Well, not really. Instead, we invited three of our favorite film critics and pop culture queens to talk about the Academy Awards: will Kathryn Bigelow break the Best Director glass ceiling? Is Sandra Bullock going to take home a statuette? Was Avatar all that it was cracked up to be? And why was that Vanity Fair Hollywood issue cover so darn white?
Courtney Young, blogger and author of From Madea To Michelle, Maryann Johanson, the FlickFilosopher, and Alison Willmore of the IFC's Indie Eye blog join us in studio to talk about all that and more.
Tarantino is a foreign director?
By Christoph on March 5th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
I am truly disappointed that this panel was not able to fully address the race issues re: the best picture nominees. The glass ceiling issue has direct pertinence to the best director award, but racism is an issue that has, does, and will continue to pervade the movie industry/hollywood. This is a type of institutionalized and deep-seeded-inherent racism, which is usually grazed over by the less race-conscious viewer. Take The Blind Side, and it’s overt stereotyping of black people; the success of Precious and its terrorizing portrayal of the black matriarch, etc. etc. Each movie ignores the political and social realities of race relations — an all TOO familiar recipe for blockbuster success.
By Sandra on March 6th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
To see the panel’s discussion after the Oscars was interesting, however I have to admit to some bewilderment over your lack of in-depth discussion of the politics, especially with regard to Hurt Locker vs Avatar. I would like someone to have mentioned that Avatar was an allegory for our times about empire and conquest (racism is a subset issue there), with a message as to the spiritual sickness at the core of societies such as ours; to say it was “trite” is to mistake sophistication for truth. While the Hurt Locker was gritty and real, it took no moral stance about the war in Iraq, which in itself —not to— is a kind of obscenity, to my mind. Have we already forgotten Howard Zinn—”You can’t be neutral on a moving train”? Sure Hurt Locker tells a truth, but it is not the wider truth, which Avatar gave us.
By Laurie on March 9th, 2010 at 10:56 am
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By larry malu on March 9th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
I’m addressing this directly to you Ms Flanders ….I regularly visit your site and truly consider it a great site for alternative views.The interview with Daniel Ellsberg is an example of the high standards.However this panel you have assembled for discussion on the Oscars happens to be one of your low points.
While discussing Bigelow’s “Hurt Locker” one of the panelists said that Bigelow deserved the Oscar and if and when she did win it that some people would say Bigelow was given an Oscar as it was politically correct to give it to a woman and that “Hurt Locker” truly deserved an award based on Bigelow’s input and on the films merits.I honestly feel that the feminism was unwarranted and that any award should be given purely on the merits of the work.
So does Bigelow merit an Oscar based on what she has managed to make?
Many veterans of Iraq tours have mentioned in their reviews of “Hurt Locker” that the film is not an accurate depiction of facts especially the military.
