The Awful File - Oscars, Millennials, Brie Larson and More!
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I keep a file on my computer that I call the "Awful File", in which I store all stories of awfulness upon which I stumble. As you can imagine...it is a big file. There is always a plethora of awful things going on in the world but writing about them all is a Sisyphean task. So instead of tackling the big awful issues, I thought today that I'd write about some of the more minor awful things floating around in my Awful File.
ACADEMY AWARDS NEW CATEGORY
To begin, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) also known as The Academy, home of The Oscars, made a big decision last week to expand their awards. The geniuses over at the Academy decided to create the new category..."Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film"...or as I like to call it the "Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pandering" or the "Desperation Award".
Some in Hollywood, like Mark Wahlberg, are pleased with the new category, of course Marky Mark is happy about the new award because it gives his sellout ass a shot to win an Oscar, but those with any semblance of artistic integrity are dismayed if not disgusted by the move. .
The biggest problem with the the "Achievement in Popular Film" award is that there is already a metric by which that talent is measured...it is called the box office...and the entire populace votes on it by either attending or not attending a movie.
The Oscars are supposed to be about excellence in cinema, not popularity, that may rub some rubes the wrong way, but that is the truth. The Oscars are meant to reward artists and craftsmen, not salesmen.
By creating this new populist award, AMPAS is pandering to the lowest common denominator and is diminishing the value of an Oscar. But this isn't the first time they've done that in recent years.
After the inane moronity of the #OscarsSoWhite nonsense a few years back, the Academy pandered to the outraged online mob by jettisoning older White members and bringing in a cavalcade of minorities and women. The Academy made it very clear that they wanted more Black actors and films nominated and winning awards regardless of their artistic merit...and sure enough we got more Black artists and films winning Oscars. To their great discredit the Academy managed to water down the prestige of the Oscars by making it based on identity and more a minority achievement award than one based on merit.
The "Achievement in Popular Film" award is once again another attempt by the Academy to water down the awards and is a blatant attempt to make sure that the stultifyingly average Black Panther wins an Oscar, even though it is, at best, the third best comic book film of the year so far (behind Infinity War and Deadpool 2).
I bet dollars to donuts that the Academy will also prop up with nominations other identity-driven "popular" films like...God help us all...A Wrinkle in Time...in order to pad their "woke" bona fides. This is the shameless beast that has been unleashed by the Academy of dopes desperate to snag television ratings in an ever splintering television market.
Sadly, by watering down the prestige of the award, the Oscars are unwittingly creating a much larger pool of competition for viewers attention for themselves. Since the Oscars are no longer the gold standard of awards they have sullied themselves enough to be lumped in among the hoi polloi of other forgettable awards like the Golden Globes, People's Choice Awards and MTV movie awards and the like.
By stooping to appease a non-existent audience yearning for blockbusters to be included in a prestigious industry insider event, the Academy Awards have cut off their nose to spite their face. It is a foolish, hapless and hopeless maneuver, and its level of delusion reminds me of Norma Desmond's famous line from Sunset Boulevard, "All right Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up!"
Rest assured, the Academy's attempts to be relevant will only hasten to make it all the more irrelevant.
MILLENNIALS
I read an article in The Guardian last week that claimed that there was a survey taken that asked Millennials what movies from the 2010's should be put in a time capsule. I will get to their answers in a moment, but let me first say that I have no idea what the survey question was, or who did the survey or any of the parameters of the survey because the hack who wrote this dreadful column, Stuart Heritage, never tells me or provides a link. Great work, Stuart. How this numbnuts can be employed as a writer at a major newspaper is beyond me.
Now...back to the list of films that millennials allegedly chose for the time capsule. Here it is...
1. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
2. Black Panther
3. Frozen
4. Wonder Woman
5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part II
6. La La Land
7. Fifty Shades of Grey
8. Moana
9. Get Out
10. Coco
11. Moonlight
12. The Social Network
13. The Greatest Showman
14. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
15. Blade Runner 2049
16. Call Me By Your Name
17. The Post
18. Spotlight
Ummm...my initial reaction is this...what in the fuck is wrong with millennials? I mean, Holy Shit that list is an abomination.
Out of the top ten, only two films are even decent, Wonder Woman and La La Land, and only La La Land is cinematically noteworthy.
As for 10 through 18, The Social Network is the best choice on the entire list, as it perfectly encapsulates the cold, disconnected social media world in which we live. Even though I disagree with it, I can see why they'd choose Moonlight, it did win Best Picture after all, as did Spotlight, a choice with which I can agree. But The Post? Call Me By Your Name? The Greatest Showman? What in the hell is wrong with these people?
As for the problems with the top ten they seem so glaring as to be obvious...why in the world would anyone in their right mind have Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the seventh movie in a franchise that was iconic back in the 70's, as the number one choice for anything? Black Panther? Frozen? The eight and final film of the Harry Potter franchise? The steaming pile of cinematic excrement also known as Fifty Shades of Grey?
