Oscars: The Open Thread
The political overtones are there—There Will Be Blood and Michael Clayton are good, old-fashioned terrors-of-capitalism tales—so there's justification for an omibus Oscars thread. Chime in with predictions, peals of joy, or bleats of anger.
Comments to "Oscars: The Open Thread":
Chris Potter | February 24, 2008, 8:43pm | #
I'm not watching it, nor am I going to, but I imagine there will be Heath Ledger tributes every ten minutes.Mr.Nice Guy | February 24, 2008, 8:47pm | #
Do you have to be some kind of wild eyed Marxist to think that in the pursuit of profit people will do stupid, evil things? Yes, it would be nice if more movies noticed, a la the Aviator, that pursuit of profit can bring us many, many nice things indeed, but the mindless pursuit of it is, in fact, pathological. Michael Clayton and There Will Be Blood, aside from being well shot, well acted films (though WTF was up with the final scene in TWBB? Nuts), said no more than that imo.Brandybuck | February 24, 2008, 8:52pm | #
Is Hollywood still in business? I have no clue because I haven't been to a theater in years. It's not that I'm boycotting them, it's that there's nothing they release that interests me.No Country for Old Men is a great, great movie. So it will probably lose Best Picture to Atonement, as the Academy loves them some Masterpiece Theatre-level films.
No Country was far too awesome to win best pic. Speaking of Cormac McCarthy, is anyone else excited for the movie adaptation of The Road?
JLM | February 24, 2008, 9:24pm | #
All the cash in my pocket says that Sicko wins best documentary. Just a hunch.Oh, and it's cool to see that Juno is nominated for best picture. I don't know if movie is worth a shit, but Jason Reitman is a libertarian. Thank You For Smoking was a good movie.
Chris Potter | February 24, 2008, 9:32pm | #
Which award is Baby Geniuses 3 up for? I've got a hunch.x,y | February 24, 2008, 9:34pm | #
John Stewart: I hope you've all evaluated the candidates, examined their positions, and decided which Democrat you're voting for.x,y | February 24, 2008, 9:37pm | #
MNG,I'm much more concerned about the pursuit of power sought by our politicians than the pursuit of profit sought by shareholders and corporate execs.
Ombibulous | February 24, 2008, 9:41pm | #
I'm starting a collection to save up and buy Tilda Swinton another sleeve.NP | February 24, 2008, 9:43pm | #
"There Will Be Blood and Michael Clayton are good, old-fashioned terrors-of-capitalism tales..."IOW, period pieces (sorry for the Harold Bloom term). Those who hold such tripe in high regard deserve as much attention as the other useful idiots in history.
Eddy | February 24, 2008, 9:45pm | #
Mr. Nice Guy,I don't get it, weren't Michael Clayton and There Will Be Blood made by movie companies in the pursuit of profit? Granted the political push is there but should it be considered irony, hypocrisy or both? Taking it further, inasmuch as the Oscars is merely a public meeting of the mutual pious admiration academy trying to drum up business for their own agenda, would it not qualify as a political action group and would McCain Feingold influence the program or does the media exception kick in?
Ombibulous | February 24, 2008, 9:54pm | #
Am I the only one who doesn't care if people want to vilify capitalism? Seriously it's like willing the sun not to rise. My father used to say if you wish in one hand and crap in the other we both know which one will get full first.Free Market Guy | February 24, 2008, 9:56pm | #
No one has ever suffered as much under capitalism as the poor buggers who lived in hunter-gatherer societies. Getting shot with an arrow can mean a long, painful death. I'd rather get shot with an assault rifle any day. The free market in fire arms has meant quick, relatively painless deaths for millions. I'd much rather be hit by a speeding car (kudos to Mr. Ford) than trammpled by a heard of bufflo. Ours is the best of all possible worlds.alisa | February 24, 2008, 9:57pm | #
JLM -- I didn't know Jason Reitman was libertarian (though, given some of the lines in Thank You for Smoking, I'm not surprised.) Juno's good, though. Very self-consciously cute, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. And nice acting and music.Chris Potter | February 24, 2008, 10:02pm | #
I'd much rather be hit by a speeding car (kudos to Mr. Ford) than trammpled by a heard of bufflo.It should be kudos to Mr Nader, as speeding is caused by delusions of grandeur produced by antilock brakes and airbags. See thread below.
