Michael Bérubé - American Airspace

And the Oscar goes to . . .

Driving Miss Daisy through the Grand Canyon!

. . . oh, and we shouldn’t forget to mention, as an important precursor, the breakthough 1997 film Volcano, in which Los Angeles’s racial tensions are resolved when everyone is covered in volcanic ash. Magnolia gave us “the frogs are general over all LA,” Volcano gave us “the ashes are general over all LA,” Crash gives us “the snow is general over all LA.” There’s your glorious mosaic right there!

Well, I suppose it’s not an utter travesty. A travesty, yeah, but not an utter travesty. After all, we survived Titanic and Terms of Endearment and Forrest Gump and Dances with Wolves. We can survive this.

Actually, I didn’t survive Dances with Wolves. But you get the idea.

Posted by on 03/06 at 09:29 AM

I have no rational explanation for this, but I was crestfallen.

I really won’t hesitate to say that Brokeback Mountain will have a longer, more important role in American culture than Crash.

Posted by Tyler on 03/06 at 11:05 AM
I’ll see your Dances with Wolves and Titanic, and raise you a Braveheart and a Shakespeare in Love.

Actually, I liked Crash. I’d say it was a better Best Picture winner than Gladiator, for example, in addition to the others named above. And, to be honest, I thought it was better than Brokeback. (Now that we’ve had a gay love story on the screen, do you think we could have an interesting gay love story on the screen sometime soon?) I’m OK with Ang Lee getting Best Director on the general principle that many Oscars are given not for a particular film, but for a body of work, and Ang Lee is a great director.

Who were George Clooney and Rachel Weisz supporting in Syrianna and The Constant Gardener, respectively?

Posted by on 03/06 at 11:06 AM
C’mon ... Titanic wasn’t all bad. Michael, you of all people should have appreciated the intertextuality of the movie’s final scenes. When Rose throws the Heart of the Ocean into the drink we have no choice but to call to mind Maverick throwing Goose’s dog tags into the scrotumtightening sea. In the spirit of Crash, let’s call that a Signifyin’ moment.

Talk to me, Goose.

Posted by on 03/06 at 11:09 AM
When Rose throws the Heart of the Ocean into the drink we have no choice but to call to mind Maverick throwing Goose’s dog tags into the scrotumtightening sea.

Good catch! I completely forgot that allusion to Hot Shots! Part Deux.

As for what Clooney and Weisz were supporting: probably something anti-American.

Posted by Michael on 03/06 at 11:13 AM
Actually, I didn’t survive Dances with Wolves.

That sounds awkward. Please say more.

Posted by Tyrone Slothrop on 03/06 at 11:14 AM
"Well, I suppose it’s not an utter travesty.” What was a travesty about Crash winning? Which film would you have preferred?

Speaking of travesties: Poor Kevin O’Connell . Better luck next time; maybe 19 is a charm.

Posted by Christian Anderson on 03/06 at 11:28 AM
Which film would I have preferred? Any of the others, quite honestly. As for what’s wrong with Crash, I yield the floor to Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir:

Look, it’s not like “Crash” is a war crime or something. A lot of the acting is quite good, and the honorable intentions of this achingly earnest sermon ("Racial Pain: Los Angeles, America, the World?") are obvious. But it’s exactly the kind of portentous, piss-elegant middlebrow trash that many critics (and, unhappily, many viewers) see as Important Cinema. The only difficult part about identifying the preaching and speech-making in “Crash” is finding the places when it stops. . . . You could say that “Crash” is aware of the ironies and contradictions of race in America, but that’s literally the only thing it’s aware of. It’s grasping you by the lapels, like that uncle you generally avoid at family gatherings, and screaming into your face: “My God! The contradictions!”

Strangely, that was exactly what I said after seeing the movie. My God! The contradictions!

I wish someone had found a baby under a bush, though. That would have been a nice touch.

Posted by Michael on 03/06 at 11:46 AM
I mentioned this over at Roy’s after your excellent one-line Daisy-Canyon synopsis, but I think that the folks responsible for Crash may have also taken their cue from Sayles’ City of Hope. Just like I bet Christopher Guest had at least a passing familiarity with Errol Morris’ Gates of Heaven before coming up with Best in Show.

