Author Topic: Post-Oscar news coverage  (Read 75648 times)

Offline tpe

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #30 on: Mar 07, 2006, 12:12 PM »
Let this tiresome duo burn in hell.  I am tired of listening to them.

Offline dirtbiker

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #31 on: Mar 07, 2006, 12:22 PM »
This only reinforced my hatred for that fat bozo.

Offline sweetlilg

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #32 on: Mar 07, 2006, 12:27 PM »
thanks everyone for posting these awesome articles!! they all spoke the truth!
"Sometimes I miss you SO MUCH I can hardly stand it" - Jack <3

RIP Heath ♥ Heath, I swear...

BrokeBack Mountain is the BEST! It has won the Oscar of my heart!

Offline hidesert

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #33 on: Mar 07, 2006, 12:40 PM »

Hollywood Isn't Being Straight with Gay Community[/b]

Wesley Morris, The Boston Globe   |  March 7, 2006


The crash you heard late Sunday night was not only Jack Nicholson announcing the best-picture Oscar winner. It was the sound of lots of closet doors slamming shut in a huff. ''Brokeback Mountain," the so-called gay cowboy movie, lost to ''Crash," a drama about the shrieking, teary, hateful, and guilty people who refuse to stop running into each on the streets of Los Angeles.

Some movies are born political, and others have politics thrust upon them.  Poor ''Brokeback Mountain" was such a movie.  Ang Lee's adaptation of Annie Proulx's short story was not out to attack us with a statement.  It really is just an unhappy love story that happens to have enormous social relevance because its protagonists are two men.  Yet the movie's biggest supporters may have turned an otherwise innocent film into a cause that got on voters' nerves. The dialogue became quotable, and the poster was mocked, lessening the emotional seriousness and making for a once-in-a-lifetime pop-culture phenomenon.

''Crash," which many Los Angelenos have come to regard as gospel, was the logical beneficiary.

As Oscar host Jon Stewart pointed out, half of Hollywood acted in ''Crash," and actors make up the Academy's largest branch.  Plus, the average age of voters is rumored to be 60-something, which means that ''Crash" might have triggered a civil-rights hot flash in the Academy.

Despite the interlocking story lines, ''Crash" is in its way a conventional social-problem drama that also appealed to voters' sense of laziness. The movie is set in their backyard. And the depiction of nonstop racial strife might have tapped into some voters' guilt about their own wealth and their own prejudices.

Sandra Bullock, as a pampered politician's wife, and Matt Dillon, as a racist LAPD officer, follow particularly improbable trajectories from bigotry to enlightenment: Each dares to hug a person of color. In the case of Bullock's character, it's her Latina maid, who exists solely for this grotesque expression of guilt.

''Crash" edges to the brink of insanity then assures you, ''If we can't all get along, the least we can do is try." Maybe the puppets in the Broadway musical ''Avenue Q" said it best when they sang, ''Everyone's a little bit racist sometimes." ''Crash" turns that declaration into volcanic melodrama.

Oddly, the characters doing all the colliding in ''Crash" are straight. Director and co-writer Paul Haggis was sure to populate his movie Noah's Ark-style, with two or three members of various races, ethnicities, and social classes represented.  Homosexuals didn't make the cut.

Thus the win for ''Crash" makes an interesting point about where Hollywood stands on the whole gay issue -- less ''I wish I knew how to quit you" and more ''not that there's anything wrong with that."

Throughout Oscar night, winners gave eloquent shout-outs to tolerance. George Clooney pointed out that Hattie McDaniel won her award at a time when it was dangerous and unfashionable to reward talented African-Americans.

A truly bracing acceptance speech, though, would demand acceptance of openly gay actors instead of congratulating a breakthrough that goes back six decades. Yes, there might not be a Halle Berry without Hattie McDaniel. But suddenly it's more reasonable to wonder when we'll ever see a gay McDaniel.

It's fine for Hollywood to urge gay tolerance. But it should give America an actual homosexual to tolerate first.

The defeat of ''Brokeback" exposes this blind spot all too clearly.  Best-director winner Ang Lee praised the fictional ''cowboys" in his movie for their bravery.  But the real -- and truly audacious -- Truman Capote went unthanked in best actor winner Philip Seymour Hoffman's acceptance speech.

