor-neuron disease; there were two references to teen-age suicide; Alejandro González Iñárritu, the big victor of the night, praised "this incredible immigrant nation," in tones of which Barack Obama will have approved; and Paweł Pawlikowski, who collected the Best Foreign Film award, for "Ida," earnestly exhorted his friends back home in Poland to get drunk, if they weren't already. By far the fiercest impact, however, was made by Patricia Arquette, the winner for her supporting role in "Boyhood," whose demand for female wage equality—"It's our time"—was rendered all the stronger by her decision to come dressed as a five-foot pint of Guinness. It was this unambiguous call to arms, I think, that brought Meryl Streep to her feet, rather than Arquette's no less heartfelt endorsement—complete with Web site—of "ecological sanitation." As John Belushi would have said, if he were around today, Man, that is some good shit.

What's important is how this went down, not at the home of Ted Cruz—I imagine that he sent his daughters out of the room at the first mention of the words "Edward Snowden," thus saving them from the sight of Sean Penn—but at the headquarters of ABC. The network's business is ratings, not sanitation or correctional control, and the signs for yesterday's broadcast, from early Nielsen estimates, are not looking healthy—down by ten per cent from last year. For every viewer who perked up when Streep, onstage, quoted Joan Didion, or when Iñárritu name-checked Raymond Carver, there will be a hundred who asked plaintively why "American Sniper"—perhaps the only Best Picture nominee that they caught this year—appeared to be locked in a cupboard for the night. How come somebody put all the guns away? Of the six hundred and twenty million dollars made, in total, by the eight movies up for Best Picture, Clint Eastwood's film racked up more than half. The triumphant "Birdman" has earned less than thirty-eight million. None of this matters, I guess, if you care for the movies that were touted and lauded at the Dolby Theatre, but it's nevertheless hard not to be saddened by the near-complete sundering between two branches of film. Only down among the technical awards did we stumble across the titles that crowds of Americans paid and surged to see; the five films, for instance, that jockeyed for Best Visual Effects, ("Guardians of the Galaxy," "Captain America: the Winter Soldier," "X-Men: Days of Future Past," "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," and the winner, "Interstellar"), clawed in a cool one billion two hundred and twenty-three million bucks. That's an awful lot of Birdmen.







Hence, perhaps, the nostalgia that swept over the auditorium when the hills, all of a sudden, came alive. "The Sound of Music" pulled people back, if only briefly, to the age of pre-sundering—to a prelapsarian time when everybody watching the Oscars on TV could tell you exactly what a resourceful nun could do with unwanted drapes. As I tried to suggest, when writing about my own enslavement to "The Sound of Music" in the pages of this magazine, the film is here to stay in our cultural marrow, whether we like it or not. We didn't need the montage of clips from it last night; the makers of the show, seeking a trim, could have leaped straight from Scarlett Johansson's preamble to Lady Gaga, filling her lungs among the silver birches. The mood in the room, which for long stretches of the evening was about as green and rolling as a salt flat, began to bloom, bursting forth when Andrews showed up to the party. The expression on the face of Felicity Jones (who may crave some uncomplicated bliss after the hard, if satisfying, graft of "The Theory of Everything"), as she gazed up from the front row, was identical to that of Disney's Cinderella, when the Fairy Godmother began to strut her stuff with the pumpkins. Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!

But why did the guests, arrayed before Andrews, look quite so relieved? Because they were secretly confident that, for the next two minutes, at least, they would be given nothing to feel guilty about? Because Maria, whatever the song says, is not a problem? Or could it be because the two women up there, the Lady and the Dame, being unmistakeable pros, could be relied upon to hold and work the room? (Decades before the former was born, the latter was starring in "Humpty Dumpty," onstage in London, in 1948. She played the egg.) Their combined ease, before a live audience, offered all too striking a contrast with most of the movie stars, who as a rule, when confronted with a sea of real faces, tend to cling to their autocues and their memorized scripts as if to a passing lifebelt. John Travolta's inability to cope with a name, even then, was toyed with last night, and the joke—in which he manfully, or uncomprehendingly, joined—looks set to run for many ceremonies to come. Still, from one year to the next, the discomfiture of celebrities, as they trip over the tiny fences of their own words, becomes, for all their physical splendor and their customized grooming, dismayingly difficult to watch. I always stagger to the end of the night feeling like the typist in "The Waste Land," who, in the wake of her joyless and mechanical seduction—"unreproved, if undesired"—remarks to herself, "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over."

If you truly can't stomach the prospect of the Oscars anymore, however, there is an alternative. You can always get your fill of cinema, and of its nourishing history, at the Governors Awards. These take place in November, thus jump-starting the mania for prizes, and we always get a few enticing clips of them during the Oscar ceremony itself; without fail, they are more impressive than the main event, and more crammed with the sorts of names that ardent movie lovers can, without equivocation, revere. Last night, for instance, we got a few, precious moments of Maureen O'Hara, a muse of John Ford, now a resplendent ninety-four; of the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, who spoke of making movies "with paper, pencil, and film," furrowing the brows of the folks who made "Big Hero 6"; of Harry Belafonte, seen for a second in historical footage of the walk from Selma to Montgomery; and of Jean-Claude Carrière, who adapted, among other things, "Belle de Jour" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." By way of a bonus, we were also granted a quick shot of Carrière standing proudly with a group of older men. You just had time to pick some of them out—Wilder, Buñuel, Cukor, Wyler, Hitchcock—before it was back to the Oscars of now. But that little glimpse of heaven was enough, and it made me wonder: Who will the Governors get together next?