Or not.

Posted by on 03/06 at 12:07 PM
I’m also surprised at how disappointed I am in Crash winning Best Pic. I join those who say, “Yeah, it was good, but...”

I guess I’m most disappointed that Good Night, and Good Luck didn’t get one stinkin’ award. I know that Clooney didn’t have a shot in hell of getting best director or best pic, but cinematography and/or original screenplay should have gone to it. Clooney read it right away when he won best supporting: ok, this is the bone they’re throwing to me and GNGL isn’t going to win anything.

The great irony of the Brokeback fiasco is that in many ways it was the most classically Hollywood film nominated for anything, in terms of narrative structuring and composition.

No comments about Jon Stewart? I think he was just ok. He had a few good moments, but overall he was just too apologetic for being the host.

Posted by on 03/06 at 12:08 PM
I hate when I have to correct a post, especially after I previewed it, but I feel compelled: should read “classical Hollywood films.”

Posted by on 03/06 at 12:10 PM
Thanks for unearthing all those awful best pictures from their appropriately repessed spaces in my unconcious. I’ve been moving this Oscar season & only saw “Walk the Line”, which was okay, but no Best Picture. Reese Witherspoon was good enough that I no longer instantly think of her as being like the girl she played in “Election”, although her acceptance speech undid some of that good.

“Terms of Endearment” and “Dances with Wolves” are good reminders of what the Academy usually rewards---noble sufferers of diseases and people who confuse their need to feel noble about supporting oppressed people with the life cirucmstances of those people. For many people, Costner’s ass was the best part of “Dances with...” Perhaps that’s what really put it over. It couldn’t have been his self-congratulatory script or hammy performance. But “Terms..” was at least as bad. You knew what was coming at the end (death and the bathos that came with it); Jeff Daniels was completely unconvincing as a college professor (he was better cast in “Dumb & Dumber"), let alone a letcherous one; and both Shirley MacLaine & Jack Nicholson had done virtually the same characters better in other films.

Posted by on 03/06 at 12:12 PM
The problem with “Crash” is that it’s a two-hour thesis statement. It’s as baldly earnest as Mrs. Lovejoy on “The Simpsons” yelling, “Won’t someone please think of the children?” But Hollywood loves the easily digestible.

By the way, on a self-serving note: I’ve published a long scathing review of David Horowitz’s book on my blog (which for some reason I can’t access at the moment; other people using blogger are having the same trouble). The homepage is crazylittlethingcalledblog.blogspot.com. I’ve already gotten a comment from Art Eckstein, who occasionally writes for FrontPage Magazine, that glory of web aesthetics and intellect. Enjoy.

Posted by Crazy Little Thing on 03/06 at 12:36 PM
On paper, in a quick rehash over a beer, Crash is no great shakes. A lecture, at best. But I sense that we Bérubéians have certain things in common such as stage time in rock and roll bands. We know that a pretty-good band playing so-so material can suddenly make magic when various elements—attack, phat groove, everyone tuned to 440—come together.

Crash is like that. Its superficial, gooey-liberal intentions are secondary to its balls-to-the-wall execution. Hey, these guys were out in the streets, renegade-style, furiously mashing together a string of over-the top scenes into an operatic whole. It’s a real tightrope act and they bring it off. I like movies that are sustained dream states.

Not saying anyone else should be entertained by Crash. Just defending its brilliant execution.

Posted by dswift on 03/06 at 12:53 PM
no comments on the fact that “it just got a little easier out here for a pimp” ... ?

I think Jon Stewart was pretty entertaining, considering the last couple of shows…

Posted by on 03/06 at 12:59 PM
Yeah, CLT, I can’t get the link to load. If you go over to dangerousprofessors.com, (in addition to a number of Horowitz’s unhinged screeds) they’ve reproduced a segment of someone being critical of Horowitz, but it’s unattributed (of course). That isn’t from yours, is it? If it is, you should demand credit for your work…

By the way, for those of you feeling scrappy, the dangerous professors site actually allows comments. I’m sure they probably delete the critical ones at some point, but as of right now, a few critical comments by “Heywood Jablowmi” are still intact.