x,y | February 24, 2008, 10:05pm | #
Holy fuck, LoneWacko is going to blow a gasket. The guy from No Country for Old Men just gave half his acceptance speech is spanish.JLM | February 24, 2008, 10:12pm | #
alisa,Here's a link, and if you snoop around the net you can find several interviews and quotes where he makes reference to it.
http://www.theadvocates.org/celebrities/jason-reitman.html
Mr.Nice Guy | February 24, 2008, 10:13pm | #
No Country For Old Men is by far the best film.Is it the culture? | February 24, 2008, 10:19pm | #
Bow down to the Minnesota connectionJacob | February 24, 2008, 10:20pm | #
Holy fuck, LoneWacko is going to blow a gasket. The guy from No Country for Old Men just gave half his acceptance speech is spanish.What did he win?
Brian Courts | February 24, 2008, 10:26pm | #
Predictions:Best Picture: No Country for Old Men
Best Director: The Cohens
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis
NP | February 24, 2008, 10:31pm | #
Jesus Christ, has there been a more soporific song in Oscar history than "Once"? What a worthless piece of sonic excrement.Michael Clayton was well-acted shite. John Grisham drivel - in other words, no nuance: corporations bad.
Chris Potter | February 24, 2008, 10:42pm | #
There's a reason why "corporation" and "corpse" come from the same root word.Click 'n' Learn | February 24, 2008, 10:45pm | #
I'm pulling for this to win Best Movie.NotThatDavid | February 24, 2008, 10:46pm | #
Jesus Christ, how many songs did Enchanted have?The only one of the big movies I've seen this year is No Country, which was amazing.
NotThatDavid | February 24, 2008, 10:47pm | #
Jacob: Yes, but going by screentime he's on the border between leading and supporting.Eric Dondero | February 24, 2008, 10:49pm | #
Watched Vantage Point with Dennis Quaid opening night last Friday. Unbeliveably good.And believe it or not, Hollywood actually made a movie where the Terrorists are indeed Radical Muslims, not some rogue White guys or mad Russians.
paleo | February 24, 2008, 10:51pm | #
—so there's justification for an omibus Oscars thread.Justification? I thought the Oscars was like the SuperBowl for cosmotarian limpwristers.
x,y | February 24, 2008, 10:51pm | #
Pound sand Dondero.NP | February 24, 2008, 10:56pm | #
NotThatDavid,Three. All the nominated songs sucked. Which confirms that any org that starts with the word "Academy" sucks as well (or as badly).
NP | February 24, 2008, 10:58pm | #
Eh, still kudos to the Academy for giving Markéta Irglová a chance to speak.Deric Ondero | February 24, 2008, 11:09pm | #
Movies with big muscular Islamofascist Muslims aw scawy!!!!Does There Will Be Blood villify capitalism? I don' think it necessarily does.
NotThatDavid | February 24, 2008, 11:18pm | #
No award for Moore this year.NP | February 24, 2008, 11:19pm | #
Nice tribute to the troops, but why didn't the geniuses at the Academy at least add short clips from the documentaries? Amazing.Chris Potter | February 24, 2008, 11:19pm | #
So, which Oscar winner is getting the Nobel Peace Prize next year?Who the fuck says islamofascist? The word is like an agreement to not think.
Islamofascists | February 24, 2008, 11:22pm | #
convert or die you InfidelsBarack Hussein Obama for Grand Mufti!
Rittberg, E.D. | February 24, 2008, 11:24pm | #
Thinking is for fucking Wimps.Don't THINK. Just DO!!!!
