As many predicted and others dreaded, the Academy Awards last night did it: they anointed the pro-domestic terrorism, anti-American, Hollywood woke fever dream “One Battle After Another” with the Best Movie award. Starring the usual far-left suspects Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn, the film is deliberately offensive to anyone who wasn’t convinced that Kamala Harris was a wonderful Presidential candidate; I made the mistake of starting to watch it and “walked out” (that is, changed channels to a “Chicago Med” re-run) after about 20 excruciating minutes. “The Critical Drinker’s” review above registered as fair and accurate based on what I saw: a well-acted, well-produced piece of political propaganda.
You know, like “Triumph of the Will.”
The fact that it was nominated told me what the annual awards broadcast would be like and that Hollywood is determined to alienate at least half the country. Good plan. If I had been producing the show, I would have told all participants that political grandstanding was strictly forbidden and that anyone who started blathering about Trump, trans activism, I.C.E. or “illegal wars” would have a trap door open under them like they used to have on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.”
But no, there were the predictable rants by narrow-view artists trying to suck up to future employers in their bubble. Even Conan O’Brien succumbed to the suck-up vibe, though he was obviously chosen as M.C. because he harkens back to the days when late night hosts mocked all parties and not just Republicans, and the producers wanted to trick Americans tired of being called racists and fascists into tuning in. And a trick it was.
Ethics Alarms 
I did’t need a baseball game to avoid the oscars. I merely read a book, drank a nice Albarino, and did nnt give a hoot about hollywood
Of the nominated movies for best picture, I saw Sinners, Bugonia and One Battle After Another and the only one I enjoyed was Bugonia. I had trouble sitting through One Battle After Another; I should have walked out like you. As for Sinners, I didn’t see any previews and if I had known it was a modern vampire movie I would have passed it up. Sinners was also disappointing for me once the “supernatural” elements were revealed; for some reason I was expecting a drama not a horror movie. I guess I should have reviewed it more before going.
I don’t watch the Academy Awards but I do check the results the day after out of curiosity.
Mr. Golden watched the Oscars, his annual version of the Super Bowl, so none of us would have to. He saw every single one of the 50 nominated films this year. I just can’t be that dedicated. I bought him an Oscar Death Racer t-shirt off of Etsy with the titles of the nominated films on the back.
Apparently, an historic first this year was nominating the best casting director. This easily took the most time of any award presentation as five performers got up and took ten minutes individually extolling the specific nominees. And, yet, they still play winners off stage, only treated us to two of the nominated best songs and managed to, as always, leave people off of the In Memoriam segment.
If you’ve been here long enough, you know that I make it a point with the Oscars and the Emmys to find out who isn’t deemed good enough or famous enough anymore to be acknowledged. The In Memoriam segment has an unstated cut-off date after which, if you die, you get shunted to next year’s telecast. If you’re lucky. They do sometimes make exceptions for too-recent deaths they can’t ignore, such as last year’s show honoring Gene Hackman. As always, they reserve the right to limit inclusion to those who predominately contributed to the movies rather than television; hence, James Van Der Beek from “Dawson’s Creek” was left off, though he had done films here and there.
This year’s In Memoriam was one of the longest ever due to the Academy having special tributes for several of the deceased, including Billy Crystal eulogizing Rob Reiner and bringing on several people who’d worked with him over the years, Rachel McAdams for Catherine O’Hara, Diane Ladd, Diane Keaton and someone named Claudia Cardinale. Finally, Barbra Streisand came up for Robert Redford. With the exception of Reiner, all of the eulogized were included in the video montage. Redford was given the final Honor Position in the montage; Robert Duvall was right before him.
The video was also broken into two parts, the first part between Crystal and Adams, the second part between Adams and Streisand. Not confusing at all!
The following is probably not an all-inclusive list:
* Clive Revill (The Empire Strikes Back, The Legend of Hell House)
* Kenneth Colley (two Star Warses, Monty Python’s Life of Brian)
* Bud Cort (Harold and Maude, Brewster McCloud)
* Joe Don Baker (Walking Tall, Mitchell)
* Robert Carradine (the Revenge of the Nerds series, The Lizzie McGuire Movie)
* Hulk Hogan (Rocky III, No Holds Barred)
* Carole d’Andrea (West Side Story)
* Richard Chamberlain (King Solomon’s Mines, Richard Lester’s Three Musketeers trilogy)
* Patty Maloney (The Addams Family, Ernest Saves Christmas)
* Jean Marsh (Willow, Return to Oz)
* Priscilla Pointer (Carrie, Blue Velvet)
* Kathleen Hughes (It Came from Outer Space, The Golden Blade)
* Enzo Staiola (Bicycle Thieves, The Barefoot Contessa)
* Harris Yulin (Ghostbusters II, Scarface)
* Julian McMahon (two Fantastic Fours, The Surfer)
* Pat Crowley (Money From Home, There’s Always Tomorrow)
* Brigitte Bardot (And God Created Woman, Viva Maria!)
* Stanley Kilbrick (Woim from the Our Gang shorts)
* Eric Dane (Marley & Me, X-Men: The Last Stand)
For those who would argue some of them fell within the mystery cut-off date to be included, I’d like to point out that Bud Cort died before Robert Duvall. Duvall was included; Cort was not.