Also, since I’ve derailed completely into Horowitzia, the latest blog entry at frontpagemag details uses David Barash’s out of office reply to illustrate… umm… well, I’m not entirely sure. Anyway, it’s good for a giggle.

Posted by Marita on 03/06 at 01:19 PM
Stewart may have not been his most brilliant, but he definitely had moments that no host has had in years. Bob Altman’s long deserved Oscar, Ok honorary at 80, but still it was great as was his remark about his heart transplant. He has always been accused of snark but compared to the Altman Lite of Crash, he seems sublime. Hollywood still likes to feel great about itself and in a year that a group of quite interesting films, the most conventional film wins. Has anyone counted the awards thatGeisha won? Yes, it was not nominated for anything major, it got for the most part bad reviews, and tanked at the box office, but that is a pure Oscar winning film and would have been nominated for more awards and won more if it had done better, but it’s DP winning???? The listing of bad films winning and people left out “Chariots of Fire”? The interesting thing to do is not list the bad films but the good ones, “How Green was my Valley,” “All About Eve,” “The Apartment,” “ Godfather 2,” etc. They are the anomalies.

Posted by on 03/06 at 01:34 PM
Count me among the Crash critics. Haggis was so damn determined to make a candid, realistic movie about race that the movie ended up being anything but. The intention (exposing mainstream America to the racial tensions that still pervade society) may have been commendable, but the resultant movie was far too reliant on cliches and stereotypes, and effect was far too self-congratulatory. Not only that, but I would guess that most viewers could energetically pat themselves on the back for being less racist than the caricatures on screen (whereas a film true to the apparent intentions would have instigated more self-examination or, even better, more serious investigation of systemic injustices). By extension, the academy voters love to pat themselves on the back for their enlightenment.

While I appreciate the genuine societal importance of Brokeback Mountain, I’m not a huge fan of that film either. Lee has had some success applying bland formulas to topics/genres that are accessible, but for some reason haven’t yet reached a mainstream audience. Crouching Tiger was a boring and polished movie that was derivative of any number of Asian epics that hadn’t cracked the American audience. But, Lee was shrewd to recognize that America was ready for that sort of film, and adapted it to Hollywood expectations smoothly. His achievement in Brokeback is more significant, because the accessible, sympathetic portrayal of a homosexual romance for a “mainstream” American audience is extremely valuable. To that end, it’s a very good--and important--film. Viewed as a film apart from its societal impact (and while, at the risk of repeating myself, that is undoubtedly extremely important, most sensible Americans (which is likely not a majority) don’t really need a dramatic western to understand the basics of sexual relativity) it’s, like most of Lee’s films, boring and formulaic.

Ultimately, the Oscars haven’t been about cinematic “art” for years, so I don’t really expect genuinely innovative or complex films to win anything; that’s why I was rooting for Brokeback Mountain.

Posted by on 03/06 at 02:09 PM
Marita (and anyone else who tried to check),

Blogger has fixed the problem, so I’m back up. Once more into the link, dear friends.

http://crazylittlethingcalledblog.blogspot.com/

Posted by Crazy Little Thing on 03/06 at 02:12 PM
The Academy Awards has just had a bad 77-year-run of awarding the Best Picture Oscar; probability dictates that they’ll get better at it.

Posted by norbizness on 03/06 at 02:15 PM
Any list of undeserving Best Picture winners has got to include the turgid Out of Africa, which beat out the much better Prizzi’s Honor and Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1985.

Posted by on 03/06 at 02:27 PM
Crash gives us “the snow is general over all LA.”

Funny, I thought that was “Traffic” ...

Posted by on 03/06 at 04:06 PM
Dang, Crazy Little Thing, I was gonna link to you tomorrow. OK, you’re linked now! It’s a really thoughtful review. Thanks.

Ben, thanks for reminding me about Out of the English Patient. I’d forgotten that one.

