Archive for February, 2011

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Let’s Play “Guess the Black Person,” Academy Awards Edition (UPDATED, Tuesday)

By
Ben Nolan
– February 28, 2011

The other day, when I was editing Tom’s Oscar Predictions post, I suggested that he might want to make a funny about the Academy’s sterling track record of recognizing black talent. Wikipediaing “Black Academy Award Nominees,” I control-’F'-ed “2010″ to see how they were celebrating the talents of black America this year, and, well, I just never would have guessed the ONE name (out of, what, 200 or so major nominees?) that popped up. Have you guessed? Well you’re wrong. Because apparently the ONE black person nominated for an Academy Award this year was Hailee Steinfeld, better known as the little (white) girl who’s at the center of pretty much all of the scenes in True Grit, which I guess translates to three-fifths of the scenes using the Academy’s rubric, which is why it makes sense that she was ghettoized to the Supporting Actress category? I’d been wondering about that.

Anyway, I just wanted to congratulate the Academy and the North American film industry in general, for…. um…. not using RACIST affirmative action? (Because as everyone knows it’s not exclusion that’s racist, but affirmative action). Look, Academy, you made Clarence Thomas smile.

***

UPDATE (11 a.m., Tuesday): I thought I’d relay a back and forth I’ve been having with a commenter on this post on Reddit. Hopefully it clarifies any ambiguities anyone might have had about what the intended takeaway from this post was:

Redditor: I fail to see why this is important. If there weren’t any good films put out there with black actors, then there aren’t going to be any nominees. Hate to say, but Tyler Perry isn’t exactly Oscar material.

Me: But why aren’t there any good films out there with black actors? Anyone that’s seen the Wire know that there are plenty “out there.”

Him: There are many reasons why an actor would turn down work. Prior engagements, salary requirements, etc might cause issues. Just because there was one movie this year that featured a “black” actress (who looks very much white, so I am putting that in quotes) doesn’t mean that next year there won’t be predominantly black actors next year. It goes with the natural ebb and flow of the business. Anyone who says otherwise is just trying to cause a stink to get their names in the papers, and helps propagate the racial intolerance across this country. As bad as it is for a white man to get promoted over a black man for his skin color, it is just as bad for a white man to get attacked or passed over for promotion because of his skin.

The issue here isn’t the academy, the issue here is shitty ass internet bloggers are trying to get their names out there, so they make a non-issue out into something that seems catastrophic. Oh no, lets call Al Sharpton because this year a good, black actor didn’t want to work on the right project.

Me: Yeah, total non-representation in a data set of 200 of 12% of the American population just wreaks of being the result of “actors turning down work.” You seriously don’t think this is symptomatic of a deep-rooted cultural problem in America? I totally agree that the Academy should nominate actors for the best performances of the year, but there is something rotten in the state of Denmark (where Denmark is the larger cultural equation).

PS – Did you even read the post? If not, read the last paragraph. If yes, reread the last paragraph.

Him: I read it, and it’s pretty obvious as to what it is. Reread my post, and you will see that I called it out for what it is- bullshit.

12% of the american population may be black, but those 12% aren’t in film. Those 12% aren’t putting the kind of work in to get close to being oscar worthy.

Why don’t we go ahead and complain about all the other actors and actresses that don’t get recognized -ever- by the academy? Oh yeah, because their work is shit.

Me: Your argument is that the world and the academy are a meritocracy? You crazy.

Him: No, my argument is that to be recognized for doing good work, you have to do good work.

I don’t get a plaque for showing up to work every day. Fuck, I don’t even get a raise for showing up to work on a daily basis.

Could we see more black actors in better roles? Sure. Is that going to happen without black actors taking whatever paycheck they get (AKA Madea goes to the drive thru)? Hell no.

Me: Ya. Your life is really hard. Nigger please.

UPDATE: Okay, so I realized that I made a bit of a leap there that might have been a bit hard to follow. My point was that:

(a) Your whole position (even if you don’t realize it) is still premised on the idea that the world tends towards being “fair” (whatever that means)

(b) One can only believe what is not blatantly, undeniably contradicted by one’s own experience.

(c) People that have hard lives know that the idea that the world tends towards being fair is contradicted all over the place in the world, because they’re the ones that get smacked in the face by these contradictions, and therefore…

(d) You’ve had the privilege of not really having a life that’s all that hard. Whatever sucks about it /is/ largely your own doing.