As for the Oscars of 2016, we should be dreading them already; and yet, for once, my hopes are unexpectedly high. And why? Because of those gift bags. The treasures reportedly hidden within are designed to enchant and soothe, and frankly, after her experience in "Wild," Reese Witherspoon more than deserves that "luxury train ride through the Canadian Rockies." Millions of women around the world would, one presumes, be happy to join Eddie Redmayne on his "glamping trip worth $12,500," although his wife might file an objection. But the real draw, available to all acting and directing nominees, is the twenty-thousand-dollar gift certificate, which will—oh, my Lord—pay for Olessia Kantor, the founder of Enigma Life, to fly out in person and meet each of the lucky winners (and grumpy losers) to "discuss their 2015 horoscope, analyze dreams, and teach them mind control techniques." Good luck controlling the mind of Robert Duvall, Olessia, but still: armed with such helpful strategies, and with freshly analyzed dreams, the luminaries of the motion-picture industry will arrive at next year's Academy Awards in a place of wholeness, at one with the creed of themselves. Stars will be led by the stars. And the winners will be all of us. Peace.

I was under the impression Selma was not a good film.  Anybody seen it want to comment?  Should it have swept everything?

And as a counterpoint, here is an actually good piece from New Yorker - a review of Ida. I have not seen the movie but it seems to me the reviewer "gets it".

QuoteMay 27, 2014
"Ida": A Film Masterpiece

By David Denby

We are so used to constant movement and compulsive cutting in American movies that the stillness of the great new Polish film "Ida" comes as something of a shock. I can't recall a movie that makes such expressive use of silence and portraiture; from the beginning, I was thrown into a state of awe by the movie's fervent austerity. Friends have reported similar reactions: if not awe, then at least extreme concentration and satisfaction. This compact masterpiece has the curt definition and the finality of a reckoning—a reckoning in which anger and mourning blend together. The director, Pawel Pawlikowski, left Poland years ago, for England, where he linked up with the English-born playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz. After making documentaries for British television, Pawlikowski began directing features in English, including "My Summer of Love" (2004), with Emily Blunt, then unknown, and "The Woman in the Fifth" (2012), with Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas. "Ida" is a charged, bitter return. Set in 1961, during the Stalinist dictatorship, the movie pushes still further into the past; almost every element in the story evokes the war years and their aftermath. The filmmakers have confronted a birthplace never forgiven but also never abandoned.

In a majestic convent, an orphaned young woman—a novice named Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska)—is ordered by her Mother Superior to visit her aunt in Lodz before she takes orders. A beautiful eighteen-year-old with a broad Slavic face, a composed, devotional manner, and a tantalizing dimple, the girl has never left the convent before and knows nothing of her family. In Lodz, wearing her habit, Anna enters the apartment of a forty-five-ish woman, who is puffing on a cigarette and waiting for the guy she picked up the night before to leave. A minor state judge and Communist Party member, Wanda Gruz (Agata Kulesza) tells her niece that her real name is Ida Lebenstein, and that she's Jewish—a "Jewish nun," she says. Abrupt and dismissive, Wanda enjoys attacking the girl's ignorance. But Wanda has mysteries of her own and scores to settle: Ida's mother was her beloved sister. The two agree to go to the village in which the parents were hidden by Christians and then betrayed—the village where Wanda grew up.

"Ida" becomes both an investigation of sorts and an intermittent road movie, featuring a dialectically opposed odd couple—Catholic and Communist, innocent girl and hard-living political intellectual, lover (of Christ) and hater (of the Polish past). Yet neither is a type, and what happens to each has to be understood as both an individual's fate and a Polish fate. Ida's faith and disciplined simplicity will be jostled by experience, and Wanda will be tested, too, as her own buried sorrows come back to life. Sardonic comedy lurks within the strange pairing. At first, Wanda can't stop taunting Ida's indifference to sex, and, about the village, she says, "What if you go there and discover that there is no God?" Yet Pawlikowski doesn't favor one point of view over the other: the two women are equal in their isolation and their need to pull together the shards of identity in a country that has been almost entirely broken.

Between 1939 and 1945, Poland lost a fifth of its population, including three million Jews. In the two years after the war, Communists took over the government under the eyes of the Red Army and the Soviet secret police, the N.K.V.D. Many Poles who were prominent in resisting the Nazis were accused of preposterous crimes; the independent-minded were shot or hanged. In the movie, none of this is stated, but all of it is built, so to speak, into the atmosphere: the country feels dead, the population sparse, the mood of ordinary conversations constrained by the sure knowledge that many who survived have committed acts of betrayal or indulged willful ignorance.

How can you capture a nation's spirit by telling a singular story? By making every shot as definitive as an icon. "I'm not emotionally excited by the power of cinema's tricks anymore," Pawlikowski has said. The director and his fledgling cinematographer, Lukasz Zal, shot the movie in hard-focus black and white; they have produced images so distinct and powerful that they sharpen our senses. "Ida" might be called static were it not for the currents of emotion from shot to shot, which electrify the women's relation to each other throughout. Clearing away clutter, Pawlikowski almost never moves the camera; many of the scenes are just long-lasting shots, fed by a single light source that often puts the faces in partial shadow (what we understand of these two women will always be limited). Sometimes the figures are positioned at the bottom of the frame, with enormous gray Polish skies above them, as if the entire burden of a cursed country weighed on its people. Both beautiful and oppressive, the bleakness of the landscape in winter suggests something uncanny in the air, as if we were watching a horror film without ghouls.

