A beautiful reunion

Jackie Chan is reunited with his stunt team on his 65th birthday. via Reddit

today is Jackie Chan 65th birthday, here’s him reunite with his stunts team from r/movies

Oscar the pundit night

So... men can get pregnant? Liberals were right all along! #WhoKnew? pic.twitter.com/P2WBZaWhIP

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) March 4, 2018

My Oscar Picks!

Best Picture: The Quiet Man
Best Actor:   John Wayne
Best Actress: Maureen O'Hara
Best Supporting Actor: Barry Fitzgerald
Best Supporting Actor: Mildred Natwick
Best Screenplay: Frank S Nugent and Maurice Walsh
Best Director: John Ford.

Of course you don't agree but that is fine. You see I pick the same people every year.

"Stacey Dash Oscar Appearance did not flop.... "

"It revealed Hollywood's real cringeworthy diversity problems"

Hollywood wants to envision itself like Rudy Huxtable’s playgroup – they want their actors and actresses to be Asian, black, redheaded or blond. They want the illusion of diversity, tolerance and open- mindedness, even though they’re much less ideologically diverse than your average suburban megachurch. As Hollywood grapples with its “diversity problem,” they are aspiring to add minorities to major roles.

That still misses the point.

Yes, black actors and actresses should have more roles. (Take a note from Hamilton the musical, guys.) But, if you have a Hollywood cast that looks different and THINKS EXACTLY THE SAME, that’s not real diversity. Chris Rock pointed it out quite nicely last night during his opening monologue.

Now, I remember one night I was at a fundraiser for President Obama, a lot of you were there, and, you know, it’s me and all of Hollywood. And all the, you know, it’s all of us there and there’s about four black people there, me, let’s see, Quincy Jones, Russell Simmons, Questlove, you know, the usual suspects, right? And every black actor that wasn’t working. Needless to say, Kevin Hart was not there, okay? So, at some point, you get to take a picture with the President.

And as they’re setting up the picture, you get a little moment with the president, I’m like, “Mr. President, you see all these writers and producers and actors? They don’t hire black people. And they’re the nicest white people on earth. They’re liberals.”

So, in their absolute thirst for different varieties of skin tone, they miss out on the one type of diversity that would make it truly interesting: ideological diversity. What if, for example, white Hollywood liberals aren’t the “nicest white people on earth?” Since Rock and his friends probably don’t ever come in contact with conservatives, they’d never know. Last night, you witnessed a rare instances when they did encounter a conservative, and that’s when their ‘open-mindedness’ really kicks in.

That’s what made America cringe as they watched the Oscars last night. It wasn’t a joke that fell flat, it was a moment that revealed just how unwilling Hollywood is to embrace anyone who thinks differently.

Oscar Winners 2016

These are the winners of the 88th annual Academy Awards.

Best Picture: “Spotlight”

Direction: “The Revenant,” Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio, “The Revenant”

Actress: Brie Larson, “Room”

Supporting Actor: Mark Rylance, “Bridge of Spies”

Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander, “The Danish Girl”

Did you watch? Want to tell us your impressions. Please do.

Separated At Birth?

 

link to original

What's the old saw? Old men (and women) all look alike just like babies do?

I swear to Blog* that I thought that was a photo of Jerry Brown when I first clicked on it.

Why is Biden in town for the Oscars?
_____________
*h/t Ruth Anne

"Best Picture Winners According to Rotten Tomatoes"

Blog Talk: If the award went to the highest rated film for each year:

• Just 23 selections would stay the same, meaning the Academy gets 26% of its selections correct.
• Last year would have seen Selma selected, rather than Birdman.
• We would have three foreign winners of the award (Grand Illusion, Z and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) rather than our current zero.
• We would have two animated winners (in back to back years from Up and Toy Story 3) rather than our current zero.
• 1994’s hotly debated win by Forrest Gump is now awarded to either of its highly touted competition, Pulp Fiction or The Shawshank Redemption, but rather Robert Redford’sQuiz Show.
• Martin Scorsese would lose his only awarded Best Picture from The Departed, but he would win his nominations from Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas.
• Cinematic giants Gone with the Wind, Ben-Hur, West Side Story, The Godfather Part IIand Titanic all lose their awards.

Certainly under this system, the Academy have a spotty record. No decade saw more than four correct selections, and the 2000s saw just one award stay with its winner (Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King). My research even caused me to contact Rotten Tomatoes themselves to enquire about their ‘Certified Fresh’ rating, meaning Mary Poppins may be squeezing its way onto the list to replace Dr. Strangelove.

Is Rotten Tomatoes’ rating system the ‘be all and end all’? No, but considering it measures the approval of film’s top critics over the world, it may just be the best option. It also, passively, attempts to measure how relevant a film stays following its release. Consider how many films from the 1920s and 30s will have reviews tabulated by Rotten Tomatoes. The greater amount of people who have gone back to review an old film surely shows a greater cultural relevance from it.

"Charlotte Rampling walks back Oscar comments"

Rampling got straightened out. 

Hours after actress Charlotte Rampling told an interviewer that the blowback against this year's all-white acting nominees was itself "racist," she is walking back her comments.

On Friday evening, the British actress, who is nominated for a best actress for her work in the film45 Years, gave a statement to CBS News, which read, "I regret that my comments could have been misinterpreted. I simply meant to say that in an ideal world every performance will be given equal opportunities for consideration."