But you can’t be faulted for not having a hard life. That’s not your fault. What you can be faulted for is failing to cultivate the imagination to see that your experience is far from a universal one.

There were no black people nominated by the Academy this year, because, yes, there were disproportinatly few prominent roles in “serious” movies that called for a black person. Why? Because middle, upper middle, and upper class people (aka people with money) don’t tend to buy shit that’s about black people, whether it’s good or bad. If there isn’t a clear market for something among the people with money, it’s going to be hard to get the money together to finance a product. Don’t believe me that this happens? A nice little case study is the ratings difference between the “white” season of the wire (season 2), and the subsequent even better but black season of the wire (season 3). That’s just one example.

The laziness and poor decision making of black actors are far from the primary factors here. And frankly, it’s racist as hell of you to suggest that they are.

So far that last comment has gotten a downvote but no response. To be fair, I only added the update this morning.

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America’s last WWI vet dies at age 110

By
Trevor Macomber
– February 28, 2011

***

As reported by various news outlets, including BBC News, Frank Buckles — the last living American to have fought in World War One — died last weekend at his home in West Virginia. His death came a mere four weeks after his 110th birthday — and a mere 94 years after he first lied about his age in order to join the fight overseas in The War to End All Wars.

In case math isn’t your strong suit (i.e., you’re an American secondary school student), that means that young Buckles voluntarily — even eagerly, according to reports — enlisted in our armed services at the tender age of 16 in order to risk life and Limburger to defend the world from Europe’s Central Powers (a.k.a., yesteryear’s “Axis of Evil”).

I don’t know about you, but when I was 16, the most pressing matter on my mind was how to get a clearer signal on the scrambled porn channel.

So here’s to you, young Buckles. I hope you finally get that war memorial you’ve been advocating for. After all, if anyone has waited long enough, it’s you.

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Reimagining American Identity, Corporate American Style

By
Sam Cheuk
– February 28, 2011

***

I’m sure I’m pretty late to the party but I just watched this Chrysler Superbowl commercial and it has my brain a-humming. Wow. Huh? Wuh?

First thing that struck me was exactly what the title suggests: the rebranding of American exceptionalism to better empathize with the contemporary American cultural anxiety. But don’t be mistaken: it’s still American exceptionalism alright, only it’s no longer the innocent ex nihilo exceptionalism that charges a Dodge truck through a pine-lined dirt path before braking heroically before a cliff or beneath an opened moonroof where a couple in black kisses elegantly under the undulating citylight. If anything, it is a reactionary exceptionalism, Rocky-style. An even more hyper-realistic (à la Eco) presentation of the American spirit in the slogan “Tried, Tested, and True” (which, okay, is Chevy’s, but if you weren’t familiar with car models and I showed you a slew of American car commercials of yore with penises photoshopped on their logos, y’know, so it’d be pixel-blotted, could you tell them or their branding differences apart?).

What a fitting symbol, Detroit, the municipal equivalent to the famous Edward Hopper painting that captures (holds hostage?) the American nostalgic imagination, to be used by this advertising firm to juxtapose the current mood of the American psyche: shots of ugly obsolete industry and Hiroshima-esque building facade (synced with a husky-voiced “I got a question for ya, what does this city know about luxury? Huh? What does a town that’s been to hell and back know about the finer things in life?”), then reinvention, set in false-dichotomy: cityscape, classical sculpture, various images testifying to “hard work, conviction, and a know-how that runs generations deep in every last one of us.” The latter is still the exact same message they had preached to pre-recession America, isn’t it? But it has been co-opted into a larger cultural narrative (rather than, say, the “unrealistic” isolation necessary for the ideological or the romantic in earlier car commercials), one that not only identifies with the fear and anxiety of America, but offers up a hopeful answer, if you were to believe that fear and hope are two sides of the same coin, the narrative of the comeback kid as the beat of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” turns up and we begin to see the car, we see Eminem in the car— “That’s who we are, that’s our story.”

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Weather Report: Portland, Oregon

By
Joseph Wightman
– February 28, 2011

“Got a cigarette by chance, Boss?” The kid steps through the train from behind me, puffing steam. I look up and shake a no. My brain automatically tallies up the time since my last smoke – two years? Two-and-a-half? Something like that. I was — just 15 minutes ago — strolling behind a fellow with a lit cigarette, matching my stride to his for a brief moment, in order to sniff the sweet-scented air that he trailed in his wake. This kid on the MAX doesn’t understand the significance of his question. He sucks his teeth at me and moves to the other end of the car.