The culture of the movie business isn't all that different from the military or sports. An accusation of homosexuality can turn a star litigious or, in some cases, relentlessly straight. Obviously, the movies are in the business of illusion. And anything that shatters the illusion is bad for business.

As this year's Oscars demonstrated, Hollywood will find a way to produce or distribute ''Capote," ''Brokeback Mountain," and ''Transamerica," but fosters an environment in which the lead parts in those movies have to be played by ostensibly straight actors. There are no gay film stars. We all know the gay actors go to Broadway (they want Tonys!) or come from England. Seriously people, Ian McKellen can't do all your work for you.

In any case, ''Brokeback Mountain" might not have been stridently political enough for Academy voters. The heroes never even say the word ''gay." ''Crash" throws all its issues up on the screen; of course it won. The Academy can congratulate itself from the bottom of its heart, while claiming to have searched its soul for solutions to decades of African-American neglect. Halle Berry, Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, Morgan Freeman, and now Three 6 Mafia are recent winners. There are lots of African-American stars and producers. Black is pretty normal in the movies.

Homosexuality? Not so much.

In an attempt to ''normalize" ''Brokeback Mountain" during Sunday night's broadcast Stewart trotted out a montage of great homoerotic moments in Westerns. It put the movie in an irreverent cinematic context, and it was very funny until you realized that, because the men in the montage aren't truly gay, all that clip reel actually does is reinforce paranoia about what seems gay. Just like the ''Brokeback" parodies sprouting all over the Internet, it was a backhanded compliment -- progressive, yet misleading, true but false, distancing and distorted.

In the very same way that straight Stewart happily woke up in bed with straight Clooney during one of Sunday night's skits, it was more insidiously coy illusion. Smirking and winking pussyfoots around the issue. Waking up beside Harvey Fierstein and loving it -- that's pushing the envelope.

Offline hidesert

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #34 on: Mar 07, 2006, 12:54 PM »

How Did 'Crash' Cash In?[/b]

ANALYSIS - Jack Matthews, New York Daily News - March 6, 2006


The thing to do after a sudden "Crash" is make sure everyone's okay, then try to figure out what happened.

There are plenty of theories being used to explain that last turn at Sunday's Academy Awards, the one that left Ang Lee and the rest of the "Brokeback Mountain" gang with whiplash.

One is that enough Academy voters found the gay subject matter of "Brokeback Mountain" too uncomfortable to sit through, meaning they abandoned their professional responsibility and didn't watch all five nominated films.

Another, more logical explanation is that Lions Gate Entertainment, which distributed "Crash," simply bought the grand prize by outspending everyone else in a $4 million campaign that included mailing DVDs to each of the 130,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild.

Only a relative handful of SAG's members are also in the actors branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but SAG's Best Ensemble award cut "Crash" out of the herd and burnished it with a peer review that made certain all Academy members watched it.

Maybe it was a combination of everybody seeing "Crash" and some refusing to watch "Brokeback Mountain." But I think the main reason "Crash" pulled off the upset is because its subject matter - racism, fear, and intolerance on the streets of L.A. - hit Academy members where most of them live.

Many critics from other parts of the country found the movie's criss-crossing characters and storylines unrealistic, and indeed they are - if you're taking the film literally. "Crash's" director, co-writer, and co-producer Paul Haggis intended it as an allegorical snapshot of a city in the midst of demographic change, and as an L.A. native, I can tell you that's how most of us saw it, too.

Having said that, and admitting that I would have cast my vote for "Goodnight, and Good Luck," I'm disappointed that "Brokeback Mountain" didn't win. It's the movie that will be best remembered from 2005, and the one that could have done the most with a Best Picture Oscar.

"Brokeback," with more than $70 million in ticket sales, has already performed better than anyone imagined in the red states, but it might have even been seen by a few rednecks if it came bearing gold. From the e-mail I've had from homophobes, I know "Brokeback" isn't going to separate many people from their prejudices, but it would have had a better chance with the Oscar.

