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June 19, 2013
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 We’d Like to Thank the Academy ... for What?Posted on Feb 21, 2012
(Page 2) Fast-forward 83 years from that first awards ceremony. No longer an emergent form, movies today are “filmed entertainment,” in large part produced by the same corporate divisions that make television. Oscar is the senior citizen of awards season, the months formerly known as winter, when those guilds the academy was created to forestall—the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild and the Writers Guild—bestow statuettes that brighten many a Hollywood mantle. Even 35 years ago, well before the mushrooming number of “kudos-fests,” as the Hollywood trade publication Variety dubbed the awards events, Alvy Singer in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” thus exclaimed of Hollywood’s prize frenzy: “Awards! All they do is give out awards! Greatest Fascist dictator: Adolf Hitler!” In the years since “Annie Hall” received an Oscar for best picture, the Academy Awards increasingly have assumed the dual character of a political campaign and a beauty pageant. Producers effectively have engineered Oscar-winning movies and performances, spending so much money in the process that there have been cries for Oscar-campaign reform. Advertisers, hungry to sell products to a mass audience in a niche-marketed universe, have turned the event into a sponsored subsidiary of the beauty industry. Fashion titans use Oscar night as an opportunity to dress up the stars as human billboards for their designs. At the 2010 Academy Awards, Jeff Bridges accepted his long-overdue statuette for the low-budget film “Crazy Heart” by observing that more time and money had been spent on the film’s Oscar campaign than on the indie film itself. (A statuette boosts long-term revenues for a film and raises its recipient’s asking price and negotiating leverage.) As for the question of whether the Oscars have outlived their relevance, ask it another way: Would the film industry and movie-going public be better off without Hollywood’s annual pageant of self-congratulation? Is a film society that failed to honor Fred Astaire, Dorothy Dandridge, Cary Grant, Sessue Hayakawa, Alfred Hitchcock, the Nicholas Brothers, Barbara Stanwyck and Mae West relevant? Imagine Hollywood without the academy and the value of the organization becomes plain. For despite its country-club demographics and the cynicism behind its creation, the fact is that without the Academy, what incentive would Hollywood have to make anything other than “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Transformers”?
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By Migs, February 23, 2012 at 3:32 pm Link to this comment
@poodfreemon: I’m with you on Taxi Driver. It’s my favourite movie too and Martin Scorsese is my favourite director. I watched The Departed again about a month ago for the first time since its cinema run and was mesmerized by it. It’s very political. Since then I’ve been searching everywhere to find an in-depth scene by scene analysis of it but haven’t been able to find one. If anyone can direct me to one I’d appreciate it. However, in my search I’ve come across a lot of other great stuff including a website dedicated to the work of Stanley Kubrick called The Kubrick Corner. On it there’s brilliant in-depth analysis of Full Metal Jacket which I highly recommend to all Truthdiggers.
Report thisHere’s the link: http://kubrickfilms.tripod.com/id6.html
By moonraven, February 23, 2012 at 2:47 pm Link to this comment
pood:
You need to expand your film horizons.
I cannot even imagine a top 100 list of all-gringo films.
The only one in my top 10 list is The Searchers (one racist film in my top ten is all I can stomach)—even though Monument Valley doesn’t look anything like west Texas….
Report thisBy poodfreemon, February 22, 2012 at 8:04 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I prefer to watch the Academy Awards alone. The worst of the evening’s experience are those winners who blabber on with two dozen thank-yous. The best of it is the fact that for 55 years I have been more than happy to escape into a good or great movie. How many movies have you seen in your lifetime?
My favorite movie: “Taxi Driver.”
In second place are my 100 all-time greats that are even better upon the second and third viewing, like “sex, lies and videotape,” “Apocalypse Now,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” “American Beauty,” and “Winter’s Bone.”
The Academy Awards show is a spectacle that allows me to dwell for three hours in the swirl of the memories of my entire history as an avid moviegoer. Thankfully, excellent films continue to be made, no matter what and who the crusty Academy decides to honor.
Report thisBy Barry Popik, February 22, 2012 at 5:16 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Academy librarian Margaret Herrick never had an “uncle Oscar.” I’ve been trying to get the true story published somewhere, anywhere. The Academy refuses to acknowledge the truth and goes with the myth.
Report thisHollywood reporter Sidney Skolsky coined “Oscar” in 1934. It’s the first time “Oscar” has been cited in print, and Time magazine and others credited Skolsky in the 1930s.
Skolsky said that he was thinking of the vaudeville line “Have a cigar, Oscar!” That takes us directly to the identity of Oscar—cigar manufacturer and opera impresario Oscar Hammerstein. His songwriting grandson, also named Oscar, would win two Oscars on some enchanted evenings.
http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/oscar_academy_award/
By felicity, February 22, 2012 at 12:46 pm Link to this comment
When the Academy awarded that awful movie ‘Titanic’ 12
Report thisOscars I knew it was a sham outfit.
By moonraven, February 22, 2012 at 12:40 pm Link to this comment
We call films from gringolandia “churros” here in Mexico.
Churros are long skinny ridged sugar coated deepfried versions of donuts….
Report thisBy ClscFlm, February 22, 2012 at 10:53 am Link to this comment
What so many fail to realize is that
Report thisAcademy Awards voting isn’t about
audience popularity. It is people who
work in particular fields voting for
the best work done in those fields for
that year. Best Picture is certainly
more fraught with politics and “the
business.” But one (of several) bright
lights provided by it all are the Foreign Language
Film Nominees. Without a nomination,
many would never pick up distributors
in the US at all. Same goes with
animated features, shorts and
documentaries. The connection with
Oscar is a much needed boost for some
genuinely challenging, artistic and
entertaining films. As a way of
genuinely honoring creative work, and
for bringing little known films to the
fore, the Academy Awards still works
very well.
By mrfreeze, February 22, 2012 at 8:14 am Link to this comment
The Academy is nothing more than a microcosm of American society. It’s High School all over again, every year and if you’re not part of “the club,” well then…........
I happen to be a fan of foreign film, especially Italian film and the Italians are producing excellent, contemporary movies, but one would hardly know this based on the way the American film industry (and especially the Academy) operates.
Fortunately, I make NONE of my decisions to watch a movie based on the number of Academy Awards it receives.
Report thisBy Migs, February 22, 2012 at 3:30 am Link to this comment
“For despite its country-club demographics and the cynicism behind its creation, the fact is that without the Academy, what incentive would Hollywood have to make anything other than “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Transformers”?”
I don’t about that. Now that every other film gets a Best Picture nomination it seems the quality of the films getting acknowledged by the Academy is already being diluted. Also, a lot of so-called independent type movies are actually being financed by big studios. So it won’t be long before the social commentary in those films is further diluted too.
Report thisBy balkas, February 22, 2012 at 3:05 am Link to this comment
for a long time i have rejected hollywood and much what it produces. it
Report thisdoes seem that hollywood at one time was not an agent of american
imperialism, injustices, racial hatred, etc.
but that era era of being to a degree enlightening/uplifting ended long
ago.
today it is just about completely of and for the One Percent.