February 28, 2005
Clint's Big Night
A complete list of Oscar winners is available
here.
It was annoying to have that whitewash of Che Guevara shoved down my throat, and heartbreaking to see Carlos Santana participate in it by watching him sing a song from The Motorcycle Diaries. But I was gratified that an Academy full of people who are still (let's face it) a bit disgruntled at Bush's re-election decided not to punish Eastwood for his Republican leanings.
It's especially lovely to see Eastwood get this kind of recognition. I remember watching some prick journalist interview him before the awards show in 1992, and asking him "how many Oscars have you won?"
Clint, even and forthright: "Zero."
He's been written off a whole bunch of times, most of them before his three masterpieces, The Unforgiven, Mystic River, and Million Dollar Baby. And he's made a whole lot of crappy movies. (My favorite? Pink Cadillac.)
But he is still brilliant, and an American treasure.
Posted by: Attila at
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1
But Eastwood is an insider, no? And what was with Antonio Banderas singing that wretched song? There are many good Latin singers, but he's not one of them. But funny to see the vapid Hollywood glitterati displaying their complete ignorance of Che Guevara
Posted by: jeff at February 28, 2005 12:03 PM (d4VTs)
2
I didn't hear too much of it, since my husband and I were talking over it, 1) arguing over whether it was appropriate for them to sing a song in Spanish for the Awards show that was originally composed in Spanish [Attila the Hub: no; Attila Girl: yes] and 2) being appalled at the aggrandisement of a murderer.
Posted by: Attila Girl at February 28, 2005 12:56 PM (RjyQ5)
3
You know the very best part of the whole "Yay, Marxist terrorism" segment of the telecast?
The fact that "Iron Chef America" was playing just a few channels over on the Food Network.
Clicky clicky.
Posted by: Jeff Harrell at February 28, 2005 07:11 PM (UAuME)
4
Men and their remotes. But it was justified this time!
Posted by: Attila Girl at March 01, 2005 12:19 AM (RjyQ5)
5
Clint never got his fair share of recognition.
The Spagetti Westerns changed an entire genre of film. And no,
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is not the best of the three.
Pale Rider is a classic western - mysterious stranger rides in from the wilderness to set things right, and punish the evil doers. I think this this a much better movie than
Unforgiven
In the Line of Fire I thought was excellent. Comedy, action, suspense. What else do you want in an evenings entertainment?
Clive the orangatan was never a favorite of mine, but I am willing to bet that both of those movies made money. (If the first one died at the box office, they would never have made the 2nd.)
Posted by: Zendo Deb at March 02, 2005 08:43 AM (S417T)
6
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was nice as a piece of social history, showing the impact of the Civil War on the West. But one of the characters in it was a little flat. I think you're right:
A Few Dollars More was the best of the bunch. No cartoon characters in that one.
I adore
Pale Rider, but I'm not sure it makes the kind of statement
Unforgiven did, which is "we all have it coming," but we can all be redeemed (even if we have a "talent" for something as awful as killing).
The Unforgiven really has the feel, at times, of a classic tragedy. I do think it's high art.
I liked
In the Line of Fire just fine, but it was like
Absolute Power—a "entertaining movie," as you pointed out.
Lately Clint seems to be doing one "commercial" project, and then one "art" project. Ironically, though, the last few "commercial" ones haven't done as well as the "art" ones.
And, of course, as a Michael Connelly fan I was appalled at how many changes were made in
Blood Work. But even that is a good thing to rent on a Saturday night.
Posted by: Attila Girl at March 02, 2005 11:44 AM (IABNA)
7
I always liked Play Misty for Me
Posted by: dick at March 06, 2005 11:17 PM (svzEJ)
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February 02, 2005
Women in Film
Govindini Murty has an interesting
post up about the paucity of good roles for women in the current incarnation of Hollywood. For those who don't know, Murty and her husband, Jason Apuzzo, are the movers and shakers behind the Liberty Film Festival, last October's celebration of conservative and libertarian cinema. The event was an enormous success, and Murty/Apuzzo have now started a blog that will discuss film and "the industry" from a conservative point of view.
This issue of roles for female actors is one that Murty discussed at the flim festival itself, and I remember having mixed emotions about her central thesis: that there is something intrinsically degrading about a woman taking her clothes off, or having to utter four-letter words—probably due to the fact that I take my clothes off and utter four-letter words every day. Of course, Murty is a real conservative, and I'm a libertarian warblogger. (And in the wake of Bush's electoral victory and the elections in Iraq, we will see debate heat up between the two wings of the GOP that we represent; this is as it should be. No problem, as long as we are all respectful.)
The larger point, of course, is dead-on: good roles for women are becoming rare, particularly for an actress who doesn't care to engage in gratuitous sexual scenes. And the "interesting" roles are very often only so because they run completely perpendicular to the traditional values of this country: certainly there's a huge market out there for stories about women that are life-affirming, and that reflect the variety of human experience.
Would I call the current situation "misogynistic"? Probably not. But there's a huge market segment that's being underserved: it's possible to make stories about strong women that do not have to be ghetto-ized into "chick flick" status. To take an extreme example, Alien and Aliens were very successful in showing a strong woman character without fundamentally denying Ripley's femininity: in Aliens, her entire motivation for needing to destroy the mother-alien reflects her role as a surrogate mother to the child Newt and a desire to protect the families in the colony. She fights fiercely precisely because she is a woman.
No one wants to take women back to the June Cleaver model, but there is a wide world out there between the stereotypical notions we have of traditional women's passivity and the types of images we are getting now (outside of some very creative movies for children that we should be thankful for). There are stories to be told that a lot of people would like to see: some of them even live on the coasts!
Time to explore, boys and girls: there's money to be made.
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