One can trace possible influences—Carl Theodor Dreyer, very likely, and Robert Bresson, and European art films from the sixties and early seventies like François Truffaut's "The Wild Child," and also Polish movies made in the period in which "Ida" is set. But I can't recall anything major that looks quite like this movie. Pawlikowski is not after commonplace realism but something you would have to call minimal realism, in which the paring away of cinematic junk makes our attention to what remains almost rapt: the clinking of the nuns' spoons at a silent convent dinner, some gentle country sounds, the transfixing boredom of long drives through the flat landscape. Yet there's one significant sign of life: in a provincial hotel ballroom, young musicians play Western-style Polish pop and American jazz. A handsome young saxophone player (Dawid Ogrodnik), who loves Coltrane, takes a respectful but persistent interest in Ida. The jazz, with its breaking patterns, suggests a possible opening to the West, an eventual end to Stalinist drabness, a hint of the very different Poland of 2014.

Fans of the movie have been debating who is the more interesting woman: promiscuous, alcoholic Wanda or faith-endowed Ida. On first viewing, Wanda struck me as one of the great movie characters in recent years. Agata Kulesza, a veteran Polish stage and movie actress, has short black hair, dark eyes, and an almost comically intense frown; her stare could shear the fender off a car. Earlier in her life, Wanda was a player—"the Red Wanda," a Stalinist state prosecutor who sent "enemies of the people" to their death for the good of the revolution. As she questions peasants in her town about their acts at the end of the war, she's both a Jewish avenger and a woman who has her own guilt to bear. Ida can't possibly understand, but Wanda tells her of her past in brief fragments, and Kulesza does more with those fragments—adding a gesture, a pause—than anyone since Greta Garbo, who always implied much more than she said.

Without too much trouble, we can create a past for this brilliant woman. She was a member of the Young Communist League in the thirties; she escaped the Nazis by going underground and fighting in the resistance and emerged in 1947 as a true believer. It is well known that some of the Jews who survived the Nazis (often by fleeing to Moscow) entered the state service in the secret police, which, to put it mildly, was not a popular move among Polish anti-Communists (or among Polish anti-Semites, either). Wanda, we gather, was smarter than many of the others, but by 1961 she has lost her faith. Her world was not born again in revolution; it suffered a long, debilitating, and shameful aftermath to the war. Red Wanda has been twice betrayed—by the slaughter of the Jews and Polish anti-Semitism, and then by Stalinism, which she enabled. By 1961, very little keeps her going—a good apartment, surviving instincts of command, a few acid jokes, Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony, booze, and sexual hunger. She's intensely likable, a tough woman too clear-headed to lie about anything, especially to herself. "Ida" may be a small story of two particular women seeking identity, but Wanda, we can't help thinking, is Polish history, both grieved over and unredeemed.

At first glance, Ida is not as interesting—or, rather, she's guarded, even opaque. When Wanda tells her she's Jewish, Agata Trzebuchowska stares back, unblinking, unresponsive. Ida has nothing in her head that she can connect to Wanda's revelations, and, for a long time, she looks at the world evenly, steadily, without much emotion. Her lustrous hair covered, her face framed by a hood, Trzebuchowska has a preternatural calm and self-sufficiency, so it's amusing to hear that this first-time actress is actually a feminist and hipster discovered in a Warsaw café by a director friend of Pawlikowski's. She didn't particularly want the part; Pawlikowski, who had auditioned many young women without finding anyone he liked, had to argue her into it. The results are mixed: we get an extraordinary-looking woman, but we miss the skill of a trained actress. Trzebuchowska can't suggest what's churning around inside Ida, yet her opacity must be what Pawlikowski wanted, and it has its uses: it keeps mystery alive. Will Ida, exposed to the world in all its bewildering complication, maintain her faith and her desire to be a nun, or will she accept herself as a Jew? Back in the convent for a while, she prostrates herself on the stone floor, apologizing for sins that she hasn't committed.

"Ida" is only eighty minutes long, but Pawlikowski takes his time. As the two women question farmers and townspeople in Wanda's old village, they stop to talk things over, fight each other, or just stare silently. The investigation is urgent emotionally yet desultory in action, as such quests are in life, and the relation between the two, established and strengthened by the strategic positioning within the frame, keeps shifting, evolving, reaching a kind of emotional finality. Pawlikowski must have stripped away dialogue, too, since not much is stated: what we infer is what ultimately matters. Concentrated and expansive at the same time, "Ida" keeps the audience working hard, gathering clues, trying not to come to conclusions too quickly. As David Thomson put it in The New Republic, the movie "[dares] to omit essential actions because they have been delivered indirectly." The violence, after all, was long in the past. What matters in 1961 (and now) is the attitudes of those who committed or suffered crimes. Without giving up judgment, the filmmakers establish that during the war, everyone in Poland was in trouble. Acknowledgment, not revenge, is the movie's driving force.

Pawlikowski has complained about critics who see the movie solely as a meditation on the Holocaust or Poland, and, of course, he's partially right, since "Ida" is certainly a story of identity; it's certainly a spiritual journey, too. His irritation may be caused by a certain hostility in Poland to an exiled filmmaker who returns bristling with ideas about the country. (Pawlikowski may want to work there again, and needs to sweeten the atmosphere.) Whatever he says, he's made a movie that breathes history in every frame, and his annoyance reminds me of D. H. Lawrence's remark, "Never trust the teller, trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it." All right, then: again and again, "Ida" asks the question, What do you do with the past once you've re-discovered it? Does it enable you, redeem you, kill you, leave you longing for life, longing for escape? The answers are startling.