So Sicko didn't win documentary? What did? I'm just following the Oscars web page and they're apparently not updating very quickly. I hope it was Taxi To The Dark Side.
The Wine Commonsewer | February 24, 2008, 11:26pm | #
Michael Moore......Doesn't Win. Yippee!Aside from that, I've barfed a few times, my ears are bleeding from listening to the tripe, and I can't find the remote......Wait, that's because Mrs TWC has it.
Jesus Chrysler, Tyler Cowan is right....impotent puppets, indeed. Well, except, Harrison Ford that is.
And WTF is with all those hideous dresses?
Bah-Bah Wah-Wah is on next and she's lookin' mighty good. In an anticipatory sort of way.
Oops - right after I posted I went back to oscar.com and it was up. Way to go, Taxi!
Grammer poseur | February 24, 2008, 11:26pm | #
The word is like an agreement to not think.How about an agreement to not split infinitives?
Thanks, Brian. I posted without seeing yours; I guess I'm slow on everything tonight....
Strike Dunham | February 24, 2008, 11:27pm | #
Agreed Calidore. I thought if anything regarding libertarianism it showed the drug war as unwinnable. I don't recall there being anything remotely capitalism related in the film.The Wine Commonsewer | February 24, 2008, 11:28pm | #
Where the hell is the guy from Pizza Hut?Sparky | February 24, 2008, 11:28pm | #
"How about an agreement to not split infinitives?"Or an agreement to spell grammar correctly?
The Wine Commonsewer | February 24, 2008, 11:38pm | #
Or a pipe bomb under the seat of every member of the Grammar Police?BTW, Spark, that was classic. Nice one.
JLM | February 24, 2008, 11:44pm | #
From my earlier post:"All the cash in my pocket says that Sicko wins best documentary. Just a hunch."
Somebody has $1.43 coming. Somebody? Anybody?
Brian Courts | February 24, 2008, 11:48pm | #
Somebody has $1.43 coming. Somebody? Anybody?
I guess I was hoping the trifecta paid a bit more, but I guess I'll take what I can get... :)
Brian Courts | February 24, 2008, 10:26pm | #
Predictions:
Best Picture: No Country for Old Men
Best Director: The Cohens
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis
Grammur provocateur | February 24, 2008, 11:54pm | #
Clearly someone needs to work on they're sense of humour.Ali | February 24, 2008, 11:54pm | #
Brian- Good job! I was betting on There Will be Blood to take it all. I guess not.Sparky | February 24, 2008, 11:59pm | #
Good call, Brian. I figured DDL and the Coen brothers, but like Ali I had There Will Be Blood winning best pic (in one of those not uncommon situations where the best director and best pic are different). But of course I didn't put my $1.43 on the line like you did.And thanks, TWC. Just doing my part to stick it to The Man.
Crimethink, this is English, not Latin. We can boldly split our infinitives all we want to.
Grammar freedom fighter | February 25, 2008, 12:12am | #
You are free to split your infinitives, indeed. And I am free to criticize you for doing so.Brian Courts | February 25, 2008, 12:18am | #
Thanks Ali and Sparky, though I guess I should confess that the only reason I didn't include a prediction for Best Actress was that fortunately the award was given before I got to the computer tonight which prevented me from getting it wrong. :)Well, sure, you're free to criticize. And don't get me wrong, I criticize all the time -- my taste in punctuation is pretty much equal to that of Lynn Truss (except for with regard to the serial comma). But criticizing the split infinitive isn't the hallmark of a discerning grammar nerd, it's a hallmark of seventh grade grammar teachers. And you've always struck me as way cooler than that.