Aside from "Crash's" win, I thought the Academy did right by most of the nominees. I wish they had found a better way to honor George Clooney's work as co-writer and director of "Goodnight, and Good Luck" than give him an Oscar for his supporting role in "Syriana." There were four more deserving actors on that ballot and one of them got screwed.

And happy as I am to see Ang Lee win Best Director for "Brokeback," I find it weird, if not disconcerting, that the Academy voters are suddenly splitting their votes for director and best picture. Three times in this decade, the director of the Best Picture was overlooked for someone else. That had only happened four times in the previous 72 years.

But, overall, three Oscars each for "Crash" and "Brokeback Mountain" underscores the tightness of this year's competition, and the three each for "King Kong" and "Memoirs of a Geisha" reminds us why movies still need to be seen on the big screen.

If "Memoirs'" story had been told better, and "King Kong" made shorter, they might have both been nominated, and Sunday's Oscars would have been a very different show.


Offline jasonx

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #35 on: Mar 07, 2006, 01:17 PM »
I try to convince myself that those Oscars don't matter (and they really don't.. we and the the most ppl, except those damn academy awards ppl offcourse  >:( , know it's the best movie).. and still... when I think of it I get upset...

Maybe I shouldn't read these "after Oscar" articles they bring up sad feelings  :'(

Offline jeddd

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #36 on: Mar 07, 2006, 01:33 PM »
Stephen King on the Oscars.  from an email, so I don't have a link

I know what you're thinking: You need another column on this year's Oscars, especially at this late date, about as much as Dick Cheney needs a few more jokes about hunting quail in Texas. But bear with me; this is, after all, the only Oscar postmortem you'll read from a guy who put The Devil's Rejects on his 2005 Ten Best List. Besides, this year I actually picked most of the big winners, although I admit there were some surprises - a rap crew wins for Best Song? Slap my tail and call me stinky. I don't know if Academy voters were trying to show their kids (make that grandkids) that they're still hep (make that hip), but Three 6 Mafia's performance - and exuberant acceptance - lit up the evening. And the ''clean'' version went over pretty well; my elderly ears detected only a single ABC bleep.
> I thought Jon Stewart was fine. The negative reviews of his performance suggested to me that there have been so many hosting changes in the last 10 or 15 years that it's hard to get comfortable with any new face. More to the point, hosting the Academy Awards is a pretty damned thankless job. It's almost like being a janitor in a tuxedo - you bring on the talent with a joke and a wave, then sweep 'em out again after they've made their little speeches and torn open their little envelopes. I thought Stewart was sweeter-natured than Chris Rock, and let's face it: The gay-cowboy montage was a hoot.
> What I liked best about this year's show was that the cumbersome, usually unfunny repartee between presenters was almost completely gone. Good! Good! As for the hosting part, it may be that the job is as dispensable as those tiresome jokes between presenters. If the Academy can't settle Jon Stewart in for a nice long cozy run - and certainly he's smart enough and talented enough to grow into the job and make it his own - I'd love to see the show's producers test-drive the No-Host Option. If it did nothing else, it might cut the still-too-long show down to three hours.
> But back to why I did so well with my picks this year: I had Brokeback Mountain shut out of every major category except for the screenplay adaptation, which I figured they had to give to Larry McMurtry (they did - and he was ballsy enough to show up in jeans). There's been a fair amount of talk about Brokeback being a breakthrough, but that's nonsense. A check of Brokeback parodies on Google should convince anyone with half a brain that the American pop culture is intent on passing this passionate, well-meant, and well-made movie like a kidney stone. And how does the American pop culture pass what it cannot stand? Easy. It laughs that s--- right out of its system.
> You can say Hollywood has been here before, awarding gold to Midnight Cowboy in 1970, but that's also bull - Midnight Cowboy is a movie about a make-believe cowpoke (Jon Voight) who hustles to keep himself and his ailing buddy (Dustin Hoffman) from starving. The movie's major moment of catharsis comes when Joe Buck (Voight) beats a harmless homosexual half to death. Cowboy is a well-made male weepie about friendship. As such, it was rewarded with a Best Picture Oscar. Brokeback is about enduring love and fierce sexual attraction between two men. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, at bottom as conservative as the current U.S. House of Representatives, gave Ang Lee one Oscar (which surprised me), the writing team of McMurtry and Diana Ossana another...and with those bones thrown, felt free to move on.
> To Crash, of course.
> Crash was the perfect alternative, and - ahem - I had it picked for Best Picture the whole way. It's the sort of flick the Hollywood establishment loves best and will always embrace, if given the chance, one where the complexities are all on the surface; its issues should come stamped GOOD FOR 2 SLICES OF PIZZA AFTER THE MOVIE (OR) 1 COCKTAIL PARTY. > Crash says we have problems. Crash says we have troubles. It says this modern life of ours is certainly a pain in the ass, especially this modern urban life. People keep ''crashing'' into each other (heavy symbolism at work, better wear a hard hat). But in the end - this is the part Academy voters like best - we can all get along if we rilly, rilly TRY!!! You almost expect to hear ''Why Can't We Be Friends?'' over the closing credits.
> And you know, until I read that last paragraph over, I didn't realize how bitter I've become about this process. Because I liked Crash. I did. I happen to believe we can get along if we really try, that coincidences do happen from time to time in the great Manhattan Transfer of city life, and people sometimes do change. It's a valid point of view, a decent theme, and Paul Haggis made the most of it. But was it the best film of the year? Good God, no. Brokeback was better. So were Capote and The Squid and the Whale, for that matter.
> But let's let it go, okay? The lights are off in the Kodak Theatre for another year. The set has been struck. The Academy sent the same soothing message it almost always sends: Everything's all right, everything's okay, the right movie won - the good movie, not the gay movie. Go to sleep, and sleep tight. Next year we'll do it all again.

