Monday, March 06, 2006

a lash of a different kind

Are we seeing the first signs of a Crash-lash? (And have I now taken this pun past clever into annoying?) And if so, is it possible that none of the Best Picture nominees were universal enough to avoid this kind of reaction? Brokeback had so much hype that it seemed preordained, arguably fueling a pre-emptive backlash that cost it the Oscar. But now that Crash is in the spotlight, it's taking shots too.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/blog/index?name=simmons&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab4pos1

The always witty Bill Simmons of ESPN.com contributes his Oscar notes, including this gem:
Part of me still thinks Jack Nicholson saw "Brokeback Mountain" on the winner card, took a deep breath, said to himself "Screw it, I hated that movie," called an audible and said, "And the Oscar goes to ... Crash!"
http://carpetbagger.nytimes.com/

The New York Times's David Carr writes in his CarpetBagger blog that he predicted Crash would win, because all of the Academy voters he spoke to thought Brokeback would win but voted for a different film. Even so, he writes that he...
...was as stunned as anyone else. How could so many people be so wrong? And the answer is the same as always in Hollywood: Nobody knows anything, especially about the Oscars.
Read down, and you'll find lots of interesting stuff in Carr's blog, including this, a transcript of the Clooney quote I cited in my previous entry.
You know, we are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while. I think it’s probably a good thing. We’re the ones who talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn’t really popular. And we, you know, we bring up subjects. This Academy, this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I’m proud to be a part of this Academy, proud to be part of this community, and proud to be out of touch.
Yet more from Carr, about what he spotted at an after party:
A maker of Serious Films From New York bemoaning the choice of “Crash”: “This is just LA’s way of reassuring itself that it’s not as shallow as it really is.”
I'd love to know who said that. Scorcese? Spike?

Meanwhile over on Slate.com, in a dialogue between film critics, Bryan Curtis uncorks this (citing another critic):
I'm going to defer to Scott Foundas, the film critic at LA Weekly, who summed up Crash in Slate last year: "Welcome to the best movie of the year for people who like to say, 'A lot of my best friends are black.' "
Yup, that about sums it up.

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