Funnily enough, here in Poland the movie got criticised by both anti-communist right wingers (as being anti-Polish) and Jewish organisations (as being anti-Jewish). That is something. :P

Quote from: Valmy on February 24, 2015, 11:16:04 AM
I was under the impression Selma was not a good film.  Anybody seen it want to comment?  Should it have swept everything?

It hasn't come out in Spain yet. Will probably check it out when it does to see if all the fuss is warranted or not.

Quote from: The Larch on February 24, 2015, 08:58:01 AM
And Penn's penultimate moment of the broadcast was

Always funny to see "professional" writers misuse words that they think will impress.

Quote from: Valmy on February 24, 2015, 11:16:04 AM
I was under the impression Selma was not a good film.  Anybody seen it want to comment?  Should it have swept everything?

What I've read has been a lot of kick-back on how both MLK and LBJ are portrayed from a political POV:  that the film dismisses MLK's innate political acumen, and that LBJ is portrayed as a hesitant and risk-averse politician--both of which are dead wrong. 

I think the problem with this sort of film is that there are far too many people still alive with far too much invested in the events surrounding the film that you can't separate reality with the act of storytelling (please see: sniper movies, realistic portrayal of snipers in and sniper movies, Siegy bitches out realistic portrayal of snipers in).

Yeah you couldn't have released Braveheart in 1320.

Quote from: Valmy on February 24, 2015, 11:16:04 AM
I was under the impression Selma was not a good film.  Anybody seen it want to comment?  Should it have swept everything?

I thought it was a very good movie, and very moving (though Oprah was jarring to me in every scene she was in, but thankfully she only had a bit part).  It did a good job at humanizing MLK, not making the film into a hagiography (though he's still obviously the hero of the story).

Oscars are so political, though, I can't really comment on whether it should have won a bunch of awards or not.  Oyelowo's performance as MLK seemed very good to my eyes, but I can see how he's too "new" to "deserve" a nomination in the Academy's eyes.

One thing though the only award it did win, for the song Glory, had nothing to do with the actual movie!  The song just played over the closing credits.

So - I don't know if it deserved to sweep everything, but nominations for best director, best screenplay, best actor would not have been out of place.

Ah gotcha.  Well....now that I know it slanders a great Texan I am not sure I should see it...but I am glad to hear it is the outrage is at least justified a bit.

$125,000 gift bags for winners is kind of a mind fuck.

Quote from: Martinus on February 24, 2015, 09:32:54 AM
that's another problem with the "stop bullying" campaign - the failure to acknowledge that kids may be bullied or want to commit suicide for reasons other than being gay.  :rolleyes:

Yeah, in fact I'm sure that most victims of bullying aren't gay.  I'd say that at least a quarter (and probably way more than that) of HS students get bullied at least on occasion, and clearly those aren't all gay. 

In my HS we didn't even have any students who were openly gay, though there were a few that were assumed to be gay, and several more that were suspected of being gay;  they didn't seem to get bullied any more than any other random student.  And at least one of the guys who was assumed to be gay apparently wasn't--I ran into him several years later and he asked me if I knew why he got picked on in school, and I brought up the fact that everybody thought he was gay.  He got very upset, saying that he isn't gay, and hadn't even realized that people thought that he was.  He actually started crying about it.

He started crying about it?  That seems a bit of an extreme reaction for something that happened way back in High School.

My wife got shit for being a Lesbian, since once she rejected some guy his vengeance was to spread that around.  But I certainly got my share of bullying in Middle School and nobody suspected I was gay.  Just easy prey.

My bullies had terrible gaydars. I don't think they got a single one right.

Quote from: celedhring on February 24, 2015, 04:01:39 AM
A director "directs" everything in the film. In theory - although that's highly dependent on your personal power - you decide everything that goes in the film, using the "proposals" of all the other professionals. You correct the actors' performances, you ask the screenwriter to change things in the script and approve them, you sit besides the editor and give him instructions, you talk with the DoP to have this or this kind of photography for a given scene, etc... You don't supplant them or their work, but you certainly direct them. So in a way, it's hard to have the best picture without the best director.

However, I'm a believer that "best director" awards should focus only on the only exclusive competence a director has: deciding shots and mise en scène, and then include the director among the recipients of "best picture" awards (nowadays only the producers are awarded).

Boyhood is an achievement of its director though--making a movie about a child protagonist aging over 12 years and dealing with all the shit inherent to that, while delivering a watchable film at all.  It's not flashy, but it was hard.  You can make a sound argument that you win no points for difficulty (Russian Ark kind of sucks, for example), but Linklater deserved the nomination as much as a lot of folks.  Of course, Boyhood was deeply unimpressive for a movie framed as some kind of meaningful emotional experience: that kid was way too cool to stand for much other than himself, and why he's interesting in that regard is a question Linklater doesn't entirely seem to realize needs an answer.

That said, I think Inarritu's win there was right and correct.  Birdman is definitely the better-directed film.  If I were to list my top five directorial efforts of last year, he and Anderson would be on it.

I really don't recall much bullying in my high school. Occasionally seniors or juniors would haze the sophomores (and freshman when we moved to grades 9-12), but most of that was harmless rite of passage.

Quote from: Valmy on February 24, 2015, 01:00:50 PM
He started crying about it?  That seems a bit of an extreme reaction for something that happened way back in High School.

I think we might have figured out why he got bullied, though, unfortunately.  Children are basically animals.