Offline *Froggy*

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #37 on: Mar 07, 2006, 01:35 PM »
Thank you all so much for posting all those articles and links.

x Froggy
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Offline tpe

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #38 on: Mar 07, 2006, 01:37 PM »
I echo Froggy's thanks.

Offline Icarus512

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #39 on: Mar 07, 2006, 01:40 PM »
Thanks everyone for the articles posted in this thread...

I read 2 of the big national newspapers here in Holland today and what I found interesting was this:
One had a huge photo of Ang Lee with the article covering the oscars and only two lines in the article devoted to crash winning and the other had another article explaining the importance of Brokeback, right next to a small one in which all the winners were named...

I found it interesting how they really couldn't pay any less attention to Crash while still mentioning it  ;D

Offline dirtbiker

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #40 on: Mar 07, 2006, 02:02 PM »
Yes, even though we can discount the Oscars and find it irrelevant in our minds now, the general public does look at the outcome of the Oscars,and conservatives may begrudgingly use that as a vehicle to watch the movie out of curiousity.  The fact that it didn't win Best Picture pretty much dashed those hopes IMO.

Offline Cowboy Cody

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #41 on: Mar 07, 2006, 02:51 PM »
Stephen King can kiss my Irish ar**!
You were goin' up there to go fishin'....NO SHIT! GIMME SEX!

Offline dirtbiker

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #42 on: Mar 07, 2006, 02:59 PM »
Stephen King can kiss my Irish ar**!

No more Stephen King movies for me.  They sucked anyways!

Offline jasonx

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #43 on: Mar 07, 2006, 03:00 PM »
Thanks everyone for the articles posted in this thread...

I read 2 of the big national newspapers here in Holland today and what I found interesting was this:
One had a huge photo of Ang Lee with the article covering the oscars and only two lines in the article devoted to crash winning and the other had another article explaining the importance of Brokeback, right next to a small one in which all the winners were named...

I found it interesting how they really couldn't pay any less attention to Crash while still mentioning it  ;D

Yeah. I read the dutch newspaper "Metro" and didn't mention "Crash" alot... It had a half page (lots off adds around it) about Ang lee with a large picture of Jack and Ennis in it (the scene with Jack sleeping on his feet). Another dutch paper only mentioned crash won from BBM and that was it.. the rest of the article was about the Capote guy.

