Best Director of a Musical - John Doyle/ Best Director of a Motion Picture - Ang Lee Best Revival of a Musical - "The Pajama Game"/Best Picture - "Crash"
see? just puttin' it out there, 'cause still smarting from the ridiculousness!
"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
To Kill A Mockingbird
Thank you for the best laugh I've had in days, colored by esteem.
And it's funny because it's true...
And FindingNamo, Brokeback is the complex story and complex human relationships.
Sweeney, brilliant as it is and beloved by me as it is, is a Grand Guinol(?) melodrama...
"A coherent existance after so many years of muddle" - Desiree' Armfelt, A Little Night Music
"Life keeps happening everyday, Say Yes" - 70, Girls, 70
"Life is what you do while you're waiting to die" - Zorba
a bit of topic, but it seems most of sondheim's shows get recorded and put on dvd/tape. is there any rumor about this getting the same treatment.
Attend the tale of Bovine Boy
His party threads we all enjoy
But does he have Mad Cow Disease?
He doesn't eat beef - but cows skating? - oh please!!!
With cocoa!?!
And lemonade!?!
The heifer-mad poster of Broadway
(World)
See...I saw it and it made me feel awful for being gay. That's rather negative. I understand others may have enjoyed it, but I fail to see a positive effect on the entire community.
Whoever said that Brokeback lost because of homophobia, bite your tongue please. Brokeback lost to an emotionally riveting ensemble drama that was entirely deserving of that award.
"Brokeback huge success will allow for many more gay films..."
It will account for the greenlighting of exactly one wave of "gay films" being green lit by the major studios, three of which will be made, 9 of which will go into turnaround. The three that get made will each have box office returns somewhere south of "Latter Days" and the the New Golden Age of Gay Cinema will actually be shorter than the great big wave of hugely successful movie musicals "Chicago" ushered in.
I know people are gonna sacrifice my ass for posting this but I just needed to post this. Read it all. Live it. Learn it. (AND REMEMBER IT IS AN OPINION!)
Crash's victory, the ULTIMATE insult.
It was so easy... Naming what all the precursors said it was the BEST picture of the year... they awarded the Score - which many were predicting -, and the locked Adapted Screenplay and Director... But comes Jack and with a wide smile he says "Crash"... and hell froze.
Crash's victory is the Ultimate insult. It's above any discussion possible. I'll point out why.
General consensus this year is that Brokeback Mountain IS the picture of the year. It swept most of the precursors in a Sideways or Schindler's List kind of way. It was hailed as a movie that was changing mainstream Hollywood. It was hailed as the most important movie of the year in a year full of important movies. In a year that gay marriage was spreading in the western world and was a really hot issue. They made us think the whole night that it would be a 4 Oscars winner (Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Score) but all of the sudden, they name... Crash.
Why does Crash's victory bother me - and many - this much? First, because it's a movie that basically can't resist the comparison to 3 masterpieces about people colliding in L.A.: Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon (only a Original Screenplay nod), Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (only 3 nods, O.Screenplay, Song and Supp. Actor for an outstanding Tom Cruise) and of all movies, Robert Altman's Short Cuts (only a Director and Screenplay nod, if I remember correctly). Naming Crash best Picture the same night Altman was the honorary award can only be described as an insult as any cinephile with a minimum taste. The only way Crash can be considered a good movie is if you buy it as a fable... but that's not the feeling you get through the movie, despite the atmospheric surprise that put some "magic" to that supposedly hiperrealist collage of racism. Too extreme characters coming together at the same time. Is Crash a parable? Maybe, but not a good one.
Having said that, Crash delivers really good and chilling moments but it's sometimes too confusing (in no way deserving the Screenplay or Editing awards). Crash wins the year that other hot runners as The Constant Gardener, King Kong or A History of Violence, were left out of the quintet. That also adds fuel to the fire.
HOWEVER.... Brokeback's defeat, the ULTIMATE victory.
Even sounding so contradictory, the greatest victory of Brokeback Mountain is its own defeat. It's opened the Pandora's Box in Hollywood and that's always a good thing, to have people openly talk about homophobia in modern society.
The fact that some Academy members rejected to see Brokeback Mountain 'cause it's a movie about a gay romance is pretty significative. Analyzing the Best Picture quintet, Crash was the only movie that could make comfortable the right-extreme right with the Oscars. Good Night and Good Luck attacked the 50's Witch Hunt. Capote, death penalty. Munich, the eye for an eye politics. Brokeback dared to show as "normal" and "mainstream" an homosexual love story.
With Crash, they had a feel-good story with plenty of great moments, easy to swallow and that made a rudimentary comment about racism... it "seemed" antiracist but in the end it was a collection of stereotypes, one right after the other. The fact some of those stereotypes didn't evolve in the movie - specially the oriental ones - actually proves the movie can only be swallowed as a fable, and not a specially good one. As disturbing as its Best Picture victory is its editing win... the edit is sometimes confusion inducing, specially with the "time" factor... much better edited movies of this same year were - look no further - A History of Violence, King Kong and Brokeback Mountain.
What do we have now? Crash is collecting a general consensus of backslash. Not its fault, however, to win. The Academy's.
And they are probably taking note of the uproar. Brokeback's defeat make easier for the next great movie about gays to enter the Red Carpet. Brokeback Mountain in the end NEVER needed to win to become the movie of 2005, it already was. Oscar needed Brokeback Mountain, but Brokeback Mountain never needed Oscar.