And yeah, Stewart gets a B plus. Steve Elworth is right, though—he had a few very good moments. But what did you expect? A fully-transplanted Daily Show? That would have been weird and dissonant. Stewart’s apologeticism was pitch-perfect at times, as in his little bit about Hollywood as an atheistic pleasure dome, etc., culminating in “I don’t really have a joke here . . . I just thought you should know people are saying that.” Nice timing on that delivery, too.

Posted by Michael on 03/06 at 04:13 PM
david pretty much hit on what i was thinking. people could look at ‘crash’ and pat themselves on the back for not being as bad as all these horribly conflicted people. i’d narrow it further by saying that ‘crash’ won because hollywood voters looked at it, patted themselves on the back, and said ‘thank goodness we enlightened people in hollywood aren’t like that.’ the rest of america, on the other hand, needs a spanking, so let’s vote it in.

actual racism is unfilmable… ‘crash’ takes on the racism of a generation ago. racism today is different; it’s buried like some jungian architype that we all share and comes out in the most subtle of ways.

Posted by random on 03/06 at 04:16 PM
Explain the English Patient for me. When it okay to reward Nazi spies with our love?

Posted by Roxanne on 03/06 at 04:16 PM
Best moment in “Crash” was when the Ludacris character complains about racial stereotypes and then immediately acts them out with a carjacking. A lol moment in an OK film.

The biggest travesty was the “Penguins” beating out some really stellar documentaries like “Murderball” and “Street Fight.”

I thought Stewart was fine - completely in control of the built-in awkwardness of the whole hosting gig.

Posted by John I on 03/06 at 04:23 PM
One of the best kept secrets in the industry is the actual vote tallys, and how they are distributed between the various guilds and associations with regard to the categories. What few ever get to enjoy, and by that i mean as an outsider who has some inside access, is just how the voting outcomes derive a great deal of their margins from those who labor in the rolling credits that most fail to watch when we leave the theater.

Studios, and the even now more powerful production companies, encourage contractual loyalty during voting; so if you are one of the Academy members from lighting or set design or construction, and are contracted with one of these major units, you are likely to vote as you are advised, or as your paycheck dictates. It isn’t about the gross revenues or points (or DVD profits), but it is about money paid to those who do the work but don’t share in the percentages. It was worse in the old days, because the studios controlled so much, but even now, Lionsgate (the largest independent production corporation--they have the #1 boxoffice film this week) versus Focus Features (a unit of Universal/NBC-GE) battle for ever limited investment dollars and use their labor markets as powerful voting blocks. Knowing some of these folks as i do, and have for most of my life, they are not particularly interested in film as forms of entertainment. Actors (SAG), directors (DGA), writers (WGA), and producers yes of course they have power, but when you look at the Science and Tech awards, you realize that these people make up over half of the 6000 or so Academy members who vote, you begin to realize how really bogus the Oscars are.

Perhaps one of the real bright spots in the industry is how labor honoring it is, unions, associations, and guilds are respected and supported. Not so much in the rest of this country.

Posted by on 03/06 at 04:28 PM
Michael,

You can still link to me; when I emailed you, it bounced back saying you were out of town. And since I’ve gotten the odd defense of D.H. already (not D.H. Lawrence, by the way, author of The Professors in Love), I thought I’d go ahead and mention it.

CLT

Posted by Crazy Little Thing on 03/06 at 04:46 PM
The single most interesting thing I’ve read in years about the Oscars was what Spyder just contributed. Thanks.

Posted by on 03/06 at 04:58 PM
I was despondent because when I did my Oscars picks, I was trying to get as many wrong as possible. Overly confident in the Brokeback Mountain juggernaut, I went with Crash to win best picture.

Posted by JDC on 03/06 at 06:39 PM
I don’t remember anything after Salma Hayek came on stage. Did ‘Serenity’ win anything? Is Salma coming back? Sigh.

