If you are in any sense a critic of Hollywood, last night was your night. Not only did the Academy choose a film of almost unfathomable stupidity and aesthetic bankruptcy as its best picture of the year (Crash) but last night's telecast also managed the distinction of being at once one of the most banal, profane and sanctimonious three-and-a-half hours of network television in American history. (Academy, can't you stick to destroying the integrity of your own medium?) When we were not being treated to one of the countless montage pieces (since when does the restaurant scene in Five Easy Pieces demonstrate social consciousness in cinema ?) or the unspeakably vulgar interpretative dance segments -- yes, that dancer was being fingered behind Katherine "Bird" York, reenacting one of the worst moments in contemporary Hollywood cinema... FCC do your job! -- we were being lectured to by a Hollywood that has the temerity to explain to us how it is an organ of great social progress. Way to honor Hattie's portrayal of a sycophantic slave, Academy! And way to point it out George Clooney!
Then again, for all the hand-wringing this morning -- my friend Matthew's piece at Termite Art is the best I've read that takes this perspective, though I would disagree with some of his analysis inasmuch as I suspect voters skipped over Matt Dillon (and reward it as an ensemble instead) in order to spread the hardware around, given that it was such a luck-luster year -- mind-numbing retardation is nothing new for the AMPAS. After all, the Academy did choose Marty rather than Night of the Hunter in 1955, Around the World in 80 Days rather than The Searchers in 1956, and Gigi rather than Vertigo or Touch of Evil two years later (I will be posting my ten best lists for the '50s later today, hence the focus on that decade, which coincidentally do not include a single best picture winner among each year's top ten). The point is the AMPAS does not, and perhaps hasn't ever signified quality in the American cinema. Unfortunately, it has rarely succumbed to such fatuousness.
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