Kinematoscope

Go here for the complete list of Oscar nominees. Normally I do a whole number crunch on how many I got right versus how many wrong, but for some reason this year I don't give a rat's ass.

I wonder why? Maybe it's because the only film I saw this year four times got shut out of all the indicators that it was a good film, with the exception of Heath Ledger's "oh but he was too handsome to die so young" nomination.

But The Dark Knight got seven other nominations, you say. Sure it did. But who cares? Effects, sound mixing/editing, cinematography, editing, art direction, and make-up: all great indicators that it was "well-made" as Frank Marshall put it today, but who gives two shits if it's apparently not any good. If it's about comic books, god forbid.

We can't nominate a movie about comic books! Quick, is there something about the Holocaust?

And this is probably going to sound harsh, but fuck the Holocaust. Make some movies about 9/11, make movies about the fucking Indian Ocean Sunami, Darfur, global warming, pandas that won't fuck, AIDS in Africa, the crisis in the Middle East, anything but the Holocaust already. Can we just fucking decide this? By all means, keep making documentaries, let's use concentration camp metaphors in everything, let's compare people to Hitler, but we have to find a different fucking bogeyman to live under our cinematic beds, because god damn they're everywhere and they weren't all decades ago.

So I'm sorry, Acting branch of the Academy, if you looked into modern times and decided to bury yourselves in the past, where everything is clear. Let's give a three years too late apology to the gay community (Milk) even though the only award we're even thinking about giving that film is to Sean Penn for pretending he's gay and (gasp!) kissing a man! (That's gotta be up there with gaining thirty pounds of Oscar weight, right?) Let's give fourteen nominations to the picture in some fairytale Louisiana where race relations are never mentioned (Button), because most of us feel good about that half-black guy we voted for- but that's only one race we don't have to feel guilty about anymore, and we just realized India existed! Is there a flashy, simplisitic, overwrought Dickensian fable we can give Best Picture to (Slumdog Millionaire) in the spirit of white-guilt and overblown worldliness? But only if it reduces an entire nation's history of poverty to a few music videos! Plus, let's give Richard Nixon "the trial he never got" (Frost/Nixon) and congratulate ourselves for being alive at the time and doing nothing, ultimately, and doing even less the last eight years in the face of larger corruption.

And finally, man oh man, let there be a movie with mediocre reviews about the Holocaust (The Reader), because it's been a little while and Israel is doing some things we really would rather not face right now, and we like to know that evil is evil and good is good, although sometimes people just follow orders, but at least it's a story we know. Don't let their be a movie that's popular, explosive, well-fashioned and well-put together that makes us face the fact that the world is in chaos. Don't let there be a film about people in costumes breaking down the walls of movie genres into artistic territory, because we just wouldn't know what to think.

Wow, I got more bitter the more I was writing that. But I'm not editing this post, because nobody reads this and I just don't care.

I'm glad AMPAS, coming off the lowest rated Oscar telecast in ever, decided to find a few ways to make it get even worse. Not only did they ignore the most popular movie of the decade in all the major categories, they even decided to cut down Original Song to just three nominees, two of which went to songs mostly in Indian.

There were a few consolations in the rough here (In Bruges for Original Screenplay, M. I. A. at the Oscars), but they weren't enough to make me care for today. Maybe next week or something. I just wanted TDK to be there- I've resigned myself to a in-no-way-deserved Slumdog Millionaire victory for a couple months now. I just convinced myself it was going to be in.

The nominations from the guilds of the Directors, Writers, Producers, Editors, Art Directors, Sound Mixers, Costumers, and the truckload of critical acclaim might have done their part too. In fact, only the Screen Actor's Guild, by extension a group that overlaps with the acting block of AMPAS, the largest one, didn't really seem to think much of TDK in their awards. So hopefully they can get fucked in their contract negotiation, for all I care. I try not to come down on Hollywood as not caring about the public, but I can't muster the effort today.