THE 2006 OSCARS, or rather THE 2006 CRASH CONTROVERSY
Some basic facts and figures:
Number of Academy Awards won by:
Martin Scorsese - 0
Robert Altman - 1 (but only after last night's honorary award)
Stanley Kubrick - 1 (for "special visual effects" in 2001 ...)
Orsen Welles - 0
The film Crash - more than these guys.
Some past Academy Best Picture nominations and winners:
1974 - The Towering Inferno (with OJ Simpson no less!)
1976 - Rocky (over Taxi Driver, Network, and All the President's Men)
1979 - Kramer vs Kramer (over Apocolypse Now and Manhatten)
1980 - Ordinary People (over Raging Bull? Come on)
1998 - Shakespeare in Love
1983 - Terms of Endearment
1981 - Chariots of Fire (over Raiders of the Lost Ark and Reds)
1958 - Gigi (over Touch of Evil and Vertigo)
And 2006, Crash (over, well, pick any movie you'd like, because I don't think Crash is that much better than anything you could come up with).
Yes folks, Crash was the big winner at the 2006 Oscars. Personally, I was floored (and vaguely disgusted) by this choice. Despite some reviewers (such as Roger Ebert) promoting the film, this movie fan just doesn't see what it had going for it. Oh, I may go back and give the film another shot. I've certainly been wrong before. Never before have I reconsidered a film I found as utterly cheesy as Crash and realized that I was watching a work of genius, however. I may have underated films before, but nothing like what would be required for Crash to turn into my best picture of 2005.
I am not a conspiracy theorist. Far from it, in fact. But with that said let's just say I have doubts about motives in this selection. Could it be that voters were a tad bit afraid of certain gay cowboy themes? Especially with yammering right wing talking heads taking as many pot shots at Hollywood as they possibly can. Could it be that many Academy voters (who definitely trend toward the older end of the age spectrum) find promoting tolerance of blacks easier than tolerance of gays? Could voters have simply been more accepting of an easy anti-racisim movie set in LA than a countrified story of repressed homsexuality?
The answer is that I don't know. Maybe I am looking too hard for a conspiracy theory? Maybe the voters just plain messed up again, just like they did in all of the choices I listed at the start of this entry. Maybe Crash is just this year's Ordinary People?
Anyway, with all said and done I found last night's Oscar ceremony neither good nor bad. I have a 'sort of okay' vibe thinking about how Jon Stewart performed as host. He utterly fell flat early, but did manage to find a few laughs later on. I'm very glad Ang Lee won best director, but was rather bored by the pararde of art awards that Memoirs of a Geisha received. I refuse to comment on the best song winner. I've actually been making fun of that song for a month now, after hearing it in Hustle and Flow. Ohhhh, I can't resist. "It's hard out here for a pimp?" Are you freaking kidding me? It's hard out here for good taste, that's what it's hard out here for.
In the end, I'm confident that the Oscars are not the the defining judge of film. They never have been, and I doubt they ever will be. If you look back over the years though, I won't dare fault them too much. It's obvious that the Academy has done a pretty good job. Despite the fact that Scorsese and Altman never won an Oscar, they did get the nominations time and again. And in past Oscar nomination lists you'll find Fellini and Kurosawa and Bergman and many other greats. So despite my disagreement about Crash, I can still say that from this year's list of nominated films will come some flicks that we'll look back at as great, great movies.
Well, I hope you enjoyed the fine batch of 2005 flicks as much as I did, because now we're off to 2006. I already have some high hopes this year, especially for The DaVinci Code, Oliver Stone's 9/11 project, Mel Gibson's Apocolypto and many more. Here's to the movies! (Now I can go watch March Madness basketball.)
posted by Brian @ 7:39 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I have to say that I was surprised that Crash won, but I it was the only nomination that I had actually watched, so I couldn't compare it to the rest. I was hoping for Brokeback Mountain though, just because of all the fuss the ranchers/cowboys are making up here in Alberta.
I liked the movie, even though it was obvious that they were trying to play with our emotions. And the themes were pretty dark - we're all rascist underneath... - but perhaps that's true? Maybe we convince ourselves that we aren't rascist b/c it's not acceptable (oh wait... it is if they're from the Middle East...) but underneath it's all too easy to judge others.
And it was cheesy, but that one scene with the little girl practically stopped my heart.
I thought Crash may have had some interesting things to say, about the little ways racism creeps into our lives and perhaps even some deeper ideas about connecting with people in general. It reminded me (in some ways) of The Screwtape Letters where the devil was always hiding in the most mundane of places.
What I really didn't like though, was *how* they carried that message in the larger work of art. I found a lot to complain about in the construction of this film:
Broad, unbelievable, uninteresting characters (or were they caricatures).
Cheesy second rate music and sound.
Entirely unimpressive visuals and direction style - no creative atmosphere to this world whatsoever. It looked and felt closer to TV-quality than best-picture-quality in my eyes ...
Silly plot coincidences (they were aiming to be a parable, but it turned out more like a soap opera).
All in all I think it is a noble movie that should be applauded, but that it just isn't anywhere near the quality of the best films of 2005.
In the end, it's all a matter of opinion I guess. But I'm pretty sure they're not going to be showing Crash on the Classic Movie Channel of your portable computer-TV 50 years from now. Time will tell, I suppose.
Thanks for the insight. B
your list of the three films your interested in is very bizarre...i need some evidence of something to get me excited for oliver stone's movie, dvc or mel gibson's craziness.
--RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com
Oliver Stone, one of the handful of cinematic geniuses working right now, taking on 9/11, the major American event of the past decade? That sounds like something to look forward to. Yes, he might churn out another Alexander, but I'm certainly interested to see what he comes up with.
I've got a feeling about the DaVinci code like I haven't had on film in quite some time. Without having seen a single frame, I'm thinking it might just have Godfather-like potential. Both books were gripping, if rather uncomplicated reads, that I think will translate well to the screen. Ron Howard is definitely at the top of his form right now as well.
And even though I didn't necessarily agree with some of what Gibson had to say with the Temptation of the Christ, it was the most original picture of the last 5 years. It was also extremely well made.
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