Offline chrissy323

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #44 on: Mar 07, 2006, 03:34 PM »
FWIW

I don't know if this was mentioned before somewhere on this forum or not. I noticed the ommission right away. This is from the Defamer site:

Ang Lee Thanks Billions, But Not Heath Or Jake

Two Washington Post staff writers were granted golden tickets to both the Vanity Fair and Elton John Oscar parties, and take us along on their Roald Dahlesque adventures. At VF they spot Madonna ("...she was heard to say 'oy' after experiencing a press photobarrage going in"), Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller sprawled on couches, J-Lo begging Marc Anthony to dance with her (he does not), Paul Haggis being gracious at a urinal (next movie: "Flush?"), and an affable, smoking Joaquin Phoenix; at Elton's: a bored George Lucas, alone but for his security guards, Pamela Anderson, and a "sea of women with Duck Face," including the world's reigning duck-faced monarchs, Amanda Lepore and Lisa Rinna.

Spirits overall were high; but there's always the exception:
Oscar-winning "Brokeback Mountain" screenwriter Diana Ossana, in a tight blue gown, kittens up to her sheepherding cowboys (mixed animal metaphor? Hello, we've been drinking?) and she has a long, serious conversation with Heath Ledger, and the only snippet we overhear is this: "He didn't even thank the cast," Ledger says.

While he could have been talking about anyone, a review of Ang Lee's acceptance speech revealed the director managed to thank the fictional characters of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, short story writer Annie Proulx, screenwriters Ossana and Larry McMurtry, a long list of Focus executives, and closed with a thank you to his family, and "everyone in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China." Not mentioned: Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, or any Brokeback Mountain actor for that matter. And while the entire population of China undoubtedly was thrilled to get their Oscar night due, let's face facts: it was Ledger and Gyllenhaal who really did the heavy lifting here, and probably deserved a tip of the gay cowboy hat.

http://www.defamer.com/hollywood/oscars/ang-lee-thanks-billions-but-not-heath-or-jake-158919.php

The entire article from the Washington Post, they categorized Heath's statement as as "carping", is at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/06/AR2006030601897.html
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Offline jasonx

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #46 on: Mar 07, 2006, 03:46 PM »
FWIW

I don't know if this was mentioned before somewhere on this forum or not. I noticed the ommission right away. This is from the Defamer site:

Ang Lee Thanks Billions, But Not Heath Or Jake

Two Washington Post staff writers were granted golden tickets to both the Vanity Fair and Elton John Oscar parties, and take us along on their Roald Dahlesque adventures. At VF they spot Madonna ("...she was heard to say 'oy' after experiencing a press photobarrage going in"), Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller sprawled on couches, J-Lo begging Marc Anthony to dance with her (he does not), Paul Haggis being gracious at a urinal (next movie: "Flush?"), and an affable, smoking Joaquin Phoenix; at Elton's: a bored George Lucas, alone but for his security guards, Pamela Anderson, and a "sea of women with Duck Face," including the world's reigning duck-faced monarchs, Amanda Lepore and Lisa Rinna.

Spirits overall were high; but there's always the exception:
Oscar-winning "Brokeback Mountain" screenwriter Diana Ossana, in a tight blue gown, kittens up to her sheepherding cowboys (mixed animal metaphor? Hello, we've been drinking?) and she has a long, serious conversation with Heath Ledger, and the only snippet we overhear is this: "He didn't even thank the cast," Ledger says.

While he could have been talking about anyone, a review of Ang Lee's acceptance speech revealed the director managed to thank the fictional characters of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, short story writer Annie Proulx, screenwriters Ossana and Larry McMurtry, a long list of Focus executives, and closed with a thank you to his family, and "everyone in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China." Not mentioned: Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, or any Brokeback Mountain actor for that matter. And while the entire population of China undoubtedly was thrilled to get their Oscar night due, let's face facts: it was Ledger and Gyllenhaal who really did the heavy lifting here, and probably deserved a tip of the gay cowboy hat.

http://www.defamer.com/hollywood/oscars/ang-lee-thanks-billions-but-not-heath-or-jake-158919.php

The entire article from the Washington Post, they categorized Heath's statement as as "carping", is at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/06/AR2006030601897.html

drama drama drama... omg stupid gossip.. probably ment nothing or was taken out of context.