Quote from: Ideologue on February 24, 2015, 01:12:41 PM

Quote from: celedhring on February 24, 2015, 04:01:39 AM
A director "directs" everything in the film. In theory - although that's highly dependent on your personal power - you decide everything that goes in the film, using the "proposals" of all the other professionals. You correct the actors' performances, you ask the screenwriter to change things in the script and approve them, you sit besides the editor and give him instructions, you talk with the DoP to have this or this kind of photography for a given scene, etc... You don't supplant them or their work, but you certainly direct them. So in a way, it's hard to have the best picture without the best director.

However, I'm a believer that "best director" awards should focus only on the only exclusive competence a director has: deciding shots and mise en scène, and then include the director among the recipients of "best picture" awards (nowadays only the producers are awarded).

Boyhood is an achievement of its director though--making a movie about a child protagonist aging over 12 years and dealing with all the shit inherent to that, while delivering a watchable film at all.  It's not flashy, but it was hard.  You can make a sound argument that you win no points for difficulty (Russian Ark kind of sucks, for example), but Linklater deserved the nomination as much as a lot of folks.  Of course, Boyhood was deeply unimpressive for a movie framed as some kind of meaningful emotional experience: that kid was way too cool to stand for much other than himself, and why he's interesting in that regard is a question Linklater doesn't entirely seem to realize needs an answer.

That said, I think Inarritu's win there was right and correct.  Birdman is definitely the better-directed film.  If I were to list my top five directorial efforts of last year, he and Anderson would be on it.

No, that's merit of the film producers. Linklater is also a producer in Boyhood.

Maintaining the tone, building a (routinely modified) story out of the footage, and keeping the actors straight is the producers' job?  Then no wonder they get the Best Picture action figures. :P

Quote from: Ideologue on February 24, 2015, 01:30:40 PM
Maintaining the tone, building a (routinely modified) story out of the footage, and keeping the actors straight is the producers' job?  Then no wonder they get the Best Picture action figures. :P

I thought you meant the technical and practical challenges, which were certainly considerable. What you mention is certainly the purview of the director, but what's so hard about it? There are lots of other films about boys growing up that maintain tone and build a story, they are just shot conventionally.

Quote from: Valmy on February 24, 2015, 01:00:50 PM
He started crying about it?  That seems a bit of an extreme reaction for something that happened way back in High School.

My wife got shit for being a Lesbian, since once she rejected some guy his vengeance was to spread that around.  But I certainly got my share of bullying in Middle School and nobody suspected I was gay.  Just easy prey.

When I was in HS, the notion that "being gay" was an acceptable (by bullies) reason for bullying was already on its way out; it was perfectly possible to be part of an in-group and be openly gay.

Essentially, the people who were bullied were people who were sufficiently antisocial, for whatever reasons, to lack an in-group sufficient to protect them from that kind of thing - once you had one, bullying simply ceased being a factor. 

Quote from: Malthus on February 24, 2015, 01:40:40 PM
When I was in HS, the notion that "being gay" was an acceptable (by bullies) reason for bullying was already on its way out; it was perfectly possible to be part of an in-group and be openly gay.

When I was in school, there was essentially no reason that was unacceptable to the bullies.  Suspected of being gay?  Get bullied.  Not suspected of being gay?  Get bullied get bullied anyway.  Family poor?  Get bullied.  Family rich?  Get bullied.  Wear glasses?  Get bullied.  Don't wear glasses?  Get bullied anyway.  See a pattern here?

Yep.  The crime that got you bullied was being socially vulnerable.  Then whatever it was they could fling at you was fair game.

Quote from: dps on February 24, 2015, 01:47:34 PM

Quote from: Malthus on February 24, 2015, 01:40:40 PM
When I was in HS, the notion that "being gay" was an acceptable (by bullies) reason for bullying was already on its way out; it was perfectly possible to be part of an in-group and be openly gay.

When I was in school, there was essentially no reason that was unacceptable to the bullies.  Suspected of being gay?  Get bullied.  Not suspected of being gay?  Get bullied get bullied anyway.  Family poor?  Get bullied.  Family rich?  Get bullied.  Wear glasses?  Get bullied.  Don't wear glasses?  Get bullied anyway.  See a pattern here?

Well, sure. As I said, the real "crime" that attracted bullying was not belonging to an in-group able to shield someone - that is, being, as Valmy put it, "socially vulnerable".

Point here is that, for the people who went through school immediately before me, "being gay" was a reason to be socially vulnerable, because it was considered, by kids, as being socially unacceptable. If yiu were gay, or suspected of being gay, you could not count on the protection of an in-group. That lack of protection was what attracted the bullies.

Quote from: Malthus on February 24, 2015, 01:58:53 PM
Point here is that, for the people who went through school immediately before me, "being gay" was a reason to be socially vulnerable, because it was considered, by kids, as being socially unacceptable. If yiu were gay, or suspected of being gay, you could not count on the protection of an in-group. That lack of protection was what attracted the bullies.

Yeah but we are old(er) people.  The "stop bullying" thing is about people getting bullied for being gay today not in 1967.

Quote from: Valmy on February 24, 2015, 02:01:33 PM

Quote from: Malthus on February 24, 2015, 01:58:53 PM
Point here is that, for the people who went through school immediately before me, "being gay" was a reason to be socially vulnerable, because it was considered, by kids, as being socially unacceptable. If yiu were gay, or suspected of being gay, you could not count on the protection of an in-group. That lack of protection was what attracted the bullies.

Yeah but we are old(er) people.  The "stop bullying" thing is about people getting bullied for being gay today not in 1967.

That probably varies from place to place. "Being gay" as a HS kid isn't the same here in Toronto in 2015 as it was in 1980, but I have no idea what the situation is like in other places - Toronto is an extremely gay-friendly place overall.