Posted by on 03/06 at 07:14 PM
Here’s an interesting exercise. Let’s look at the 1000 top films at theyshootpictures.com, a listing of hundreds of critics favorite movies list, and then look at what they thought was the best english-language movie of the year from 1927 to 2001. For clarification, movies that actually won best picture are in all capitals. Movies that were actually nominated for best picture are marked with an asterisk, while an exclamation mark notes that the best picture of that year was not nominated. If there are three exclamation marks, it means none of the movies nominated for best picture that year are on the top 1000 list. OK, here we go!

1927-28 Sunrise (!!!)
1928-29 Steamboat Bill Jr., (!!!)
1930 ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT
1931 City Lights (!!!)
1932 Trouble in Paradise (!!!)
1933 King Kong (!)
1934 IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
1935 The Bride of Frankenstein (!)
1936 Modern Times (!!!)
1937 Grand Illusion(*)/The Awful Truth (*) (!) Some explanation here. Grand Illusion is a foreign language film but it was nominated for best picture in 1938, one of a handful to get that honor. The Awful Truth is the highest ranking English language film. It was nominated, but did not win.
1938 Adventures of Robin Hood (*!)
1939 The Wizard of Oz (*)
1940 His Girl Friday
1941 Citizen Kane (*)
1942 The Magnificient Ambersons (*!)
1943 CASABLANCA
1944 Double Indemnity (*!)
1945 Brief Encounter (!!!)
1946 It’s a Wonderful Life (*)
1947 Out of the Past (!)
1948 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (*)
1949 The Third Man (!)
1950 Sunset Blvd (*)
1951 Strangers on a Train (!)
1952 Singin’ in the Rain (!)
1953 The Band Wagon
1954 Rear Window
1955 Night of the Hunter (!!!)
1956 The Searchers (!)
1957 Sweet Smell of Success
1958 Vertigo (!)
1959 Some like it Hot
1960 Pyscho
1961 WEST SIDE STORY
1962 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
1963 The Birds (!)
1964 Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb (*!)
1965 Repulsion
1966 Chimes at Midnight (!!!)
1967 Bonnie and Clyde (*!)
1968 2001: A Space Odyssey (!!!)
1969 The Wild Bunch
1970 Performance (!)
1971 A Clockwork Orange (*!)
1972 THE GODFATHER
1973 Mean Streets
1974 THE GODFATHER PART II
1975 Nashville (*)
1976 Taxi Driver (*)
1977 Star Wars (*)
1978 Days of Heaven
1979 Apocalypse Now (*!)
1980 Raging Bull (*!)
1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark (*!)
1982 Blade Runner
1983 The King of Comedy (!)
1984 Once upon a time in America
1985 Brazil (!)
1986 Blue Velvet
1987 Full Metal Jacket
1988 Dead Ringers
1989 Crimes and Misdemeanors (!!!)
1990 Goodfellas (*)
1991 Reservoir Dogs
1992 UNFORGIVEN
1993 SCHINDLER’S LIST
1994 Pulp Fiction (*)
1995 Casino (!!!)
1996 Breaking the Waves
1997 The Sweet Hereafter
1998 The Thin Red Line (*)
1999 Topsy-Turvy (!!!)
2000 None
2001 Mulholland Dr. (!)

Posted by on 03/06 at 07:58 PM
I’m not so sure it is really possible to know if a film is good or not at the time. Partisan’s list is really interesting, but I wonder if critics that year would have agreed with critics now, or the actual nominees, or neither.

One temporal issue I see is in what is considered “best”. Critics now give a great deal of weight to films that reflected the politics of the time - or better, lead them. But plenty of political films are just dated and clunky many years later. Who can tell at the time? Critics love “The Graduate”, but do they love the movie or the way it reminds them of a certain time? What about Bonnie and Clyde? Great movie, or great expression of alienation in the late sixties?

Posted by on 03/06 at 08:37 PM
By the way, dswift’s right about the virtues of playing fast. Comment 13. Just saying.

Posted by Michael on 03/06 at 09:26 PM
Roxanne said,
Explain the English Patient for me. When it okay to reward Nazi spies with our love?