Offline hidesert

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #47 on: Mar 07, 2006, 03:52 PM »
Spirits overall were high; but there's always the exception:
Oscar-winning "Brokeback Mountain" screenwriter Diana Ossana, in a tight blue gown, kittens up to her sheepherding cowboys (mixed animal metaphor? Hello, we've been drinking?) and she has a long, serious conversation with Heath Ledger, and the only snippet we overhear is this: "He didn't even thank the cast," Ledger says.

Sorry, but I don't put much stock in gossip columnists.  That late at night with the booze flowing I wouldn't take anything as gospel.


Offline hidesert

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #48 on: Mar 07, 2006, 03:55 PM »

Thanks to Ethan for the link to Gene Stone's article on The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gene-stone/hollywood-hardly-hearts-h_b_16886.html


Quote
There's no point in Brokeback fans getting angry and upset, however. In the long run, Brokeback will win -- its esteem will grow and its message will spread. Keep in mind that the Academy seldom selects the best movie of the year for an Oscar. "Citizen Kane" lost to "How Green Was My Valley", "Grand Illusion" lost to "You Can't Take It With You", "High Noon" lost to "The Greatest Show on Earth", and "A Place in the Sun" and "A Streetcar Named Desire" lost to "An American In Paris". "GoodFellas" lost to "Dances With Wolves". And in one year three of the greatest movies ever made -- "All the President's Men", "Taxi Driver", and "Network" -- were all nominated. They lost. To "Rocky".

"Citizen Kane" is on every "greatest movies" list I've seen in either 1st or 2nd place. All the other great but "didn't win" films he mentions are the ones that are still discussed in film classes because they are the best.


 

Offline jeddd

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #49 on: Mar 07, 2006, 04:24 PM »
WOW

I really need to stay off the Sandra Bullock message boards!



QUOTE:  The media is going ape over this upset by "Crash" and I'm thrilled about it. I've never seen "Brokeback Mountain" and if it won every award in the book I still wouldn't see it. It's a movie that glorifies sodomy and portrays despicable homosexual acts in vivid detail (according to the review on ScreenIt [1]). I don't care to see that. Quite frankly I'm shocked that it's been so critically acclaimed. Then again, given the highly amoral Hollywood society, it's not much of a surprise. The critics need to be critiqued. :UNQUOTE

bbmfan13

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #50 on: Mar 07, 2006, 05:28 PM »
http://film.guardian.co.uk/oscars2006/story/0,,1725204,00.html

"Did gay politics sink Brokeback Mountain? Awards for best director and best adapted screenplay were absolutely right, but was the academy keeping an arm's length from the story itself? The acting and best film Oscars, which would imply a more direct endorsement of gay love, were not forthcoming. A conspiracy theorist might make a few bales of hay from that. "

JerBear418720

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #51 on: Mar 07, 2006, 05:33 PM »
Stephen King can kiss my Irish ar**!

Move over, CC, and make room for mine too!

Offline frenchcda

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #52 on: Mar 07, 2006, 05:49 PM »
I really need to stay off the Sandra Bullock message boards!

Same here i I jts let her know to stop acting like a Fagghag and let kenu Reeve out of the closet, and that I can hardly wait to read what Tony Pelliconi has to say about her
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JerBear418720

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #53 on: Mar 07, 2006, 05:53 PM »
Let this tiresome duo burn in hell.  I am tired of listening to them.

Ebert touts out his opinions like they are Holy Scripture in this article.  "Crash is a better film" - so sayeth Roger - and THEN he has the nerve to attack those that disagree and smell the rat that was hiding in the Best Picture envelope (surprised it didn't bite Jack Nicholson).  OK, this windbag is off my Christmas card list for good.

Offline hidesert

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #54 on: Mar 07, 2006, 06:15 PM »


Crash Plus Cash Equals Oscar[/b]

The formula that gave an independent studio the edge over the majors

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles  |  The Guardian
Tuesday March 7, 2006
 


The studio behind Crash, the surprise best picture winner at Sunday night's Oscar ceremony, spent a total of $4m (£2.3m) promoting the film ahead of the ceremony with a targeted campaign to woo academy members. The film itself only cost $6.5m to make.