Quote from: Malthus on February 24, 2015, 02:03:37 PM
That probably varies from place to place. "Being gay" as a HS kid isn't the same here in Toronto in 2015 as it was in 1980, but I have no idea what the situation is like in other places - Toronto is an extremely gay-friendly place overall.

Is it: a super cold version of San Francis....wait

This being the case, what was your point again? :blush:

Strangest hijack ever.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 24, 2015, 02:07:14 PM
Strangest hijack ever.

Come now we have had much stranger hijacks than this.

I never saw any bullying in my HS. We would have considered it incredibly childish.

Quote from: The Brain on February 24, 2015, 02:09:18 PM
I never saw any bullying in my HS. We would have considered it incredibly childish.

So you adopted a "see no evil" stance?

Quote from: dps on February 24, 2015, 02:11:06 PM

Quote from: The Brain on February 24, 2015, 02:09:18 PM
I never saw any bullying in my HS. We would have considered it incredibly childish.

So you adopted a "see no evil" stance?

No.

Obviously his stance is "speak no evil".

Marty hijacks his own threads quite a bit. Though perhaps in his mind Oscars and bullying gay schoolkids both fall under "gay issues" and this isn't a hijack at all?  :hmm:

Quote from: The Larch on February 24, 2015, 08:58:01 AM
If you want to read the outraged, oh so outraged, opinion of an unhinged Guardian columnist on this year's Oscars regarding race, sexuality, politics and more, here you have it!

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/23/academy-strange-relationship-with-race-on-display-oscars-2015 (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/23/academy-strange-relationship-with-race-on-display-oscars-2015)

QuoteThis year's Oscars unmasked Hollywood's most dubious views

Despite stirring support for the spirit of Selma, and big prizes for Hispanic film-makers, it was the unfortunate throwaway remarks which will linger longest after the 87th Academy Awards

"Who gave this sonofabitch his green card?" Sean Penn demanded before presenting Mexican film-maker Alejandro González Iñárritu the best picture Oscar for Birdman, giving a whole new political dimension to the racism of the 87th Annual Academy Awards.

Penn, who starred in Iñárritu's 21 Grams all the way back in 2003, probably thought it was a funny joke with an old friend. But racism from friends assumed to be benign can be the worst kind, especially at an awards show: just ask black author Jackie Woodson, whose "friend" used presenting her with a National Book Award to make a watermelon joke.

The incident highlighted Oscar's uneasy relationship with race, which was on full display throughout last night's ceremony. Along with Tinseltown's fraught relationship with American militarism, Penn bookended a politically awkward and often uncomfortable evening, which started with host Neil Patrick Harris making a joke about Hollywood celebrating its "best and whitest".

Four hours later, Penn reminded the world that white supremacy is never far away in America, and it's at its most insidious and powerful when wielded by self-proclaimed Hollywood liberals – like Penn.

Right before Birdman won, it seemed as if some of the racial tension I had anticipated going into the evening would be muted. Selma, the biopic of Martin Luther King, had been snubbed for its director Ava DuVernay and star David Oyelowo. But, it had won for Glory, its politically charged theme song (which beat out the vapid Everything Is Awesome) and gave John Legend the chance to say: "We live in the most incarcerated country in the world." Legend then excoriated America for allowing incarceration to be more prevalent for black men now than slavery was in 1850. As Deray McKesson, one of the main organizers in Ferguson, tweeted: "@johnlegend tonight gave us a one-person protest. And I'm all for it."

The Academy honored the black, pacifist film for its aspect which most directly linked the civil rights movement of 1965 to Black Lives Matter movement of 2015. Meanwhile, American Sniper, the incredibly jingoistic bio pic of Navy Seal Chris Kyle (which has appealed to America's most base prejudices as a box-office hit) only one won Oscar. As did Boyhood, a film I had a lot of white supremacist reservations about, even though I loved it.

In fact, as the evening wore in, it became apparent that neither white nor black but Hispanic film-makers behind the camera for Birdman were the breakout stars of the night. Mexican director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki won for Birdman (after winning last year for Gravity), and Iñárritu won for writing, directing and producing Birdman (following up Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón winning for Gravity).

It was a big moment when Birdman won best picture – and Sean Penn took a big dump on it when he said: "Who gave this sonofabitch his green card?"

Iñárritu was gracious in saving the moment, making light of two Mexicans winning back to back as meaning the Academy needed to look at its immigration policy. He then championed political reforms for Mexicans in Mexico and immigration reform for Mexican Americans in the United States.

Iñárritu later called the joke "hilarious". But as a Hollywood director, he isn't likely to feel the fallout of increased racism Americans will wage against more vulnerable Hispanics, armed with justification from the likes of a good liberal like Penn. And it was only the final slight of presenters treating artists of color poorly. Neil Patrick Harris made an odd joke about Oprah being as big as American Sniper's profits (though he tried to say he was talking about the size of her wealth) at the top of the night, before engaging Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer in a cringeworthy and unfunny bit about why she needed to keep watch over his Oscar predictions; he even went so far as to tell her she couldn't eat or go to the bathroom to watch his stuff. In those predictions, he made a joke about mispronouncing Chiwetel Ejiofor's name – when he mispronounced it again! And he also weirdly referred to David Oyelowo as a nominee when he wasn't, before involving him in an unfunny bit.

And, despite having a black woman, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, as its president, and no shortage of black performers, the Academy has a long history of having an overwhelmingly white membership, having few minorities in positions of power, and for only rewarding black actors for playing subservient roles.