One reviewer writes..”..Whoever wrote, directed, and/or produced this movie should be ashamed of themselves. There are so many major errors that I can’t address them in this short review. As a soldier who daily works with Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), I can say that they have absolutely no concept of what EOD or any other military units actually do. They didn’t bother to research either. This movie presents support units as ground-pounding heroes and elite units as incompetent mercenaries. The plot was all over the place. Full of propaganda and very misguided stereotypes. …”
Another re affirms the above…”I’m an Iraq war vet, and i walked out of this film. .First of all, all of the military stuff in this film was inaccurate I.E. 1. humvee on patrol in a city that finds an ied and hides behind a wall waiting for e.o.d. who comes in 1 humvee to dismantle the bomb. In Iraq you don’t leave the wire with less than 4 guntrucks PERIOD! Secondly the black e-5 (sgt) was telling the e-7 (sergeant first class) what to do that doesn’t happen ever. That sgt would have been dropped down in rank for disrespect. Third, no one was wearing a flag on their right shoulder except for the LTC (the psychiatrist) who was wearing a flag on both shoulders. 4th, the scene where they are taking sniper fire from the building and the British special forces couldn’t take them out but the eod guys could was ridiculous eod DOES NOT train to be snipers special forces do. …”
another writes..”I’m a huge fan of war movies, and, as a Vietnam combat vet, have some experience with the technical details. I worked with the bomb guys more than once and have nothing but respect for them. Other vets, and Iraq vets in particular, have summarized the inaccuracies in this movie very well. Poetic license is one thing, but this movie is a complete fantasy, and fails badly because of it. No bomb disposal unit, or any unit, would ever have tolerated this rogue operator for more than 5 minutes. Military units prize conformity and discipline for a reason;it saves lives. The opening scene particularly annoyed me. The guy with the cell phone would have been shot immediately. Yelling, “Stop dialing” is not an effective deterrent. It got worse from there. The scenes with the sniper were particularly egregious. As others have noted, your average EOD guy doesn’t know jack about being a sniper, and to think any Arab sniper is that good really stretches the imagination. Kidnapping an Arab businessman for some form of personal revenge just wouldn’t happen. Somebody might shoot him, but this kind of risk-taking is limited to the movies. I could go on, but, as I said, others have pointed these things out in detail. This is not a good movie, and if it wins any awards at all, it’s a further reflection of why “La La land” is so named….”
Factual errors are one thing…. more importantly the film doesn’t explain why American soldiers are being shot at by Iraqis.It doesn’t explain why Americans are in Iraq.It continues in the same vein as “our brave soldiers fighting for Democracy in faraway lands” as many other propaganda films before it.If I were an Iraqi fighting an occupying force which the American Army really is I would be giving them hell.So where is their view point?American would be shooting Iraqis if they invaded America and occupied them.What is this nonsense about brave tough soldiers who also show their softer sides?After bombing them with cluster bombs,destroying their infrastructure,killing and maiming their children and after the tortures at Abu Ghraib why this show about being benovelent policemen?
What about other issues?How about Blackwater’s role in training the actors for their roles.?
Your own Uncle Alexander Cockburn has this to say on his website which lives upto its name of being the best political newsletter on America….” I haven’t seen The Hurt Locker and don’t plan to, having endured more than one bomb-disposal films in my movie-going career. Also, the circumstances of the movie’s filming seemed distasteful, with scenes shot in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan. “We had these Blackwater guys that were working with us in the Middle East and they taught us like tactical maneuvers and stuff – how to just basically position yourself and move with a gun,” Hurt Locker actor Anthony Mackie told the New York Times’ Melena Ryzik. “We were shooting in Palestinian refugee camps. We were shooting in some pretty hard places. It wasn’t like we were without enemies. There were people there looking at us, ‘cuz we were three guys in American military suits runnin’ around with guns. It was nothing easy about it. It was always a compromising situation.”
Jeremy Scahill writes an item in The Nation about Blackwater’s role, as disclosed by Ryzik and the author of The Hurt Locker’s screenplay, Mark Boal, made haste to contact him to deny that Blackwater had ever been hired in any capacity. Boal, apparently, supervised all such hiring of military and security consultants. Scahill asked him about comments made by the film’s director, Kathryn Bigelow, in other interviews, mentioning the presence of Blackwater personnel on set, including as technical advisers. “It’s possible,” Boal conceded, “that at some point somebody on set worked for Blackwater, but we never hired Blackwater.”
The New York Times writer Melena Ryzik describes how Mackie showed her how the Blackwater men trained him to hold his weapon. “If you’re a trained killer,” Mackie told Ryzik, “you’re very precise.” This is Blackwater-precision, as displayed by the panic-stricken contractors, when they mowed down 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad in 2007. But then, as Obama quoted in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech from his favorite intellectual and unappetizing apologist for Empire, Reinhold Niebuhr, “To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”
The awarding of the Oscar to Bigelow tests the limits of reason.Judging purely by the quality of the work on view one should conclude that Bigelow was given the Oscar for furthering the lie that America’s imperialist adventures abroad are essentially imbued with benevolence.
By AM on March 13th, 2010 at 11:37 am