Released in the US last May by independent studio Lions Gate, the movie trounced the clear favourite, Brokeback Mountain.

Lions Gate gave a clue as to how when it warned last month that its profits would be lower than forecast. The main reason, it said, was that it had spent an additional $2m promoting Crash during the run-up to Sunday night. That was on top of the $2m it had already spent. While the figures for Crash may be small by comparison with other years, the effort was nevertheless effective.

By January, before the Oscar nominations were announced and with attention focused on the Golden Globes and a flurry of other awards, Lions Gate had spent $2m promoting the film, offering screenings to members of the various voting academies and urging voters to back the film with the time-honoured phrase so redolent of the pomposity of Hollywood, "For your consideration".

To make sure that everyone who counted got to see its film, Lions Gate sent out 130,000 DVD copies to members of the Screen Actors Guild, which holds a minor but influential awards ceremony. It was a surprisingly economical move, costing just 60 cents for each DVD, and it worked. Crash became the only film that SAG voters were guaranteed to have had the opportunity to see. The buzz about the film reignited, more than six months after its release, and just in time for the Oscar nominations. "The SAG mailing is something nobody had ever done," Lions Gate president Tom Ortenberg said. "It was a very effective and cost-efficient opportunity."

In early January, Lions Gate set aside a further $500,000 to promote the film, and after the announcement of the six Oscar nominations on the last day of January, a further $1.5m.

All this is small change to the major studios, which routinely spend $10m-$20m promoting films for Oscars. In 1999, at the high point of campaigning, Miramax outspent DreamWorks to ensure Elizabeth beat Saving Private Ryan at the Oscars. This year Universal, owned by cash-strapped General Electric, is thought to have spent $5m-$10m promoting Munich and Cinderella Man. But with none of the other majors in the running for the big awards this year, the field was left open for Lions Gate.

The investment in awards is worthwhile for any studio because of the kudos it brings, a point made by Ortenberg. "The branding that goes into a best picture nomination is really what helps attract filmmakers and acting talent," he said recently. Feel-good ensemble Crash, showing actors caring about the world while performing in what is a fairly conventional Hollywood movie, is precisely the sort of low-budget project to bring bring talent to Lions Gate's door.

And then there was Oprah Winfrey factor. "Hey everybody!," she wrote on her website last summer. "I just saw Crash. Go see this movie. It's superb! I'm on 'vacay' - otherwise I'd be on the show telling everybody to GO SEE THIS MOVIE! It's so well done. So thought-provoking. I saw it a week ago ... and I can't stop talking about it!"

The film's writer-director-producer Paul Haggis duly appeared on Oprah's TV show to tell how his real-life carjack drama led to the film, while the key members of the cast also appeared to ask: "Are you a racist?" Oprah's O magazine also ran articles on the film. "I believe everybody should have this in their movie collection," Oprah told viewers.

Despite being described by one distributor as "a made-for-TV film", Crash has done well at the box office. On its opening weekend it took $9.1m. By the time it ended its run in the US in September, it had taken $55.4m. Worldwide, including Britain, where it was released in August, it has taken $83.4m.

When the awards season started, Crash was already out on DVD in the US, selling 20,000 units a week. With the nominations, sales leapt to 50,000. The Oscar win is expected to generate several hundred thousand extra sales, as well as increasing the price for TV sales and rights. From its $6.5m investment, Lions Gate can expect to see Crash revenues pass the $100m mark.


Offline glacier1

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #55 on: Mar 07, 2006, 06:41 PM »
This LA Times column/blog by Steve Pond, "If Picking Brokeback was Wrong, I Don't Want to Be Right" contains about 19 responses....all of which will offer some solace.   I don't think the link requires a password.

http://oscarbeat.latimes.com/awards_oscar/2006/03/if_picking_brok.html#comments

Here's just one of them:

I appreciate all of the insightful analysis of the fiasco fthat was the best picture award this year, especially Don's comments. I had no idea that there was that much hostility from such a large number of Academy voters. How naive I really am, after all. I thought that this was the one place where a movie like BBM would be warmly embraced.
For me, seeing this movie the day before the Academy Awards was an incredibly emotional, cathartic experience. I found myself finally able to get beyond my own problems with understanding gay people and I became completely involved with these two men to the point that I could see them just as two people caught up in a love affair that could not possibly end happily. I rejoiced in their expression of love and I found myself wanting them to be together, realizing that they were only happy and alive when they were with each other.
What a marvelous thing it is to have a voyage of self discovery while watching a true masterpiece of brilliantly crafted moviemaking. I was overcome at the end and I couldn't get the images of this marvelous movie out of my mind. I will always remember Ennis Del Mar, played with such skill and subtlety and utterly hearbreaking poignancy by Heath Ledger. He touched my soul and my heart and I am grateful that I was able to understand what both he and this movie are really about.
I feel sorry for those who felt that they needed to shun or back away from what this movie was depicting. I also am afraid that maybe its distributors underestimated the skill and zeal of the people behind Crash, and therefore, maybe snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. But I do not blame them nor do I hold them ultimately responsible for this travesty.
It was the cowardice and the hypocrisy of those members of the Academy who could not get beyond their own fears and prejudices to embrace a true work of art. Yes, Don, the story and the movie did make me cry, and yes, when it lost, I cried again for all the wrong reasons.

I realized that I, as a writer, was having the rarest film trip: my story was not mangled but enlarged into huge and gripping imagery that rattled minds and squeezed hearts.....Annie Proulx.

Offline hidesert

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #56 on: Mar 07, 2006, 08:42 PM »
Glacier, the comment is good but I copied Steve Pond's article and will include it below.  If Steve Pond and Tom O'Neil the two "Oscar experts" at the LA Times didn't see the crash cart ready to hit, we shouldn't feel so bad. 

Quote
If picking "Brokeback" was wrong, I don't want to be right

Steve Pond, LA Times

All along, I'd been convinced that the talk about a "Crash" upset was just wishful thinking on the part of people desperate to make the race more interesting. "Brokeback Mountain" did seem as if it might be vulnerable — but not to the other films in contention this year, not after all the previous awards it had swept, and not after it won a trio of acting nominations as compared to a single acting nod for "Crash," which was being touted as the presumed favorite of the actors branch.
Crash

Because of that — and, let's face it, because I happen to believe that "Brokeback" is a very good movie and "Crash" is not a very good movie — I ignored the omens. I shrugged off reports that "Brokeback" was not playing well at its final academy screenings, rationalizing that members who waited until late February to see it probably weren't going to vote for it anyway.

I figured that Roger Ebert was wrong, that the anecdotal evidence was meaningless, that Tony Curtis' reluctance to even see "Brokeback" meant nothing.

I managed to ignore all the omens until about 8:10 last night, when I left my usual spot in the wings of the stage and walked into the lower-lobby bar of the Kodak Theatre. The bar was crowded as Uma Thurman prepared to hand out the award for original screenplay. She read the nominees, mentioned "Crash," and the room erupted.

The ruckus got even louder when Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco won. That's when it finally clicked: this "Crash" thing might be a lot bigger than I thought.

About 15 minutes later, I was back on the side of the stage. Haggis was standing a few feet away with a dazed look on his face.

"I've got a (bleeping) Oscar in my hand!" he yelled.

My thoughts exactly.

Offline bnjmn3

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #57 on: Mar 07, 2006, 11:06 PM »
Paul Ryan on OutQ just said that Ernest Borgnine refused to see BBM, too. He's 89. So maybe many of the older voters behaved the same way.
We can't change it. We will have to stand it.

Offline rabjr1

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #58 on: Mar 07, 2006, 11:54 PM »
Paul Ryan on OutQ just said that Ernest Borgnine refused to see BBM, too. He's 89. So maybe many of the older voters behaved the same way.

                Ernest Borgnine is still alive? 

RAB aka Raoul The Really Rotten

Offline chameau

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Re: Post-Oscar news coverage
« Reply #59 on: Mar 08, 2006, 12:03 AM »
Paul Ryan on OutQ just said that Ernest Borgnine refused to see BBM, too. He's 89. So maybe many of the older voters behaved the same way.

                Ernest Borgnine is still alive? 



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