Okay, to quote Ross Perot, here's the deal: Oscar's, Sunday night, 8:30 p.m. ABC. Hollyweird''s biggest night, and all that jazz.
As your political columnist, what do the Academy Award nominated films and performances tell us about the Zeitgeist, circa early 2010?
First of all, though much has been written about the fact that academy officials last year, freakend out about lower television ratings and the fact that a majority of the nominated films are ones that a majority of Americans haven't seen, expanded the Best Picture category from 5 to 10 this year. What hasn't been written or discussed is how the vote tally will be calculated via IRV, or instant-runoff voting, which a lot of voting rights advocates would like to see happen in our regular political elections(and does in such cities like San Francisco and Minneapolis. Sarasota citizens approved such a system in 2007, but voters in Burlington, Vermont just repealed it).
Long story short, Academy members will rank the 10 best-picture nominees in order of preference. If no film gets 51% of the vote, the auditors will then divide the movies into 10 stacks, with movie with the fewest #1 votes thrown out. The process will repeat itself if a majority still isn't arrived at. The upshot? A film that gets more 2nd or 3rd place votes could beat out the flick with the most 1st place votes.
I digress. The the news on the show business blogs over the past week is all the dirt that's coming The Hurt Locker's way. The Kathryn Bigelow directed action thriller that me and about three dozen other people saw in Tampa Bay when it opened initially opened last summer has moved into the favorite category for best film recently, which is why it's not getting a dose of negative pub.
The sleaziest news is the lawsuit filed on Wednesday against Hurt Locker screenwriter and producer Mark Boal, brought on by Master Sgt. Jeffrey S. Sarver, whose Explosive Ordnance Disposal (E.O.D.) unit Boal was embedded with Baghdad while working for Playboy. The suit names Boal, Bigelow and the other producers of the pic of basing the lead character that Jeremy Renner (who copped an Oscar nomination) plays on him, Sgt. Sarver.
According to the NY Times:
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, is based on six counts, including misappropriation of name and likeness, invasion of privacy, infliction of emotional distress, fraud and negligent misrepresentation. It seeks in excess of $75,000 for each of the counts, along with costs, interest and legal fees. It charges that the movie amounted to “the exploitation of a real life honorable, courageous, and long-serving member of our country’s armed forces, by greedy, multibillion dollar ‘entertainment’ corporation.
Please people. Let's move on. Hopefully Hurt Locker wins it all.
Now, like any predictor, I have to go back to my column written on December 18th, when I published my top 10 list of the year. #1 was Precious. This movie is incredibly controversial in some parts of the black community I learned when I visited my home in the San Francisco/Berkeley area during the holidays. Academic Ishmael Reed wrote a lengthy and stinging diatribe about the film for the alternative Web site Counterpunch back in early December (he wrote a shorter op-ed for the NY Times in January about the film).
New York Press film critic Armond White wrote his own essay tearing into the film by beginning his review this way:
Shame on Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey for signing on as air-quote executive producers of Precious. After this post-hip-hop freak show wowed Sundance last January, it now slouches toward Oscar ratification thanks to its powerful friends.Winfrey and Perry had no hand in the actual production of Precious, yet the movie must have touched some sore spot in their demagogue psyches. They’ve piggybacked their reps as black success stories hoping to camouflage Precious’ con job—even though it’s more scandalous than their own upliftment trade. Perry and Winfrey naively treat Precious’ exhibition of ghetto tragedy and female disempowerment as if it were raw truth. It helps contrast and highlight their achievements as black American paradigms—self-respect be damned.
Next on my list of favorite films, and the flick that some call a dark-horse to win best film , is Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, which is a return to form for the former video store clerk since his 1994 Oscar nominated classic Pulp Fiction.
Inglourious has been getting some late blogging love by opinion makers like MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell, wrote on the Huffington Post's Web
The more I talk to Academy voters, the more I hear them leaning toward Basterds. Maybe half of the votes have already been cast. Most of the rest will pour into the Academy this week. The timing for the buzz shift toward Basterds could not be better.
If I had a vote to cast, Basterds would get mine. What I love most about Inglourious Basterds is its utter indescribability. Go ahead, try to describe it to people who haven't seen it. It will sound like a silly, incoherent, horribly inaccurate depiction of World War 2. They will not believe any adult would put up money to make or see a movie like that. They will not be able to fathom why Brad Pitt would jump at the chance to star in it. Tarantino took a crazy idea that rattled around in his head for years, turned it into what must have seemed like a pretty crazy screenplay, then turned that into a masterful movie crammed with unbearable tension, twisted humor, true eloquence, and remarkable performances.
Next up is the big kahuna, Avatar. Especially on the Internet, no film has has such incendiary reactions (well, actually, there has been: Precious!, but after that, no film has had such incendiary reactions).
The premise of the 3-D wonder is classic anti-American (military) and pro-environment too its DNA. After seeing it in San Francisco days after it opened nationally, I was surprised the right wasn't making more political hey for it's perceived "anti-America" message.
There have been so many interesting essays, with some claiming the film is racist for its depicting its white protagonist as leading the "savage beasts" to victory that I suggest when you have some free time Googling some up. It's more than just an interesting little ditty with blue people starring in it.
Those are the big ones that are in contention for Best Film. I dug Jason Reitman/Walter Kirn's Up in the Air (which if you'll recall way back in early December was the "hot" choice for best film), not so much for the topicality of its subplot about the American worker getting shafted due to the crummy economy, but because of what happens to its lead character played by Hollywood's successor as officially the Cool Kat, George Clooney.
Specifically, Clooney's wandering, and inability to connect and have a meaningful relationship (there was all that stuff about unpacking your backpack as well). Without getting too personal, let's just say the theme is powerful for those of us who are still (happily?) single.
What else? Well, hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin hopefully will be fun. But I'm bummed out that Sacha Baron Cohen's skit mocking Avatar has reportedly been cut because of fears about Mr. Cameron not enjoying the joke.
Having said all this, can I add that I'm actually more into the American Film Spirit Awards, the indie version of the Oscars, that will air tonight on IFC at 11 p.m. eastern? I still can't get over the fact that famed transvestite Eddie Izzard, hosting the Spirit Awards this year, ran 43 marathons in 51 days. Now that's a lot weirder to me than telling jokes for a couple of hours in women's clothes.
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2010.