Los Angeles Plays (With) Itself

Even after a decent night's sleep, there's still little more than stunned silence here at Filmbrain HQ over the Crash victory. In fact, more offensive than the best picture nod was the award for best original screenplay. When judged by any standards (even in a McKee-dominated world), Haggis' screenplay is a poorly written, insulting, pedantic exercise in one-dimensionality that incorporates dramatic tricks that might be considered acceptable coming from a twelve year-old. Are we truly meant to believe that the Academy members felt that dialog such as: "But if a white person sees two black men walking towards her and she turns and walks away, she's a racist, right? Well I got scared and I didn't do anything and ten seconds later I had a gun in my face. Now I am telling you, your amigo in there is going to sell our key to one of his homies and this time it would be really fucking great if you acted like you gave a shit! was actually better than Good Night, and Good Luck, Match Point, The Squid and The Whale or Syriana? Or were Crash's wins due to the votes it received from its cast of thousands (and their friends)? And even though Crash was critically at the bottom of the list (as per Metacritic), its best picture win shouldn't come as that much of a surprise -- of the five nominated films, it is (by far) the most Hollywood of the bunch, and is as smarmy and self-congratulatory as the Oscars itself. As a means of silent protest, may I recommend renting Charles (Killer of Sheep) Burnett's The Glass Shield -- a far better film about racism in Los Angeles. Unsurprisingly, Burnett's 1994 film didn't get any recognition at awards time. But then again, he was interested in actually confronting and taking a stand on issues, rather than just fueling liberal white guilt.