Link Dump
Odds and ends before we head off to New Orleans for a wedding. The Sopranos, Ebert on Unknown White Male, and the beauty of a short baseball season.
Tagged: Links, Television
Culture Snob
Last Words on Crash
Final thoughts on Crash at the Oscars.
Tagged: Academy Awards, Crash, Links, Oscars
Family Matters
Junebug has an affection for empty physical space, silence, and the way sound travels through a house at night. The result is a typically indie meet-the-parents family drama infused with eerie, unacknowledged loneliness. Plus: a dully competent Proof.
Tagged: Amy Adams, David Auburn, John Madden, Junebug, Phil Morrison, Proof, Reviews
Neko Notes
With the release of a new album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, out this week, it’s time to catch up with Culture Snob favorite Neko Case.
Assessing Oscar and Hollywood
The hand-wringing going on right now about the state of Hollywood and the Oscars is a bizarre mix of long-overdue self-awareness and stubborn self-delusion. Observers have noted with much shock that people aren’t going to movies that much and that none of the Oscar nominees is a genuinely popular movie. But these are long-standing trends.
Tagged: Academy Awards, Oscars
In Praise of Hate
What the hell is happening with the delayed polarization that Crash has engendered? Nobody got terribly worked up about Paul Haggis’ sincere, overstuffed race-relations drama when it was released in April. But as the buzz started building that Crash might (gasp!) win the Best Picture Oscar, indignation showed its ugly face.
Tagged: Academy Awards, Crash, Oscars, Paul Haggis
When Good Isn’t Good Enough
If the co-directors of the documentary Paradise Lost had made a more forceful movie – one that ripped apart this case they clearly think is so flimsy – they might have actually freed the accused. Instead, they crafted a portrait of a community with its innards exposed. It seems obvious enough that when it’s a matter of freedom, decades in prison, and death, one shouldn’t fuck around, but they do.
If Critics Were King-Makers
If movie critics chose Oscar nominations, then, here are two possibilities of what they might look like.
Tagged: Academy Awards, Critics, Oscars
Resistance Is Futile
I fought Millions for as long as I could. But in the end, it won. It’s a charming little movie that casts magical realism as the mind of a child. Plus: an easy dismissal of Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