What this list shows me is that millennials are corporatized and infantilized to such a degree that they are morally distorted beyond human recognition. For example, seven of the top ten films are franchise or Disney animated kid's films. This is contrasted by number sixteen, Call Me By Your Name, which is a pedophile love story and number seven, Fifty Shades of Grey, which is a degenerate story of sadism and masochism. So you have a generation emotionally and intellectually stunted who have been conditioned to enjoy childish entertainments and yearn to be sexually controlled or manipulated by a dominant elder. Yikes.
I am joking...about millennials...sort of. I actually coach a lot of millennials and have found them to be a decent bunch of human beings whose main failings are that they are addictively myopic to a self-destructive degree. That said, what concerns me most about them is their taste in film...which according to this survey is atrocious.
Here is a list, off the top of my head, for films that I nominate to put in the time capsule. This isn't the list of best films, but a mix of best, most relevant and most insightful about the decade. In no particular order...
Hell or High Water, Sicario, Phantom Thread, The Master, Dunkirk, Inception, Ex Machina, The Social Network, A Quiet Place, The Big Short, Whiplash, Nightcrawler, The Tree of Life, Django Unchained, Her, 12 Years a Slave, Deadpool, Logan, Thor: Ragnarok, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes.
BRIE LARSON
Back in June, according to Variety, Brie Larson said this at the heretofore unheard of Crystal and Lucy Awards show,
“Am I saying I hate white dudes? No, I’m not"...
But then she went on to say...
"I don’t want to hear what a white man has to say about ‘A Wrinkle in Time.’ I want to hear what a woman of color, a biracial woman has to say about the film. I want to hear what teenagers think about the film.”
“If you make a movie that is a love letter to women of color, there is a chance that a woman of color does not have access to review and critique your film,” she said, while revealing plans to roll out an opt-in program that will provide studios with access to underrepresented journalists and critics. “Do not say the talent is not there, because it is.”
Ok. Well...let me preface this by saying, just like Brie Larson doesn't hate "White dudes", I don't hate White "chicks" or "chicks" of any color...BUT...that being said, I think Brie Larson may have huffed a little too much King Kong dung.
Let's embrace Ms. Larson's logic for a moment and see where that gets us. Fine...she doesn't want to hear what White "dudes" think of A Wrinkle in Time. Great...so then White dudes don't have to go see that piece of shit movie...thank you...that is a relief.
According to Ms. Larson, that movie is a love letter to teens of color, I wonder if the director Ava DuVernay told Disney that before she got financing, that she was only interesting in teen girls and girls of color seeing the movie? Disney would have absolutely loved that idea since, as their history shows, they don't care about money at all. Also, Brilliant Brie might want to consider what it means for the box office if a film is meant to exclude White dudes, she might discover that White dudes not seeing a movie could possibly, maybe...oh, I don't know...hurt the film at the box office? Maybe Ms. Larson might reconsider that alienating "White dudes" might end up being not such a great deal for the filmmaker or the people at Disney.
And is A Wrinkle in Time really hill Ms. Larson wants to plant her flag on in trying to make the case for more diversity in film criticism? The film has a 40% critical score at Rotten Tomatoes, which Ms. Larson will no doubt blame on vicious White male critics, but the problem with that is the audience score, which is no doubt made from many women, women of color and teens, is a dismal 29. So instead of implying White male critics sabotaged A Wrinkle in Time's chances for success, maybe she should listen to all the female and minority amateur critics who are saying the movie sucks.
Ms. Larson's Identity-Based Critic Policy basically mirrors the argument heard from nerds she would deem hateful in regards to Gamergate and Star Wars movies and such. Nerd stuff is overwhelmingly guy stuff, and so if we follow Ms. Larson's own rules, women are no longer allowed to review stuff made for guys...you know...like Star Wars and Marvel movies...or Martin Scorsese, PT Anderson, Terence Malick or Christopher Nolan films. I am happy about that because, like how Ms. Larson doesn't hate "White dudes", I don't hate "chicks", and just like Ms. Larson doesn't "want to hear what white dudes think of A Wrinkle in Time" and wants their voices excluded regarding "chick flicks", I want all chick's voices regarding the aforementioned guy projects to be silenced.
Much like Ms. Larson's feelings regarding White male critics, I think the opinion of female critics taints the films they review and skews it towards a feminist perspective...so they all must go!! Leave guy stuff for guys and girls stuff for girls. I'll bask in the blockbuster entertainment of Star Wars and Marvel movies and basically all the best cinema on the planet while chicks get to have Ava DuVernay girlie junk like A Wrinkle in Time and the Sex and the City movies. Sweet deal!!
Does any of that sound rational at all? Of course not, it sounds hateful, bigoted, vicious and entirely counter productive. So maybe Ms. Larson should try and actually think before she speaks and takes actions against an entire group of people based on nothing but their race and gender.
And finally...Ms. Larson's demand that I not say that "there is no talent there"...is something I will completely ignore. There is no talent there...you know how I know that? Because if there were talent there, these allegedly ignored minority/female critics would write a review and someone would read it and like it. How do I know that? Because that is what I did and now I have people all over the world reading my reviews and I never had any special access to film festivals or studios or any special program to give me a leg up...hell, I never even used Facebook or Twitter...ever.
