Wednesday 20 January 2016

Hollywood Babble On & On #1260: Why The Oscars Are So White...

With the Oscar nominations out comes the traditional complaining about how weirdly unfair the nominations seem to be.

For the second year in a row all of the acting nominees are white, marking the return of the #OscarSoWhite and #OscarsSoWhite hashtags on twitter as well as threats of boycotts from several prominent black entertainers.
They do have a case. Several African American actors like Michael B. Jordan, and Samuel L. Jackson, and the cast of Straight Outta Compton have put out performances that critics and audiences have considered Oscar worthy. Also the African American directors F. Gary Gray and Ryan Coogler were snubbed even though their films, Straight Outta Compton and Creed, had excellent box office, reviews, and Oscar buzz.
So, why all the snubbing?
Do the Academy members meet around a big table and declare a moratorium on African Americans getting nominations?
Are the individual Academy members so riddled with hate for non-white people they can't bring themselves to nominate African-Americans?
The answer to both questions is: No.
The cause isn't hatred.
The cause is blindness.
You see the Academy members are predominantly older (average age 67), predominantly white, and predominantly politically liberal. 
They are the generation that came of age in the 1950s and 1960s and they see literally EVERYTHING through that lens.
Which brings us to the reasons why Creed and Straight Outta Compton were mostly snubbed: They didn't look like "black films" to the Academy voters.
For someone in the very rarified demographic of an Academy Voter Straight Outta Compton and Creed look radically different from the way everyone else saw them. To an Academy Voter Straight Outta Compton was just a showbiz biopic about a kind of music they don't like, but don't dare admit to not liking, for fear someone will call them racist. 

They also saw Creed as just a sports movie and a comeback vehicle for a previous nominee who has been below their precious radar since the first time he played his signature character.
No one in Compton or Creed are brutalized slaves in the pre-Civil War South, or led Civil Rights marches in the 1960s, or ended up on death row because of a racist justice system manned by white men with heavy southern accents. If they were, then they'd all be up for Oscars, because to Academy voters those are Oscar worthy African-American movies. Instead, the movies featured African-Americans using talent and hard work to succeed in America, and, to various degrees, doing just that.
No martyrs, no Oscar nominations because the Academy just cannot accept them as telling a "sincere" or "real" African-American story, because they lay outside their narrow field of vision.
There is a way to use the Academy's narrow vision to get nominations and awards.
Bryan Cranston was nominated for playing blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in Trumbo, a film whose sole purpose was to get Cranston an Oscar nomination and to do that, it followed a carefully structured formula. 
It was a story about Hollywood, and Academy voters love navel gazing.
It has a martyr, Dalton Trumbo, albeit a Hollywood kind of martyr, who was blacklisted for his politics. For those who don't know, blacklisting meant that he was forced to write screenplays for less money under pseudonyms.
It has a politically acceptable villain, chiefly right-wing American politicians who didn't care for Trumbo's love of the Stalin regime.
It's a perfect white man's Oscar bait film, and it could be performed entirely in gibberish with falsetto voices by a cast wearing clown make-up, it would still get at least one nomination.
Now you're probably sitting in front of your computer or tablet, furrowing your brow and thinking "What about Will Smith in Concussion?"
If the Academy thinks like me, they probably looked at the trailer for Concussion and thought: "Denzel Washington or Idris Elba would have knocked that out of the park. Will Smith just seems too fluffy, to 'movie star' to pull it off." Then they'd see what else was on.

Those are my theories, what are yours?

Friday 15 January 2016

Hollywood Babble On & On #1259: It's Oscar Time...

Here's the list of Oscar nominations with my commentary possibly coming later...

Best Picture

“The Big Short” 

“Bridge of Spies” 

“Brooklyn” 

“Mad Max: Fury Road”

“The Martian” 

“The Revenant”

“Room”

“Spotlight”

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Cate Blanchett, “Carol”

Brie Larson, “Room”

Jennifer Lawrence, “Joy”

Charlotte Rampling, “45 Years”

Saoirse Ronan, “Brooklyn”

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Bryan Cranston, “Trumbo”

Matt Damon, “The Martian”

Leonardo DiCaprio, “The Revenant”

Michael Fassbender, “Steve Jobs“

Eddie Redmayne, “The Danish Girl”

Actress in a Supporting Role

Jennifer Jason Leigh, “The Hateful Eight”

Rooney Mara, “Carol”

Rachel McAdams, “Spotlight”

Alicia Vikander, “The Danish Girl”

Kate Winslet, “Steve Jobs“

Actor in a Supporting Role

Christian Bale, “The Big Short”

Tom Hardy, “The Revenant”

Mark Ruffalo, “Spotlight”

Mark Rylance, “Bridge of Spies”

Sylvester Stallone, “Creed”

Best Director

Adam McKay, “The Big Short”

George Miller, “Mad Max: Fury Road”

Alejandro G. Inarritu, “The Revenant”

Lenny Abrahamson, “Room”

Tom McCarthy, “Spotlight”

Visual Effects

“Ex Machina”

“Mad Max: Fury Road”

“The Martian”

“The Revenant”

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”

Best Documentary Feature

“Amy”

“Cartel Land”

“The Look of Silence”

“What Happened, Miss Simone?”

“Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom”

Best Documentary Short Subject

“Body Team 12”

“Chau, Beyond the Lines”

“Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah”

“A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness”

“Last Day of Freedom”

Editing

“The Big Short”

“Mad Max: Fury Road”

“The Revenant”

“Spotlight”

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”

Production Design

“Bridge of Spies”

“The Danish Girl”

“Mad Max: Fury Road”

“The Martian”

“The Revenant”

Best Original Score

“Bridge of Spies”

“Carol”

“The Hateful Eight”

“Sicario”

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”

Best Foreign Language Film

“Embrace of the Serpent,” Colombia

“Mustang,” France

“Son of Saul,” Hungary

“Theeb,” Jordan

“A War,” Denmark

Best Original Screenplay

“Bridge of Spies”

“Ex Machina”

“Inside Out”

“Spotlight”

“Straight Outta Compton”

Best Adapted Screenplay

“The Big Short”

“Brooklyn”

“Carol”

“The Martian”

“Room”

Best Original Song

“Earned It” from “Fifty Shades of Grey”

“Manta Ray” from “Racing Extinction”

“Simple Song No. 3” from “Youth”

“Til It Happens To You” from “The Hunting Ground”

“Writing’s on the Wall” from “Spectre”

Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling

“Mad Max: Fury Road”

“The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared”

“The Revenant”

Best Animated Feature

“Anomalisa”

“Boy and the World”

“Inside Out”

“Shaun the Sheep Movie”

“When Marnie Was There”

Best Animated Short Film

“Bear Story”

“Prologue”

“Sanjay’s Super Team”

“We Can’t Live Without Cosmos”

“World of Tomorrow”

Best Live Action Short Film

“Ave Maria”

“Day One”

“Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut)”

“Shok”

“Stutterer”

Best Cinematography

“Carol”

“The Hateful Eight”

“Mad Max: Fury Road”

“The Revenant”

“Sicario”

Achievement in Sound Mixing

“Bridge of Spies”

“Mad Max: Fury Road”

“The Martian”

“The Revenant”

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”

Achievement in Sound Editing

“Mad Max: Fury Road”

“The Martian”

“The Revenant”

“Sicario”

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”

Best Costume Design

“Carol”

“Cinderella”

“The Danish Girl”

“Mad Max: Fury Road”

“The Revenant”

Wednesday 13 January 2016

Goodbye Major Tom

David Bowie is dead.
Killed by cancer just days after his sixty-ninth birthday and the release of his latest album.
Turning on twitter and seeing reports of his passing was a real kick in the teeth for me. Like millions of others around the world Bowie didn't seem like an ordinary mortal. Death seemed so inconceivable for such an important part of the soundscape of our lives. One could be forgiven for assuming that Bowie would just assume a new persona and genre and go off in some new creative direction. 
Sadly, he was just a human being and death came for him as it will come for us all eventually.
His death stings especially hard because Bowie taught people who were freaks growing up learned that not only were they not alone, there was a way they could be accepted and that's by being as creative and as accepting of others as they can possibly be. To be a Bowie fan was a responsibility. He wasn't everyone's cup of tea, and when I was growing up, a time when the music you listened to established your identity, those who didn't get Bowie liked to express their displeasure with your choices often verbally, and on rare occasions physically.
However, camaraderie could be found with other Bowie people, who would then introduce you to other bands and styles of music, who themselves were influenced by Bowie's work and versatility. Bowie was the gateway drug to alternative rock and alternative pop culture.
I always admired how Bowie managed to remain cool right to the end by avoiding the trap that had ruined so many of his profession. Since he was constantly experimenting and reinventing himself and his music, and wasn't wed to some look from what he considered his gloried past. A habit that transformed too many rock and pop legends into ridiculous or creepy parodies of themselves.
Could you imagine if he had never left his Ziggy Stardust phase?
*shudder*
That constant experimentation and reinvention also meant that if one of his experiments didn't succeed with some segment of the audience, no problem, his next project will be different anyway, and you might like that instead.

Well, we won't be able to take David Bowie for granted anymore.