The Academy's relationship with gay rights had a couple of interesting moments. Though the host, Harris, is openly gay, he is as tall, blond and heterosexually oriented as any Hollywood leading man ever has been – whether he's singing opposite Cinderella, starring in How I Met Your Mother, or parodying himself with Harold and Kumar. The evening's interesting gay moment was when screenwriter Graham Moore, who wrote the biopic The Imitation Game about gay mathematician Alan Turing, won and said: "When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself ... And now I'm standing here ... for that kid out there who thinks she's weird or she's different or she doesn't fit in anywhere. Yes you do."

The role of militarism in the US, and how both Hollywood and the American news media facilitate through both mindless and deliberate propaganda, was tensely played out. On the red carpet, I was kind of appalled at how Taya Kyle, widow of Chris Kyle (the subject of American Sniper) was attending the Oscars, as if Hollywood was wrapping itself in war as shamelessly as politicians do.

But Hollywood's ambivalence about the military was a bit more nuanced. Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 won the documentary short award, and Harris chose to follow up the film-maker's touching speech about her veteran son committing suicide by making a joke about her dress. (Patricia Arquette's call for women's civil rights was enough to bring Meryl Streep to her feet, but I guess Reese Witherspoon's call to #AskHerMore and not reduce women to their clothes wasn't enough to keep Harris from reducing a mom talking about her dead son to her dress.) Then, Citizenfour won best documentary feature. As Guardian alumnus Glenn Greenwald took the stage, it was hard not to think the Academy wasn't embracing a critique of US militarism at least as probing as when it award Moore his Oscar.

The politically conscious high point of the night to me was when Selma's song Glory won. Everything is Awesome is still the year's most memorable movie song. But despite its original mission to critique if everything is awesome, it's became as bland a ballad as last year's most memorable nominated song (Happy) to maintain the status quo. Hollywood likes to think it is cutting-edge on social issues, but it's usually very conservative. So it was good to see Glory's musicians provide at least reference to what the hell has been happening in America between Happy and Everything is Awesome.

And Penn's penultimate moment of the broadcast was its lowest point, when he brought to the fore not just the simmering, weird way race was near at hand with several African Americans who weren't nominated. He showed that white supremacy in Hollywood needs to assert itself even in the face of minority exceptionalists who are nominated and actually win – that it needs to remind a brown film-maker receiving the Academy's highest honor that he is still a sonofabitch with a green card, ostensibly stealing work from good white folk.

In a way, Penn did us a favor: he exposed Hollywood's faux liberalism for what it truly is. Hollywood has an uneasy relationship with racism, feminism and militarism because it will exploit all of them to keep making money. It is not concerned with diversity or economic justice, except to the extent it can feign interest in any of them to perpetuate its own power.

• This article was amended on 23 February 2015. An earlier version said that Chris Cooper was the Navy Seal in American Sniper. It was further corrected on 24 February 2015 to remove an incorrect statement that Michael Moore won an Oscar in 2005 for his anti-Iraq war documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.

QuoteSteven W Thrasher is a weekly columnist for Guardian US. He was named Journalist of the Year 2012 by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, the Advocate and more.

LOL I just saw that this was posted in earnest as "omg horrible racism" on Paradox OT.

Quote from: The Brain on February 24, 2015, 02:19:08 PMLOL I just saw that this was posted in earnest as "omg horrible racism" on Paradox OT.

Where do you think I found it?  :P But it was not posted seriously there either.

Quote from: The Larch on February 24, 2015, 02:25:32 PM

Quote from: The Brain on February 24, 2015, 02:19:08 PMLOL I just saw that this was posted in earnest as "omg horrible racism" on Paradox OT.

Where do you think I found it?  :P But it was not posted seriously there either.

That famously retarded Communist wasn't serious? Broken clock I guess.

It is kind of too bad they cannot just write an article saying 'I found a few problematic things in the Oscars that Hollywood might want to consider'.  Instead it has to be "Hollywood is false and full of sin.  REPENT'.

Three things:


- Scarlett looked gorgeous

- John Travolta is a creep

- Gaga was magnificent



G.

Quote from: Valmy on February 24, 2015, 02:32:05 PM
It is kind of too bad they cannot just write an article saying 'I found a few problematic things in the Oscars that Hollywood might want to consider'.  Instead it has to be "Hollywood is false and full of sin.  REPENT'.

Such an article wouldn't probably be posted on forum boards generating traffic for its author.

Quote from: celedhring on February 24, 2015, 02:37:26 PM

Quote from: Valmy on February 24, 2015, 02:32:05 PM
It is kind of too bad they cannot just write an article saying 'I found a few problematic things in the Oscars that Hollywood might want to consider'.  Instead it has to be "Hollywood is false and full of sin.  REPENT'.

Such an article wouldn't probably be posted on forum boards generating traffic for its author.

Yeah that is what I was trying to get at.  Click bait and all that.

Languish would get a lot of traffic if we were more in-your-face and not so damn polite.

Quote from: celedhring on February 24, 2015, 11:26:57 AM

Quote from: Valmy on February 24, 2015, 11:16:04 AM
I was under the impression Selma was not a good film.  Anybody seen it want to comment?  Should it have swept everything?

It hasn't come out in Spain yet. Will probably check it out when it does to see if all the fuss is warranted or not.

Why do spaniards hate Israel so much?

It cannot be love of muslims. You guys do have an immigration problem with moroccans, don't you?
And didn't you fight an 800 years war to free yourself from the muslims?
So it must be anti-semitism.

