Well, this Sunday night come the Academy Awards again, and if you're like me, each year the nominees seem more and more out of touch with the lives we live now. This year's prominent nominees are no exception:
"The Aviator"? In this day and age of Enron and Wal-Mart, we are supposed to be transfixed by the personal demons of a billionaire? Boo fuckin hoo, I say. And what a dismal view of human nature comes out of "Closer", a movie where each character was so heartless and cruel that one could leave the theater starting to think that people deserve to live under fascism. Mike Nichols should have known better.
"Finding Neverland" was moving, as any movie about becoming an orphan would be, but to suggest that we contend with our problems by retreating into a kind of perpetual childhood just doesn't cut it for me. And, I'm sorry, but don't even get me started on "Million Dollar Baby"; there was just something Nietzschean about that film, and not in a good way. I could imagine Ayn Rand admiring that movie very much. Pummel your enemies into submission to get your just due, then, when you can no longer care for yourself, do the proper thing and remove yourself from this world; that's the message I got. Imagine how the need for Social Security would plummet if we all just follow this moral!
No! The REAL nominees for Best Picture of the year should be:
DOGVILLE
FAHRENHEIT 9/11
KILL BILL VOL. 2
KINSEY
SIDEWAYS
The envelope, please. And the winner is:
FAHRENHEIT 9/11!
Truly, what movie will you remember most from 2004? It made you laugh, it made you cry, it made you think. What more do you want? And when will we ever have the experience again of sitting in a packed movie theater with a group of like-minded citizens trying to figure out the machinations of a government gone wild? Sadly, probably never again. It was more than a movie, it was an event.
Yes, I know it is not even nominated, but hey, this is just a blog on a Friday night. What are YOUR choices?