Twitter | February 25, 2008, 12:25am | #
That Click 'n' Learn guy has great taste in movies! Thanks for the link. In return, I'll make sure I spit on a couple of Mexicans on the way to work tomorrow.Arkady | February 25, 2008, 12:39am | #
I mean, I say this to you as a fellow libertarian and grammar/syntax/punctuation purist. Being libertarians (and Anglophones) we can recognize the stupidity of an exercise like the Academie Francaise, but being purists we can also recognize the need for criticism of peoples' mistakes. We need to target our criticisms in ways that will maintain the utility and readability of the English language, and not waste time on shibboleths that never mattered anyway. We should spend less time on split infinitives and prepositions at the ends of sentences and much, much more time on misused apostrophes, confusions of their/there/they're, and the depressingly ubiquitous replacement of the word "lose" with "loose".Oh, and, uh, No Country for Old Men rocked. Juno was pretty excellent, too. And despite its vaguely anti-capitalist sort-of plot (I think it was really more a condemnation of Tilda Swinton's character's drive to avoid detection than anti-capitalist per se), I thought Michael Clayton was good.
smacky | February 25, 2008, 12:55am | #
Calidore | February 24, 2008, 11:15pm | #I don't think it did, either. Admittedly, part of me was cheering Daniel Plainview on in the last scene. He's a hero. I almost said he's an antihero, but he's not pathetic, lazy, unsuccessful, or dumb...he's just a psycho. :)
Does There Will Be Blood villify capitalism? I don' think it necessarily does.
A very attractive psycho.
Its over they're | February 25, 2008, 1:04am | #
We should spend less time on split infinitives and prepositions at the ends of sentences and much, much more time on misused apostrophes, confusions of their/there/they're, and the depressingly ubiquitous replacement of the word "lose" with "loose".Their is some sound advice and it's following would be wise since its difficult to really loose with. :)
I'd like to dedicate this comment #69 to Daniel Day Lewis for his portrayal of Daniel Plainview. Without him, this comment wouldn't have been possible. And I'd like to thank the Academy.
Warty | February 25, 2008, 1:13am | #
How about an agreement to not split infinitives?If by infinitives, you mean your ugly, ugly face, then no. I can't agree to that.
stephen the goldberger | February 25, 2008, 1:15am | #
That Amy Ryan didn't win for Gone Baby Gone is bullshit. That was the only award i really cared about and they fucked it up.Tim Washburn | February 25, 2008, 2:30am | #
I'm still trying to figure out the proper use of semi-colons. Is that about a partially completed surgery?Malto Dextrin | February 25, 2008, 2:45am | #
Grammar Freedom Fighter:Forget about split infinitives; Arkady is right.
You'll have your job cut out for you just trying to stem the tide of misplaced apostrophes. Thank Bill Gates for that.
Oh, and Michael Moore really looked grossly obese. Kinda like Jabba with a baseball cap on.
I'm a little disappointed that Hal Holbrook and Persepolis didn't win in their respective categories; otherwise, I couldn't care less. Did I mention I slept through the whole thing...
there over hear or you're under where? | February 25, 2008, 4:38am | #
If ewe can't get English to work, try Latin; (warning, semi-colon just used gratuitously )semper ubi sub ubi
always where under where
green mamba | February 25, 2008, 4:52am | #
Yeah, Persepolis should have won, not the insipid Ratatouille. And it's a crime that Philip Seymour Hoffman wasn't nominated for either of his two amazing performances this year (in Charlie Wilson's War and The Savages).Mo | February 25, 2008, 7:02am | #
green mamba,PSH was nominated for his role in Charlie Wilson's War for best supporting actor.
Murph | February 26, 2008, 2:35am | #
Another reason Michael Clayton sucked: it was completely predictable. I knew at least a half hour before it happened how Clooney would set the corporate wench up. That's been done too many times in a number of movies. Also, I wouldn't think it's a problem that a Hollywood movie takes aim at corporate greed (or worse) but it just seems so overdone and simplistically done. Why not at least include the tension between the need to be responsible to share holders and other sorts of values. Dramatizing that tension could make for an interesting story, if done well."How about an agreement to not split infinitives?"
Shouldn't that then read, "How about an agreement to split not infinitives?"