I make it a point to be otherwise occupied on Oscar Night. It's the same for the Grammy's, and the American Music Awards and the Golden Globes. I have, on rare occasions, watched the People's Choice awards however.
I have lived quite the happy life despite never watching the rather silly Men's Choice awards or anything that might have ever been awarded to Ben Affleck. I do, every year, make it a point to tune in to the Tony Awards. This is primarily due to the fact that, living in Houston, it is typically a few years before any new shows come to town.
I'm not a fan of award shows, especially in the entertainment industry. Typically all these become are chances for people to politely clap for winners that, in other circumstances, they would gladly shank, or an opportunity for someone with a Dramatic Arts degree to lecture us on International politics.
So I usually pass.
Because of that I can't really work up a can of care over this.....
Calls for boycott of Oscars grow over diversity of nominees. Jake Coyle, AP via Chron.com
Not the institutional racism, Of course that's a bother. I'm referring to the entirety of the Oscars themselves. The annual beauty pageant that the movie world throws itself in a vain attempt to assuage their raging Narcissism.
I can say that it would be nice if everyone learned to ignore them, if we didn't give two-shits what the actor just out of drug-rehab was wearing, whether or not Actor X showed up with Actor Y and if the wedding is back on or even if Penelope Cruz had a wardrobe malfunction exposing herself to the pathetic people over at TMZ for two seconds.
My idea is this.
Just keep making movies where things blow up, battles are fought and the CGI is good. You can also make dramas that tell good stories, and comedies that make me laugh. Just make sure that the drama doesn't get too much in the way of an action movie and, for the love of it all, please stop trying to lecture me on my morality in your movies. (I'm looking at you Matt Damon)
That the Oscars is a good-ol'-boys network staffed, predominantly, by wealthy Caucasian progressives should not surprise you, after all, many of those people are the same people who make up the ideological leadership of the increasingly (at the top) Caucasian Democratic Party.
So, yes, it was silly that Straight Outta Compton didn't get a nod, or that Idris Elba (who I would like to see be the next James Bond FWIW) didn't score a nomination and, in a perfect world, that kind of thing would change. I will also admit that it's telling, after last year's debacle, they were so tone deaf that they didn't even make a nod towards tokenism, which is what I thought they would do. Turns out, they couldn't even go that far.
But in many ways this is better, because now we have the opportunity to drop the charade that any of this crap matters. To stop pretending that the proclivities of some crusty old Hollywood insiders somehow tells us whether or not a movie is any good. To admit that, for the most part, their judgment on what's good or not really, and I mean REALLY, sucks. Ben Kingsley won an Oscar for Chrissakes and Peter Lorre never did. Neither did Edward G. Robinson which is criminal. American Sniper didn't even garner a nomination for Best Picture. While you're at it, go look at the winners of best picture over the last 20 years and the runners up. Then go look at the highest grossing movies of those years. The entire Oscar process is a long-running inside joke.
Why don't we take this opportunity not to call for separate but equal (as is Jada Pinkett Smith) but to call for and end to the silliness that is award season all together. We know what good acting is, and that Will Smith accomplished it in Concussion, that Denzel Washington should have been nominated many more times than he was and Mykelti Williamson should have won for Bubba Blue. We know all of this so having these awards shows take up television time is really a waste. Then we can take up the vacant space with more shows such as Galavant.
Well, except for the Tony Awards. Because without them those of us who don't live in New York might never get to see anything from Broadway other than Wicked and the Disney musicals.
As such, this is the last Oscar-related blog post that I hope to ever write.
