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Go Home Quote of the Day, 'Huh?' Edition

TIMOTHY NOAH JANUARY 23, 2012

Quote of the Day, 'Huh?' Edition

BY ISAAC CHOTINER

[Guest post by Isaac Chotiner]

From Gavin Polone's anti-Oscars piece in New York magazine:

Can you really say that Borat didn’t deserve a [Best Picture] nomination but Letters From Iwo Jima did?

Er, yes. Yes you can.

Which reminds me: the Academy Awards is in danger of reaching a unique place in our culture--a place currently inhabited by the festivities surrounding Christmas. Very briefly, the Oscar telecast is annoying and silly. So is Christmas music, and so is phony holiday cheer. But much more annoying are the people who complain incessantly about these things. The Oscars has now gotten such a bad press, for so long, that the prospect of reading more anti-Oscars articles induces greater dread than the thought of watching the show's third musical number.

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16 comments

I would add the Olympics to that list. Whatever shortcomings the games may have pale in comparison to the annoying nattering of purists in the media who love to wail about "commercialism!". Gasp, they're shocked! As if any of these critics would actually applaud if their government (especially here in the US) just raised the necessary money through taxes.

- bjones

January 23, 2012 at 3:54pm

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What about neither of those films being nominated for Best Picture instead? I don't think the Academy has chosen a good film for Best Picture (or at least very few) in the past twenty years. Most of them are forgettable. Shakespeare In Love? The English Patient? Crash? The Return of the King? The list goes on from there. And Scorsese should have won for Good Fellas--not The Departed.

- maxhencke

January 23, 2012 at 3:58pm

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They still give out the Oscars?

- Tristan

January 23, 2012 at 4:06pm

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But max, I've a feeling that few of the Best Pictures between, say, 1940 and 1960 would be enduring classics either. The last 20 years saw The Hurt Locker, Silence of the Lambs, Unforgiven, American Beauty, and No Country for Old Men take Best Picture. Not a bad bunch at all.

- ironyroad

January 23, 2012 at 5:35pm

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De Gustibus Non Disputandum or words to that effect (my high school Latin was in the Nixon/Ford years). Otherwise, I'd have to say I loved Shakespeare in Love, and The English Patient, and I think Silence of the Lambs was good but overrated (yes the Foster/Hopkins scenes are great, but much of the rest of the film is mediocre).

- bjones

January 23, 2012 at 6:51pm

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What. I LOVE Borat. I wish he would cover the GOP primaries!

- Sophia

January 23, 2012 at 6:52pm

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Or, Bruno. Hmmmm.... :)

- Sophia

January 23, 2012 at 6:53pm

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Soph... kidding aside, if you're a Sasha Baron Cohen fan, you'll be looking forward as I am to him starring in the upcoming biopic of Freddie Mercury. I can't wait.

- Tristan

January 23, 2012 at 6:59pm

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I'm with Max. Neither. Borat was a intermittently amusing squirmfest that was fundamentally dishonest insomuch as it was heavily edited to make the ordinary Americans it ambushed appear stupid and bloody-minded, when in fact most of them reacted to Borat with politeness and appropriate skepticism. And while I haven't seen Letters, I can say that Clint Eastwood has to be the most consistently overrated writer/director of the past decade. Million Dollar Baby and Grand Torino were implausible on almost every level. The characters represent types that don't exist in real life and wouldn't behave the ways they do if they did, and in both movies the terminal plot twists were simply ridiculous. But anyway, since when has the Academy Awards been anything but an exercise in marketing?

- AaronW

January 23, 2012 at 7:00pm

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irony - we agree again. 'The Hurt Locker' was masterful. 'Unforgiven' was best western ever until the remake of 'True Grit', which I thought deserved a nomination for Best Picture for 2010. Eastwood did history a great service for his dualling narratives of Iwo Jima - and the nomination of the Japanese 'Letters' was a tribute to doing both films in the same year. But, I thought DiCaprio was by far the Best Actor for 'Blood Diamond', not the guy who played Idi Amin - I even watched it to see why he won, and still prefer DiCaprio in 'Blood Diamond' - his best ever. Hollywood punishes Edward Zwick and Clint Eastwood for their politics, and preferring old-fashioned story lines. 'Return of the King' won for the Trilogy in total - the Lord of the Rings was the best of the three. Borat? beyond post-modern crudity...can't even watch one second.

- K2K

January 23, 2012 at 7:35pm

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Agree with you on DiCaprio in Blood Diamond, K2K. That movie overall was damn good. Exciting story, exotic locale, solid performances all around and at least one outstanding performance (LD's), some politics made simple but not too simple... It reminded me of a well-made, adult studio picture from the forties, one of the Bogart films maybe. I seem to recall TNR giving it a rave, but Blood Diamond got too little attention in general and at the Oscars too.

- AaronW

January 23, 2012 at 7:51pm

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make that "studio picture for adults", an "adult movie" being something else entirely

- AaronW

January 23, 2012 at 7:53pm

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ironyroad: I agree with you about Silence of the Lambs, Unforgiven, and maybe No Country For Old Men (except There Will Be Blood came out that year, so maybe not). I didn't mean to suggest that no good movies won in the past 20 years; I just wanted to point out that there were many duds in the bunch. And many great films, for that matter, which didn't win (or weren't even nominated) that are now held in higher esteem than the films that did win. AaronW: Totally agree with you. 100%. Clint Eastwood is seriously, seriously overrated. What about these (past twenty years--either didn't win or weren't nominated): Do The Right Thing, Malcolm X, Being John Malkovich, Brazil (from the 80's, but still), Mulholland Drive, Se7en, Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction (didn't win Best Picture), The Player, Miller's Crossing, O Brother Where Art Thou, Children of Men, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Usual Suspects, Good Fellas, Casino, Heat, Requiem for a Dream, Trainspotting... Those are just a few off the top of my head.

- maxhencke

January 23, 2012 at 8:13pm

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There is bad Christmas music out there, but also a lot of great Christmas music. Avoid seasonal albums by NSync and focus on the classics and you'll enjoy it.

- DC Spence

January 23, 2012 at 9:12pm

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K2K, I thought it was a great pity that The Hurt Locker didn't get wider distribution. It seemed to have gained a bit of a reputation as some kind of liberal antiwar movie or whatever, but in fact it was a study of human beings (in this case male American human beings, with their particular quirks and defenses) under combat conditions in a tradition going back to Stephen Crane at least.

- ironyroad

January 23, 2012 at 10:12pm

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About Sasha Cohen playing a God in the upcoming biopic (his humor is not mine at all, but I think he's a very powerful, talented actor), I await with jaded eyes - one takes great risks attempting to interfere with the Prime Directive. I am open to his performance being successful, but it could also be a spectacular failure, particularly offensive (Cohen's specialty, and I salute him for it - anarchy has its place in this world, especially in art). Fingers crossed. I love every last second of every Academy Awards and always have. The whiners bore me to tears. It's a wonderfully American tradition and we'd all complain even more if it somehow became tame, respectable, visionary, any of those things - zzzzzzzzz.

- WandreyCer

January 24, 2012 at 8:32am

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