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.

Comments

[Pierre]

Most embarrassing stunt Oscar every could have pulled. further proof of it's irrelevance. Oscar no longer established Classics. Taxi driver, The Godfather, The Color Purple, Shawshank redemption, Pulp fiction, citizen cane are classic films. who knew a film would actually come along to make the "Rocky" win look better. Good bye Oscar

[nick]

To Christian who described the germa guy as a "nazi skinhead". Thanks for the additional cliche.

Btw, I saw Suriana a few days ago. Pretty much Crash in the Middle East... (with different Cliches though like how one becomes a suicide bomber)

[Craig Shergold]

I am profoundly against Crash because the name "Crash" belongs to Cronenberg & Ballard.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115964/

[Christian]

nick: As I said, he was *not* a nazi skinhead :-)
I am quite aware of skinheads not automatically being nazi skinheads. I certainly would not have watched the movie together with a nazi skinhead. Yet, nazi skinheads certainly do exist (too many here in Germany).

[colinr0380]

My point of view on the Crash vs Brokeback Mountain issue is this: the Oscars are about the film industry voting for what they like, and by association what they would like to be in themselves. So they would probably prefer to be in a worthy ensemble drama with big issues where they get to discover different races and cultures (no Altman, we don't want YOU to do it - your films are too original to be trusted with any more than a lifetime achievement award in this day and age!) than a scary male love story.

Even if they loved Brokeback Mountain, Crash is infinitely more imitateable! I don't think we'll be seeing Hollywood's biggest names teaming up to make lots of gay love stories! But just imagine Brad Pitt and Jack Nicholson doing a remake of Harold and Maude!

[Anand Kumar]

Official Website of Shri Srinivasa Ragavaswamy charitable Trust in South India working towards constructing a temple for Sri Srinivasa Perumal (balaji) with Raja Gopuram which is named as Kovai Thiruppathy.