Friday 1 January 2016

Hollywood Babble On & On #1258: 2015 - The Year In Stupid

2016 has finally stumbled into our lives like an alcoholic uncle who shows up late for the holidays with a bottle in his hand screaming for everyone to keep the party going even though all are still hungover from the last year.
Anyway, 'tis the season for looking back in list form and I'm not immune for that sort of easy clickbait, so let's look back at the year in stupid.
THAT'S OFFENSIVE: 2015 was the year when EVERYTHING was declared offensive. In fact, I'm pretty sure that someone, somewhere is offended by my mentioning people finding things offensive.
It was also the year that a select few saw that no matter what they try, popular culture will always be in the wrong to the new class of professionally offended people who write thinkpieces for websites.
Let's use sexism as an example.
Hollywood does have a sexism problem. They don't know what to do with female stars and female audiences like they did in the allegedly more sexist Golden Age, when both female stars and audiences were much bigger box-office players. However, modern Hollywood sexism is trapped in a never ending circle of offense. Even when they try to appease or even please their critics they still get crapped on.
Critics complain that there are not enough stories being made about the accomplishments of historic women. Hollywood responds with SUFFRAGETTE a lavish period drama about the fight of women to get the vote. SUFFRAGETTE is almost immediately condemned that the suffragette movement was too white and middle class to matter to modern audiences. (Ironically, a complaint made about the real suffragette movement at the time)
Critics complain that there are not enough competent female heroes on the screen, so they give them Rey in STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS who is tough, competent, and capable of tackling any problem. Many of the same critics then condemn the film and the character as a "Mary Sue" a female character who is "too perfect" to be believed.
There is literally just no pleasing some folks. 
The greatest irony is that when there is something that just reeks of sexism, it's treated as a victory. I'm talking about the all-women reboot of GHOSTBUSTERS. Hollywood is literally tossing women the scraps of a franchise that's been dead for over 25 years, instead of creating something new and original, and it's seen as a victory for feminism.
To borrow a phrase from Admiral Ackbar: "IT'S A TRAP!"
If the film succeeds, the credit will go to the affection people have for the GHOSTBUSTERS franchise.
If the film flops, the blame will be put on its female stars. 
Yet I appear to be the only person who sees this.
Ironically, I'm not offended by it, just saddened.
GEORGE LUCAS: Lucas called Disney "white slavers" after they dropped $4 billion on his lap for Lucasfilm because they revived the long moribund and once creatively bankrupt STAR WARS franchise sans Lucas and his whims like Jar-Jar Binks.
George, I love ya for creating STAR WARS, but you're driving me crazy with this sort of spoiled brat chatter. It was nice that you apologized, but maybe you shouldn't have said it in the first place, right when people were about to forgive you for the prequels? 
SLOW WEST: My problem is not with the movie itself. It apparently got lots of good reviews. My problem is with the title.
It's hard to sell a Western, but calling a Western SLOW WEST is about as smart as naming a play THEATRE CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS. 
It's going to turn audiences away.
What producer or distributor allowed themselves to be convinced that it was a good title for a Western?
It makes the film sound pretentious, annoying, and, most of all SLOW, and audiences hate slow and will avoid anything that literally promises slowness in the title and makes the film lucky to pull in the $200,000 it did at the box-office.
Not seeing that means those who green-lit that title should probably reconsider their career choices.
MARTIN SHKRELI: Now this isn't an entertainment or pop culture story, but it does have some lessons people in any business can learn.
In case you're living in a cave Martin Shkreli is a millennial multimillionaire who took over a drug company and immediately jacked up the price of a drug for people with compromised immune systems by about 7,000%. He claimed he was going to kick the profits back into research and development, but his lifestyle, business record, and overall attitude about everything made everyone doubt his word.
In fact, when he was arrested and arraigned on running a high financed Ponzi scheme the internet pretty well cheered in unison.
Which brings me to the lesson.
A little known fact about business life is that no matter how honest an American businessperson strives to be, they commit on average several felonies a day without even knowing it. This number goes up exponentially the higher up you go in the financial food chain.
The majority of these felonies are violations of obscure Federal regulations that even the regulators don't fully understand. 
That creates an interesting situation.
First, there are laws that everyone breaks, but since they're so complicated and obscure they're selectively prosecuted.
Second, if you want to be prosecuted for something, be a business person that makes himself a politically attractive target.
Which means that Shrkreli was nowhere near as smart as his ego told him was, or he would have seen that coming. If Conrad Black could be convicted of a crime that never happened, then any businessperson can become a pelt on a prosecutor's wall, so be honest, be straight, and for the love of Xenu, don't make yourself a target.

There's been a lot more stupidity this year, but I've decided to just let it go, and pray that 2016 will be a lot smarter.