Grout
This weekend, I played a lot of Metroid Prime. Then, Katie and I went to the Waterfront and bought some calligraphy pens and got a great deal on this Hoover FloorMate, which we later found out is not intended for use on carpet.
This morning, I read this little bitter piece by Annie Proulx (author of the short story on which the movie Brokeback Mountain was based). Now, I was hoping just as much as anyone else that Brokeback would win Best Picture, but do we really have to turn its loss (and let's remember - 3 other films lost as well) into some political statement on what the Academy thinks about...um...what? Gay people? Your own director said it wasn't a gay movie; it was just a simple love story, remember?
I haven't seen Crash, and I've heard it's a worse movie, but let's be fair: these are the Academy awards. The "best" films don't always win, and Brokeback is no less of a great film for having lost the Best Picture Oscar (it did, after all, win 3 more Oscars than Short Circuit 2 ever did). What does, in my mind, diminish the stature of the film is the ridiculous whining and self-preening that multiple members of the Brokeback "team" have shown in the post-Oscar week.
I'm surprised you didn't win. Now get over it and be proud of the fact you made a great movie.
2 Comments:
I think that what's driving people to suspicion about homophobia is how no movie with thus much precursor support coming into the homestretch has *ever* lost.
Personally, I do think that whatever film emerged as the acceptable alternative to Brokeback would have won. And I do think that that's because the Oscars, quite to the contrary of Clooney's pompous speech, always award social issue movies well after the statements lost their potency. I don't think Brokeback was a social issue movie. But that's how it was perceived in the media. "Groundbreaking," they called it. And the Oscars freaked.
Unfortunately, the alternative out to be Crash, one of the most disappointing movies I saw all year, a movie that, true to Oscar-winning form, talks about an issue in a way that might have been controversial decades ago.
alternative *turned* out
Post a Comment
<< Home