Quote from: The Brain on February 24, 2015, 02:29:21 PM

Quote from: The Larch on February 24, 2015, 02:25:32 PM

Quote from: The Brain on February 24, 2015, 02:19:08 PMLOL I just saw that this was posted in earnest as "omg horrible racism" on Paradox OT.

Where do you think I found it?  :P But it was not posted seriously there either.

That famously retarded Communist wasn't serious? Broken clock I guess.

You still go to Paradox, you shameless traitor, after all they did to you?

I still think Birdman will win it. I also heard Neil Patrick Harris will be host, that could work.

Quote from: lustindarkness on February 24, 2015, 02:55:28 PM
I still think Birdman will win it. I also heard Neil Patrick Harris will be host, that could work.

I hear he's a house faggot now, though, betraying his fellow gays. :(

Isn't that guy gay?

Quote from: Siege on February 24, 2015, 02:57:03 PM
Isn't that guy gay?

He's gay for that pussy.

Theory: the number of terribly political statements on stage is in direct proportion to the embarrassment felt at how monochrome the nominees were.

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 24, 2015, 03:37:11 PM
Theory: the number of terribly political statements on stage is in direct proportion to the embarrassment felt at how monochrome the nominees were.

I think that was the real source of Sean Penn's lame joke.  But what do I know?  Anyway if they feel so embarrassed about it they have an easy solution.

But that would mean confronting the shocking lack of diversity within cultural institutions. It's far easier to ignore it and assuage your conscience by supporting the right side politically <_<

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 24, 2015, 03:40:40 PM
But that would mean confronting the shocking lack of diversity within cultural institutions. It's far easier to ignore it and assuage your conscience by supporting the right side politically <_<

It's easier still to ignore it and laugh till you pee at bleating from the Guardian.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 24, 2015, 03:49:55 PM

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 24, 2015, 03:40:40 PM
But that would mean confronting the shocking lack of diversity within cultural institutions. It's far easier to ignore it and assuage your conscience by supporting the right side politically <_<

It's easier still to ignore it and laugh till you pee at bleating from the Guardian.

Incontinence, and at such an early age too.  :(

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 24, 2015, 03:40:40 PM
But that would mean confronting the shocking lack of diversity within cultural institutions. It's far easier to ignore it and assuage your conscience by supporting the right side politically <_<

Nothing shocking about Hollywood playing it safe.  That is what they do.  Cannot wait for Spiderman 17.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on February 24, 2015, 02:18:04 PM
Marty hijacks his own threads quite a bit. Though perhaps in his mind Oscars and bullying gay schoolkids both fall under "gay issues" and this isn't a hijack at all?  :hmm:

Err, I didn't hijack the thread.

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 24, 2015, 03:40:40 PM
But that would mean confronting the shocking lack of diversity within cultural institutions. It's far easier to ignore it and assuage your conscience by supporting the right side politically <_<

Maybe blacks are just bad at movies. They are good at sports - they can't be good at everything, right? :P

Quote from: Siege on February 24, 2015, 02:52:13 PM
Why do spaniards hate Israel so much?

It cannot be love of muslims. You guys do have an immigration problem with moroccans, don't you?
And didn't you fight an 800 years war to free yourself from the muslims?
So it must be anti-semitism.

The press is almost unanimously biased against Israel. Why is that I don't know, but since we have pretty much no Jews it might simply be inertia, consequence of a society shaped by Franco's Middle East policy, which was markedly pro-Arab (IMHO probably for pragmatic reasons, such as avoiding embargoes, trade, Catholic integrism, and early on German influence).

Quote from: celedhring on February 24, 2015, 01:37:00 PM

Quote from: Ideologue on February 24, 2015, 01:30:40 PM
Maintaining the tone, building a (routinely modified) story out of the footage, and keeping the actors straight is the producers' job?  Then no wonder they get the Best Picture action figures. :P

I thought you meant the technical and practical challenges, which were certainly considerable. What you mention is certainly the purview of the director, but what's so hard about it? There are lots of other films about boys growing up that maintain tone and build a story, they are just shot conventionally.

But Boyhood was not shot conventionally.

Maybe I overestimate the difficulty.  I mean, hell, not like it really did amount to that much in the end.

Quote from: Martinus on February 24, 2015, 04:46:04 PM
Err, I didn't hijack the thread.

Weren't you the first person to mention the "stop bullying" campaign?

Hey, at least Lena Dunham wasn't involved, right?

Quote from: CountDeMoney on February 24, 2015, 09:42:31 PM
Hey, at least Lena Dunham wasn't involved, right?

Oh, the huge manatee.

Quote from: celedhring on February 24, 2015, 04:01:39 AM
A director "directs" everything in the film. In theory - although that's highly dependent on your personal power - you decide everything that goes in the film, using the "proposals" of all the other professionals. You correct the actors' performances, you ask the screenwriter to change things in the script and approve them, you sit besides the editor and give him instructions, you talk with the DoP to have this or this kind of photography for a given scene, etc... You don't supplant them or their work, but you certainly direct them. So in a way, it's hard to have the best picture without the best director.

However, I'm a believer that "best director" awards should focus only on the only exclusive competence a director has: deciding shots and mise en scène, and then include the director among the recipients of "best picture" awards (nowadays only the producers are awarded).

I think that you can easily have a better film (due to having a bigger budget for actors and professionals) without having the best director.  Directors turn resources into film stock.  With fewer resources, its hard to match the quality of an expensive film's stock.  Really great directors like Leone or Eastwood make the quality differences more moot.

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FQgyJcvk.jpg&hash=54550759afd83f0ed1634a107a3706d23d3d5a5c)