It is amazing that all you have to do to become a writer is to...you know...write something. In my case, I love cinema, I studied it as a young man and now I write about and some people read it...there is absolutely nothing stopping women or minorities from doing exactly the same thing...nothing.
And by the way Ms. Larson...there is plenty of access for writers to write film reviews...tons in fact...look at me...I review films on my blog...amazing...how did I think of something so ingenious? People can write reviews on Facebook or they can write reviews and leave them on Rotten Tomatoes if they like..lots and lots of people do!
So instead of bitching about lack of access or diversity or opportunity, why not encourage women and women of color to actually, you know, learn something about cinema and then actually write reviews of the movies they see. What an incredible idea!! But Brie Larson wouldn't go for that because all that matters to her and her ilk is a person's identity, not their ability.
RUBY ROSE - BATWOMAN
Speaking of the bat shit crazy world of identity politics, there is now the story of the outrage over Australian actress Ruby Rose being cast as Batwoman in the CW's "Arrowverse". Ms. Rose has quit Twitter (a healthy choice) and Instagram because of the vitriol she has received in response to her casting.
Now, Ms. Rose is not the first actor to face a backlash by fans after being cast to play a beloved character. The choice of Michael Keaton to play Batman in Tim Burton's original film and Heath Ledger being chosen as The Joker in The Dark Knight were both met with cries of despair and anger from the DC comic fan base.
What makes the outcry over Ms. Rose's casting is that those creating the uproar are not "fanboys", but "fangirls" in general and lesbian and Jewish fangirls to be more precise. You see Batwoman, according to the DC comic book canon, is a Jewish lesbian and apparently Ms. Rose, who has been out as a lesbian since she was 12, has been deemed not "gay enough" for the lesbian contingent and she is not Jewish at all which offends some in the Jewish fanbase.
Obviously, this is identity politics run amok. Actors can play characters that are not exactly like them...gay actors can play straight characters and straight actors can play gay characters. This is what acting is...and if identity politics adherents in Hollywood want to really think about it, by holding such stringent requirements for actors that they can only play roles for which they already "identify" in their real lives, then it is minority actors who will suffer most.
For example, in a recent New York Times op-ed by Jennifer Finley Boylan (a transgender woman), Ms. Boylan wrote that she thought Scarlett Johannsson should not play a trangender character because she isn't trans. I get the feeling behind the thought, but taken to its logical conclusion that means that trans actors can only play trans characters...and gay actors can only play gay characters. Therefore, since LGBTQ people make up about 3.8% of the population, there will be a considerable disadvantage for LGBTQ actors to get work since there will be far fewer characters that identify as LGBTQ just because of the reality of their statistical insignificance in the general population.
I find the identity politics fury and the charges of "cultural appropriation" and things like that to be so devoid of substance as to be ridiculously absurd. My counter argument is that we should be judging actors, writers, filmmakers and other artists on the quality of their work not on whether or not they check the right identities on the racial, ethnic, sexual and gender boxes.
I would like to say that this storm of idiotic identity politics will pass...but I have a sinking feeling this is the way it is going to be from here on out, and the arts are going to suffer greatly because of it.
JOHN OLIVER
No discussion of awful things is complete without mentioning John Oliver.
This past Sunday John Oliver did a brief bit on Saudi Arabia being pissed at Canada during his God awful show Last Week Tonight. It was...as usual...the most flaccid and impotent of comedy imaginable. What made it egregiously insipid and insidious though was that Oliver never mentioned the U.S. involvement in the grotesque war and genocide in Yemen. It is like the war in Yemen barely exists and even if it does then America certainly has nothing to do with it. This whole segment is strong evidence in my case claiming Oliver is a shamelessly venal shill for American neo-liberalism and the establishment.
To Oliver's credit, he did mention, sort of, Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9-11, something he has failed to do in the past...but again never spoke of the oddity of the US supporting a brutal dictatorship that is not only committing war crimes and genocide in Yemen and being aided and abetted in those war crimes and atrocities by the U.S.)...but attacked the U.S. on 9-11 and killed 3,000 people.
Instead of spending his precious HBO time making liberals painfully aware of the atrocities in Yemen and America's complicity in that evil, Oliver instead did a lengthy piece on that most pressing of issues...astroturf (fake populist ads)...oooh...how daring! Oliver is such a dissembler and disinformation agent that it is staggering and frankly horrifically disheartening that so many liberals hang on his every word and take it for gospel truth.
The bottom line is this...John Oliver is a scumbag shill of the highest order. I think we should toss him in a sack and fucking airmail this useless douchebag back to whatever British shithole he crawled out of.
And thus ends a brief foray into my Awful File...sadly, it is still chock full of awfulness but I don't have the heart to keep going through it. But know this, there is always one thing you can count on...the Awful File will never run out of material.
©2018