The novel was different from the film. The novel focused more on the Asian charater (the guy who defuses bombs for the British army) who at the end of the film leaves his white lover & returns to his country to fight for it rather than fighting for the British. In the film the script downplayed the Asian anti-bomb guy who was the novel’s hero and made the Hungarian/Nazi spi the hero. Gosh, he’s a white man, so the white filmmakers made him a hero. Double gosh, he only becomes a Nazi spy out of love. Actually, the English Patient was a stupid film but it had pretty pictures of the desert to look at and it was supposed “literary” while destroyed the novel it was based on. Well, that’s the movies.

Julia

Posted by on 03/06 at 10:11 PM
I think the Best Supporting for George Clooney was his Tootsie Oscar™, like the one they gave Jessica Lange because she didn’t get it for Frances and should have.

Good Night is a perfect cable/DVD film. It isn’t going to get asses into theaters. Crash might.

Posted by julia on 03/06 at 10:36 PM
Good Night is a perfect cable/DVD film. It isn’t going to get asses into theaters. Crash might.

And finally, someone touches on the True Theme of this year’s Academy Awards: don’t watch films at home!

Posted by Michael on 03/06 at 10:46 PM
The results are completely unsurprising--what else would the Academy like more than a contrived after-school special about R-A-C-E?

Posted by e. fiction on 03/07 at 12:22 AM
I dunno, what about reaching out to the young by glorifying men who keep themselves in consumer goods by treating women like disposable commodities?

I think hollywood has found its link to the youth culture.

Posted by julia on 03/07 at 12:55 AM
don’t watch films at home!

Which means it takes some serious guts when you try to redeem Titanic by closing your eyes and yelling “Marco!".

Posted by on 03/07 at 01:15 AM
A dear friend of mine described Crash, which I have not seen, thusly:

“Like the high school valedictorian wrote it and now will be surprised to find that no one is impressed by the one acts he earnestly churns out at college. Except, apparently, the Academy is impressed, and most of the U.S.! Gross.”

Posted by bitchphd on 03/07 at 02:03 AM
> Which means it takes some serious guts when you try to redeem Titanic by closing your eyes and yelling “Marco!”.

OK, now *that’s* funny.

Posted by random on 03/07 at 02:45 AM
Thanks to Partisan for the list. We see that out of about 75 films a full 5 of them were made by Alfred Hitchcock. Hitch, of course, never won as best director or for best film award (Rebecca won but David O. Selznick got the award as producer). So, in 1968, he accepted his honorary Oscar with the shortest acceptance speech in Oscar history: “Thank you.” Every time I see the clip I can’t help but think he’s really saying, “Fuck you.”

On another note, perhaps the Academy should divide the best film category into two parts: 1) Movies with a Message, and 2) Movies that Entertain. All of this year’s best films certainly fit into category 1 (with Good Night, and Good Luck being the most effective in this category). If there were a Category #2 I would give the Oscar to Woody Allen’s Match Point, which had all the unrequited love of Brokeback and all the suspense of a Hitchcock thriller.

Posted by Christian Anderson on 03/07 at 07:23 AM
Actually, Partisan, “Sunrise,” F.W. Murnau’s 1927 classic, DID win best picture. However, back then there were two best picture categories. One was called “Best Picture, Unique and Original Production,” which is what “Sunrise” got, and the other was “Best Picture, Production,” which in 1927 went to a film called “Wings.” Basically, it’s like having a separate award for independent or (a modern example) foreign film. (Actually, the foreign film category today is pretty telling in terms of what Hollywood thinks of the world. I would complain more about reducing world cinema to five films (one of which always seems to be about Nazis), but I don’t feel that eliminating the foreign film category is going to make more Americans watch them.)

*sigh* BTW, “Crash” sucks.

Posted by on 03/07 at 09:37 AM
The toy stuffed penguins were cool.

Posted by on 03/07 at 09:24 PM
With regard to the comment i made above: today in the Hollywood Reporter, the following analyses were presented by an “insider source.”

