Wednesday, March 08, 2006

The Red Carpet

I really love movies and enjoy watching the Academy Awards every year with my family and friends. I don’t really worry about the controversies and attacks of being out-of-touch with the common person. Hollywood, despite what the talking heads may lead us to believe, does not set policy for America. It is a art gallery for movie making and art lends itself to controversy. Good art or bad, it is meant to challenge us, anger us, make us feel emotions and entice us to talk about uncomfortable issues. That is, after all, how we progress as a people. I have not seen all the movies, but I will as they come out on Netflix.

As for the Oscars, that is my family’s party. That is our time to get together with friends (both conservative and liberal) and talk about the movies we love and the movies we hate. We have flicks that we root for and see awards given to people we don’t think deserve it. It’s all about having fun.

This year’s host, Jon Stewart, has seen mixed reviews for his performance. I think people expected him to be as cutting at the Oscars as he is on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”. But the Oscars is a different venue. I think back to M. Night Shyamalan’s movie “The Sixth Sense.” It received wonderful reviews, but audiences were very disappointed with his next film “Unbreakable” because it was not “The Sixth Sense.” Of course it was not, but “Unbreakable” was a great gem in it’s own right. And so it was with Jon Stewart. Everyone expected “The Daily Show” but what they got was an Oscar host.

Crash won Best Picture, which I didn’t think would happen, but which in a previous post, has said that it should. I picked Brokeback Mountain to win because of the hype it generated. I thought it was a lock. I have to say, I did a pretty poor job picking winners this year. I got only nine correct.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Sorry we had to miss the party. I thought Stewart did a good job for the part of the Oscars I got to see. I was also happy that Crash won because I thought it deserved it.