It’s pleasantly warm in here. They heat these trains. It’s like a public service that they provide along with the cheap transportation.  I appreciate it. It’s fuckin’ cold outside. Waiting for the train, I stood on the platform with my back to the wind, facing down the stream of traffic. I watched a bicycle pass a car on the right, in the middle of an intersection, over the slick, metal MAX tracks. His flickering red tail-light was still visible two blocks away. That seems pretty safe.

The doors open at each stop and the fluid that moistens my eyeballs freezes in the icy blast of outside air. I have to blink a few times to thaw them out.

All day today people were talking about snow. It was forecast for last night, but it didn’t come. The meteorologists called it for this evening, between four and five. It didn’t come then either. I heard someone say that they were predicting snow by ten o’clock tonight. It’s 9:54 now, and let me tell you… it’s not snowing, but it’s cold.

(image via)

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The Oscars were Terrible

By
Tom OHare
– February 28, 2011

No, that’s not just sour grapes.

My predictions were a touch… wrong, but it’s important to remember that the main reason they were wrong was because of Britain, which I’d forgotten about. Rule number one in Hollywood: if you speak in a British accent, you are a Very Serious Actor. Rule number two: if your movie is about the trials and tribulations of British people, it is a Very Serious Picture.

As an American of Irish descent, I would like to take this opportunity to remind the British people that although The Academy seems to have forgiven you for Oliver Cromwell, I most certainly have not.

I didn’t actually watch the ceremony, though I did watch the red carpet festivities. (Hello, Mila Kunis. You looked excellent and I am single.) What can I say? The prospect of listening to Anne Hathaway and James Franco try to be funny for four hours was less than enticing. Plus, why watch the whole ceremony when you can just go to the HuffPo the next morning and get 1) the list of winners and 2) the most charming/embarrassing/whatever moments distilled into a few clips under wildly misleading headlines? There’s no reason to actually put yourself through that nonsense, is what I’m saying, and so I didn’t. I did, however, learn this morning (via HuffPo) that some lady from The Fighter said “fuck,” which OMG Think of The Children.

The biggest problem with my predictions, aside from Britain, was my reliance on months-old conventional wisdom that “Facebook” would win everything. Specifically, my problem was that I did not realize that the conventional wisdom had of late shifted to favor “Th-th-t-the-King’s-King-K-The-Kin-King’s-K-The-King’s-Speech-The-Kin-The-King’s-Speech.” (See what I did there?) Another problem was thinking that Twilight would win despite its not being nominated. And a final problem was that I do not give a fuck about the Oscars.

So how did I do?

Not bad, considering the above factors. If I spot myself the awards for which I did not make predictions (which, why not, tie goes to the runner, etc.) I got twelve out of twenty-four right. That is fifty percent, for those keeping track at home, and that is better than randomly picking names out of a hat. It is as good as flipping a coin, in other words, which you can’t do with pools of three to ten, because coins don’t work that way. Which means I did extraordinarily well. Well enough to win an office pool? Certainly. Assuming that you are self-employed and not too heavy a drinker, you fared excellently. If you had to compete against other human beings, I hope you did not put too much money down.

Anyway. Here is a scandalous video from last night’s show. Now let us never speak of this again.

 

Update: B&S’s own Alix MacLean adds at her place,

If I was the producer, I would’ve paired Hathaway with a charismatic older stud, like Hugh Jackman or Clooney, someone just dripping with class and showmanship. That way, her excited little girl shtick would’ve played a lot better. But then again, I’m not the producer, because if I was, the show would’ve included me firing James Franco out of a cannon into Helena Bonham Carter and them both exploding into flames.

Can I get a Hallelujah?

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The Week is Over

By
Tom OHare
– February 25, 2011

 

Here are some things that happened.

If you need anything else, I will be at the bar drinking myself into a coma.

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“What Time Do The Oscars Start?” (& other Search Engine Optimized Oscar Queries, Answered)

By
Tom OHare
– February 25, 2011

(Prediction: Sunday, February 27th, 8:00 p.m. EST)

It’s Oscar season. Are you excited? I am excited. I get excited for the Oscars because all of the famous people are dolled up and looking excellent on the red carpet, posing for pictures and taking questions from Joan and Melissa Rivers, who are Hard Hitting Journalists. The Oscars are America at its best, and America at its best is the only America I’ve ever even heard of.