What some insiders are saying privately is that many Academy members felt so threatened by “Brokeback’s” gay cowboy romance they couldn’t bring themselves to view it even on DVD. As a result, many votes reportedly were cast much later in the game than is usually the case—by which time “Crash” was being perceived as a worthy alternative. There also may have been fewer votes to count if reports are true that as many as 20% of Academy voters didn’t send in their ballots.

If that’s what happened—the public will never know, of course, since the Academy never reveals the voting results—it becomes easier to understand how “Brokeback” got trumped by “Crash.” With 6,188 voting members of the Academy, if 20% of them abstained from voting that would remove 1,238 votes from the mix and leave just 4,950 to determine the outcome. In a race where every vote typically counts, that alone could dramatically alter the results.

Moreover, insiders are also pointing to a little known piece of Oscar trivia: not since 1980’s “Ordinary People” has a film won the best picture Oscar without also having had a nomination for best film editing. “Brokeback” wasn’t a film editing nominee this year, while “Crash” film editor Hughes Winborne took home the Oscar. Insiders claim that film editors don’t vote for best picture nominees that aren’t also best film editing nominees. There are 239 members of the Academy’s Film Editors branch. If their votes are added to the 1,238 that quite possibly weren’t cast at all, that’s a total of 1,477 votes—nearly 24% of the total Academy membership—that didn’t go to “Brokeback.”

Actors, meanwhile, make up the Academy’s biggest branch. There are 1,359 actors who vote and they represent nearly 22% of the Academy’s membership. It’s a safe bet that they preferred “Crash” to “Brokeback” since the Screen Actors Guild in late January gave “Crash” its Best Ensemble Cast award, its equivalent of a best picture honour. It was the only important vote that “Brokeback” missed out on, but it sent a signal that the movie wasn’t resonating with actors.

“Crash” had an additional advantage with SAG and other union members because it was shot in the Los Angeles area. Unlike “Brokeback,” which filmed in Canada, “Crash” provided jobs for actors and other L.A. based workers, who are increasingly frustrated by “runaway” productions that travel to far-flung locations where cheaper costs and tax deals are increasingly helping producers stretch their budgets.

Posted by on 03/08 at 12:01 PM
Warning: Volcano SPOILERS ahead.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for pointing out the importance of Volcano as a precursor to Crash! Much more so, I think, than Short Cuts and Magnolia, though those vastly superior antecedents also bear mention. But what’s wonderful about Volcano is that it has both a much more cogent argument about race in Los Angeles AND Tommy Lee Jones kicking the ASS off a volcano</i>.

Now, Michael, you probably remember Volcano’s argument about race as the treacly end bit where once everyone is covered in volcanic ash, they all look the same. Well yes, that’s there, and hey, outta the mouths of babes! but the setup for that is actually a much more politicized account of spatialized segregation in Los Angeles than that offered by Crash.

You see, the heavy in Volcano (besides the volcano) is the developer who opposes the extension of the subway to the Red Line because it will bring poor brown people near his fancy condo tower. That’s a real conversation that happened in Los Angeles and helped thwart a cross-town subway. L.A. is just now moving past it. Compare that to Crash’s account of spatial segregation, which is the bit how in order to meet people who look different, you need to bend their fender. (Compare also to the Cronenberg ‘Crash’, which also recommends auto accidents as a good way to get to know people better.) Anyway, while critics pointed out that people mostly have their prejudices confirmed in Crash, Volcano provides a much better ending, because the racist developer gets his beautiful condo tower BLOWN UP to stop the volcano—in essence, Tommy Lee Jones kicks his ass as a byproduct of kicking the ass off the volcano. And the racist developer’s girlfriend leaves him for being a racist, which is the kind of comeuppance that you should have in a good liberal movie.

Anyway, thanks for inviting my own personal hobbyhorse into the Legitimate Blogosphere.

Posted by P. Evergreen on 03/09 at 05:11 PM
Glad to see that Thomas Elrod made the point I was going to make about Sunrise’s academy award.

But why the snark at Wings, which is a flawed movie with some rather wonderful stuff in it, not all of it from Clara Bow. Of course I’ve had the good fortune to see it on a wide screen with live music.

Posted by on 03/10 at 11:28 PM

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