The multilingual Rampling had given a Friday radio interview to a French journalist in which she said of the lack of any nominees of color, "We can never know if it was really the case, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to be in the final straight."

When her interviewer asked about the possibility of quotas, she responded, “Why classify people? These days everyone is more or less accepted ... People will always say: ‘Him, he’s less handsome’; ‘Him, he’s too black’; ‘He is too white’ ... someone will always be saying ‘You are too’ (this or that) ... But do we have to take from this that there should be lots of minorities everywhere?”

By Friday evening, she was on board: “Diversity in our industry is an important issue that needs to be addressed,” her statement continued. “I am highly encouraged by the changes announced today by the academy to diversify its membership.”

Fox News Stacey Dash goes rogue

“We have to make up our minds, either we want to have segregation or integration,” Dash said. “If we don’t want segregation then we need to get rid of channels like BET and the BET Awards and the [NAACP] Image Awards, where you are only awarded if you are black. If it were the other way around, we would be up in arms, its a double standard.”

"#OscarsSoWhite, in Part Because #EverythingsAProblem"

A classic case of damn if you do, damn if you don't

WFB: For the second year in a row, no actors of color have been nominated for an Academy Award. As a result of this travesty, the Academy Awards—an organization that has awarded the following men

(From l. to r.) Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro G. Inarritu, and Ang Lee

the last three Oscars for best directing, by the way—has again been slammed with the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag. People are very upset! There are so many strong movies with heavily black* casts, films like Chi-Raq and Beasts of No Nation. Why weren’t they rewarded?

Of course, we haven’t considered the fact that many of these films were also deemed extremely problematic, both before and after their release. Can you solve one problem (lack of Oscar diversity) by appealing to problematic art?

Let’s go through some of the snubbed pictures and see how socially conscious types addressed them during their release:

Chi-Raq

Chi-Raq is the latest Spike Lee joint; I reviewed it here. It’s a modern retelling of Lysistrata set on the streets of Chicago, where the gal pals of gang leaders refuse to give it up for their men whilst bodies are still dropping. Many people are rallying to Spike Lee’s side after he called out the Academy for its problematic lack of “flava” (his word, not mine). Of course, Chi-Raq itself was deeply problematic, as was a song tied to the film’s release:

Titled “WGDB”—We Gotta Do Better—it’s an ode to black pathology, anchored by two opinions. The first is that black-on-black gun violence is something that occurs because blacks widely approve of or ignore it, which means it still needs repudiating. The second is that maybe if black people just had more self-respect, the cops whose salaries black people pay would treat them nicer, shoot and/or jail them less, and so on. These are both bad and dumb opinions.

So let’s say Spike Lee’s film gets a bunch of nominations in the acting categories. What do the think pieces look like then? “Oh, sure, the Academy loves rewarding films that blame black people for all their own problems! #smdh #outrage” (read the whole thing)

Speaking of Skin in the Game

Those of you who watched the Oscars extravaganza last night... what did you think?

Who should have won? Do you think Sniper was purposely snubbed? What about the Joan Rivers in memoriam snub?

What about the political speeches? The Host disrobe?

Drudge: American Diaper

My 2015 Oscars Predilections

Having seen only two of this year's Best Picture nominees, I can't offer superlatives. I saw American Sniper and gave my thoughts here. Last night, I watched Richard Linklater's Boyhood and in my opinion, it's the better picture.

I like most of Linklater's movies - perhaps because he is my age and he knows the 1970's Zeitgeist and beyond from my perspective.  I've liked his movies ever since Dazed And Confused -- a vastly underrated movie in my opinion.

Boyhood uses Linklater's original lapsed-time cinematography which is an art form unto itself. I liked it in his Before...trilogy and I like it in Boyhood.  Of course, it portends there being a subsequent film called Manhood. :0

Boyhood is really a movie for people who had kids during that time period. The back talk scenes are priceless as are the moments when parents and child really do connect. And there is something very alluring about Patricia Arquette which made me realize that Nicholas Cage is a fortunate man.

My Oscar predictions: Either American Sniper or Boyhood for Best Picture. I'd be happy with either.

Oscar Snubs and Twitter Bust

.@Mediaite @TheMattWilstein You make it sound like a monster's ball.
— Lem (@Lemang01) January 16, 2015

"The Social Oscars: Academy Award Predictions From Across the Web"

The Social Oscars

"Last year we proved that social buzz could successfully predict the Academy Award winner for Best Picture. So this year we wanted to see what else social could predict for Hollywood’s big night."

 

Adapted Screenplay

Nominees:

• 12 Years a Slave
• Before Midnight
• Captain Phillips
• Philomena
• The Wolf of Wall Street

Social Winner: 12 Years a Slave

Original Screenplay

Nominees:

• American Hustle
• Blue Jasmine
• Dallas Buyers Club
• Her
• Nebraska

Social Winner: Her

Actor in a Supporting Role

Nominees:

• Barkhad Abdi for Captain Phillips
• Bradley Cooper for American Hustle
• Jared Leto for Dallas Buyers Club
• Jonah Hill for The Wolf of Wall Street
• Michael Fassbender for 12 Years a Slave

Social Winner: Jared Leto

Actress in a Supporting Role

Nominees:

• Jennifer Lawrence for American Hustle
• Julia Roberts for August: Osage County
• June Squibb for Nebraska
• Lupita Nyong’o for 12 Years a Slave
• Sally Hawkins for Blue Jasmine

Social Winner: Lupita Nyong’o