Ubiquitous
2017-02-24 10:12:43 UTC
Are you going to watch the Academy Awards this Sunday? Please don't.
You'll only drive yourself crazy. If you love Donald Trump, you'll
be outraged at all of the idiotic, self-important protests. If you
hate Donald Trump you'll be exasperated that the idiots in Hollywood
somehow managed to find the most annoying and counter-productive
ways to oppose the Orange Menace. It's a lose-lose proposition.
Plus, La La Land is going to win everything. All the statistical
models show that it has a 95.3 percent chance. So it's a lock. Those
things are never wrong.
Though, in all seriousness, La La Land really is going to win
everything. This is the least suspenseful Oscar night since 1997.
So do yourself a favor: Instead of sitting through the Oscar
telecast, watch a movie!
I know, it's a crazy idea.
On this week's episode of the Substandard podcastwhich will be
posted here this morningwe argue about the best and worst movies to
have won the Oscar for Best Picture. I don't want to spoil it. But I
will say this: In prepping for the show, I was shocked at how
mediocre Best Picture winners are, as a class.
If you take the last 50 Best Picture winners, it's hard to find even
five legitimately great movies. It's impossible to find ten of them
in the bunch. Most of the winners are pretty good; some of them are
just embarrassments.
And when you look at the last twenty years, it turns out that most
of the movies which we now regard as modern classics weren't even
nominated. If we had time, I could write you a convincing 4,000
words arguing that The Dark Knight, Layercake, and Heat are the
three best movies of the last two decades. None of them were
nominated for Best Picture.
Neither, by the by, were The Big Lebowski. Or Jurassic Park. Or
Boogie Nights. I could go on and on and on.
On the one hand, I'm sympathetic to the notion that it's hard to
judge art in the moment and that you can't really evaluate the
greatness of a film until you've had a few years to let it sink in.
On the other, I don't understand how anyone could have walked out of
the theater from any of those films and not understood they had seen
something special. And I cannot imagine how anyone walked out of The
Cider House Rules and thought, "This might have been the best movie
of the year!"
So skip the Oscars. Go watch Layercakewhich is smart and funny and
interesting and the greatest gangster movie since Goodfellas (at
least).
You'll only drive yourself crazy. If you love Donald Trump, you'll
be outraged at all of the idiotic, self-important protests. If you
hate Donald Trump you'll be exasperated that the idiots in Hollywood
somehow managed to find the most annoying and counter-productive
ways to oppose the Orange Menace. It's a lose-lose proposition.
Plus, La La Land is going to win everything. All the statistical
models show that it has a 95.3 percent chance. So it's a lock. Those
things are never wrong.
Though, in all seriousness, La La Land really is going to win
everything. This is the least suspenseful Oscar night since 1997.
So do yourself a favor: Instead of sitting through the Oscar
telecast, watch a movie!
I know, it's a crazy idea.
On this week's episode of the Substandard podcastwhich will be
posted here this morningwe argue about the best and worst movies to
have won the Oscar for Best Picture. I don't want to spoil it. But I
will say this: In prepping for the show, I was shocked at how
mediocre Best Picture winners are, as a class.
If you take the last 50 Best Picture winners, it's hard to find even
five legitimately great movies. It's impossible to find ten of them
in the bunch. Most of the winners are pretty good; some of them are
just embarrassments.
And when you look at the last twenty years, it turns out that most
of the movies which we now regard as modern classics weren't even
nominated. If we had time, I could write you a convincing 4,000
words arguing that The Dark Knight, Layercake, and Heat are the
three best movies of the last two decades. None of them were
nominated for Best Picture.
Neither, by the by, were The Big Lebowski. Or Jurassic Park. Or
Boogie Nights. I could go on and on and on.
On the one hand, I'm sympathetic to the notion that it's hard to
judge art in the moment and that you can't really evaluate the
greatness of a film until you've had a few years to let it sink in.
On the other, I don't understand how anyone could have walked out of
the theater from any of those films and not understood they had seen
something special. And I cannot imagine how anyone walked out of The
Cider House Rules and thought, "This might have been the best movie
of the year!"
So skip the Oscars. Go watch Layercakewhich is smart and funny and
interesting and the greatest gangster movie since Goodfellas (at
least).
--
Dems & the media want Trump to be more like Obama, but then he'd
have to audit liberals & wire tap reporters' phones.
Dems & the media want Trump to be more like Obama, but then he'd
have to audit liberals & wire tap reporters' phones.