Comment of the Day. I used to do an In Memoriam snub post after the Oscars until I decided the Oscars didn’t deserve my time. Bridget Bardot seems to be a pure political snub: she was a major, iconic film star. Bud Cort was a sta of tow cult films—I’m shocked that he would be left out. Joe Don Baker was a major supporting actor (He played the Babe Ruth character in “The Natural” and was memorable in the remake of “Cape Fear”) , and his “Walking Tall” was another cult film. Clive Reville was best known as a stage performer (the original Fagin in “Oliver!”) but he made an impact in all three genres, TV, film and stage. I guess they pigeon-holed Robert Carradine and Richard Chamberlain as TV actors, but that’s ridiculous in the latter’s case: he was the villain in “The Towering Inferno”, a huge hit and the best of the 70s disaster movies.
“Joe Don Baker was a major supporting actor…”
And he was introduced to another generation via “Mystery Science Theater 3000”!
My my my my Mitchell…
“Mitchell…even the name says, ‘Is that a beer?'”
What a fantastic episode of MST3k!!
As many predicted and others dreaded, the Academy Awards last night did it: they anointed the pro-domestic terrorism, anti-American, Hollywood woke fever dream “One Battle After Another” with the Best Movie award. Starring the usual far-left suspects Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn, the film is deliberately offensive to anyone who wasn’t convinced that Kamala Harris was a wonderful Presidential candidate
By accident really I watched this movie 2 nights ago with my sister. (As is usual my sister fell asleep!) I am intending to watch it again but not so much for ‘admiration’ (though it has some excellencies) but rather because it pictorializes a fallen culture, and a fallen America. So it can be very useful as a critical document. This is why, Michael West, I said that America is in a very dangerous and difficult state.
I might recall the line from the famous poem often cited when people wish to critique the present: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are felled with passionate intensity”.
My understanding of this is that when a people (and persons) no longer can define, or choose to define, veritable metaphysical principles by which to live, they fall into that passionate intensity that so well defines the left-progressive sect of America. All the force of life, and youth, is still there, but it has only the ‘horizontal’ as field of action. (Since it has no way to define anything “vertical” (transcendent). There is, for example, a scene at a monastery of African-American and PoC nuns, dressed in nun habits, who grow (and smoke) marijuana as their monastic focus. It is a rather sad (but also funny) parody of spiritual delinquency.
(filled with passionate intendity)
:::sigh:::
(passionate intensity)
I agree. The modern world feels more like nihilism now. People think they can defy biology and all of reality and call it empowerment.
I watched about the same time as you did. Everything about the movie is good in terms of movie stuff, like cinematography, performances, music, interesting characters, and the like. When I realized it was just glorifying antifa and disparaging the military, I turned it off. I may pick it up again because I really love cinema, but this one is hard.
I watched 28 of 50 nominees, only missing the 2 movies whose only nomination was “Original Song” and I also didn’t watch anything “Short” or anything “Documentary” (20 nominees).
The bright spots of this award season, for me are as follows:
Marty Supreme – chaotic and crazy in an exciting way. What a swindler: the main character played by Timothy Chalamet reminded me of Tim Curry’s “Rooster” from the 1982 Annie movie – like if that character had a spin-off movie all about his next scheme. Definitely worth a watch.
Blue Moon – engrossing “play as a movie” type about Lorenz (Larry) Hart set on the night Rogers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma” debuts. Ethan Hawke was absolute gold in this role and should have (in my opinion) won best actor. Highly recommend.
Frankenstein – Another great interpretation of the Mary Shelley classic. Doesn’t tread any new ground, but if you want to step back into that world, this is a fine entry.
Song Sung Blue – Based on a true story of a midwest Neil Diamond cover band. Heartfelt, well performed, and of course, great music.
Weapons – gripping and tense of the supernatural horror type.
Kokuho – a 3 hour treatise of Japanese Kabuki theatre. This was well overlooked by the academy only receiving a nomination for makeup and hairstyling. This was the darkest of horses in the list but by far one of my favorite movies of the year that I never would have watched otherwise. Highly recommend if you enjoy cinema – but I wouldn’t blame you if you found it to be too slow or a subject you don’t enjoy. This should have been nominated for the international foreign language feature and won, in my opinion.
I saw your endorsement of “Blue Moon” on Facebook. I just can’t get around casting a 5’10” actor to play a sub-5 foot writer whose stature was a large part of his emotional problems. A case of knowing the subject too well to enjoy historical fiction, kind of like my problem with “Death by Lightning.”
They definitely got the effect of his short stature correct on film. He was way shorter than everyone else on the screen.
I really enjoyed the adaptation of Frankenstein. We saw Song Sung Blue via streaming one night. It had all the feels.
Fun useless trivia: Mr. Golden drove 160 miles to the closest theater that was showing Kokuho. I told him he was required to come back safe. He gave me permission to, should he fail to do so, grouse at his funeral that he died seeing “a three-hour kabuki film”.
A note about website maintenance – if you scroll all the way down you can see the link to the Follow Us On Twitter “Tweets by CaptCompliance” – I think it’s time to remove this relic since that X account is now being run by some random person that I’m not familiar with…
Yikes. Thanks. Now I just have to remember how to do that.
Aaaand…I can’t.
I sent you instructions via email.
Thanks. Let’s see if I can figure them out.
I did not see the Oscars either. I tend to wait a number of years before I watch a Hollywood movie.
I was wondering how much political activism there was at the Oscars. Did anybody call for the freedom of Iran?