So I’m predicting the Oscars. I know what you’re saying to yourself. “I’ll bet you didn’t even see any of these movies, Tom O’Hare, because they’re not on Netflix Instant and you’re too poor to go to the movie theater because you spend all of your money on cigarettes.” To which I’d reply that one of the nominees is, in fact, on Netflix Instant, thank you, that I’ve seen it, and that I ALSO saw ‘Inception’ in the theater last summer, when I was not quite so broke. I would point out further that with these types of large data-set predictions, it often doesn’t matter how much specific knowledge you have of the data in question, and that picking names out of a hat can be a very sound course of action, indeed. (I will not actually pick names out of a hat, though, for my Oscar predictions. My system is much more clever. And sneaky.)

Have you ever participated in a March Madness pool? When, like, even though you don’t follow college basketball at all during the regular season, for the week between the release of the official bracket and the start of the tournament you’re frantically researching, like I dunno, Gonzaga’s points per game versus Purdue’s overall defense to see which team you should pick for easy first round points? Have you ever done that? And your buddy who subscribes to ESPN The Magazine and has a satellite dish and a TiVo and NFL RedZone or some shit  is all, “I’m gonna mop the floor with you, mister!” and you’re like, “Ha! Not if I can help it!”? And then thirty days and many pitchers of cheap beer later, you’re watching the National Championship, but it doesn’t even matter anymore, because your ESPN The Magazine buddy’s friggin’ girlfriend already won the pool, and all she did was just pick the team names that sounded the nicest?

It is directly a consequence of this phenomenon that I am making Oscar predictions. I am a fairly firm believer in shit luck.

If you have an office Oscar pool going on, heads up! I’m talking to you. You do not want to be the butt of the jokes at the water cooler Monday morning. “Hahaha,” Wendy will say, “Phil picked Javier Bardem for Best Actor, what a homosexual” snicker, snicker — in this case you are Phil, and your face turns red, and you feel bad for Wendy because she is a bigot. Wendy makes you pony up the $10 you wasted by not reading this article. Your credit card’s maxed out and you can’t afford lunch. Way to go, pal. Shoulda probably read this, shouldn’t’ve ya?

You should have. Don’t even argue.

On to the categories!

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Matt Damon and Ben Affleck Swap Wives. Or something.

By
Trevor Macomber
– February 25, 2011

According to MSN, Beantown boy wonders Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (along with Ben’s younger brother Casey — a.k.a., Affleck 2.0) are currently collaborating on a new movie called The Trade, based on — of all things — the Yankees.

Well, okay, not the Yankees, per se, but rather former Yankees’ pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson. And what’s so movie-worthy about Kekich and Peterson — two southpaws who enjoyed but a single All-Star game selection between them? Only the fact that, one day in the early 1970s, they decided to swap wives.

Like this, but, you know, fo’ realz.

Permanently.

According to the story (and not surprisingly),

Kekich is panic-stricken. He has moved away and has a new identity. He is freaked out that those working on the movie found out where he is. He isn’t too keen on having the scandal dredged up again after all this time.

Peterson, on the other hand — though not cited in the article — probably isn’t as worried about his family finding out about his sordid past. Why? Well, as it turns out, he and Kekich’s former wife, Susanne, are still married. No word on whether they’re still swinging, but as the Black-Eyed Peas might say, I’ve got a feeling…

(Top image via Best Movies Ever. Or Film Drunk. Whatever. The point is, somebody stole it from somebody and I stole it from them.)

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The Academy Isn’t Wrong Every Time

By
Ben Nolan
– February 25, 2011

The NFB’s description:

This Oscar®-winning [2004] animated short from Chris Landreth is based on the life of Ryan Larkin, a Canadian animator who produced some of the most influential animated films of his time. Ryan is living every artist’s worst nightmare – succumbing to addiction, panhandling on the streets to make ends meet. Through computer-generated characters, Landreth interviews his friend to shed light on his downward spiral. Some strong language. Viewer discretion is advised.

Ryan Larkin died in 2007.

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Happy Birthday to George Harrison, the Dreamiest Beatle

By
Tom OHare
– February 25, 2011

He is, of course, dead, but he would’ve been 68 today.

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