I grew bored with Sunday night’s Oscar presentations – with its interminable, long-winded, and pretentiously disconnected speechifying punctuated by over-hyped, overproduced, and under-talented between-award acts – several years ago.
Like NHL hockey – whose gratuitous gloves-off violence left me ice-cold long ago – it’s been a long, long time since I’ve been able to drag myself into watching either.
The similarities between Oscar and the NHL go further – particularly the politics behind the inaction: movie producers have been known to spend as much on securing an Oscar nomination as they did making the movie they wanted nominated, while the NHL regularly blabs about reducing dangerous violence… as long as the perpetrators aren’t big enough stars to put a dent in the box office.
It’s all entertainment, and it has become more important than real life.
Heh! How’s that for interminable, long-winded, and pretentiously disconnected? And I have the temerity to complain about actors’ verbal diarrhea!
But I’ve got more.
As it happens, Gravity was the only one of all the films, shorts, etc. nominated for Oscars this year that I’ve actually seen.
Except for that one – which, truth be told, I saw only because Donna wanted to watch it – I’m normally quite content to wait for everything else to show up on our free listings.
Having seen it, however, I’m surprised that it didn’t win (er, I mean, “receiveâ€) the Best Picture nod.
Either 12 Years a Slave (which I suspect must be the story of B.C. teachers who had their contracts unilaterally torn up by the provincial government in 2002) is truly worth a watch… or it had a better political machine activated in the pre-game show (borne out by the two Supreme Court rulings in their favour – although not yet to their avail – over the past 12 years).
Or perhaps the deniers of basic scientific precepts have infiltrated the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and decided to go after another of nature’s immutable laws.
After all, Evolution may be easier to deny, but Gravity is less controversial.
There are other titles on the Oscar nominations list of peak productions that have piqued my interest, and may just get me into my armchair to have a peek.
If it were up to me, for instance, B.C.’s public school students would have won the Academy Award for actors in a supporting role, for their part in Prisoners.
And I’d like to see the documentary exposé of just what happened to Adrian Dix’s election strategy in 20 Feet from Stardom.
And speaking of last year’s provincial election, I can’t wait to catch the political pollster’s explanation of their work in The Missing Picture.
B.C. politics seems to have been a prominent feature in the nominations list. Surely, it’s former Education Minister (circa the aforementioned 2002) and current Premier Christy Clark whose performance is recognized in
Room on the Broom, with former Langley City Mayor and current Education Minister Peter Fassbender adding a masterful supporting role.
But let’s not forget the feds, shall we? Especially take note of Steve Harper as Iron Man 3, who is already grooming himself to take the lead role for Iron Man 4 in 2015.
And then there’s Toronto’s Rob Ford. All sorts of titles from the Academy nominations list jump out at me: there’s Feral and Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, not to mention Helium (I’m sure he’s tried that, too).
Ford: the epitome of Star Trek into Darkness.