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Oscar nominations
Announced this morning. They just announced them, and put them in the news feed. No snazzy tv show, no big theatre, no tuxes and fancy dresses, no red carpet, no Billy Crystal or whoever telling jokes, they just announced them, as they do every year, even though I find the nominee list far more interesting and meaningful than the final winners.
I made a point of renting The Social Network as soon as possible after the DVD release for the same reason that I bothered to go to see True Grit and The King's Speech in the theatres: in a bid to increase the number of movies likely to be nominated for major Oscars that I'd seen before the nominations came out. Last year, and the year before, I'd only seen 3 at that point.
And this year: 3. The above 3. Run as fast as you can, you'll still be in the same place.
However, we are better off in at least one respect. In the previous two years, I found only two of the three films to be good as films. This year they were all well-made and enjoyable, on that level, to watch. The problems were different. The Social Network is about a villain who wins the game, which could be great if only the story were fiction. Unfortunately it's all too true. Better that, though, I suppose, than a whitewashing of history. I've previously alluded to to the historical howlers in The King's Speech but I tried not to go on and on whinging about it. No, I'll leave that to Christopher Hitchens, who does it better than I could. I'd quibble with some of his emphases (Edward VIII wasn't that pro-Nazi) and query one statement (I've never read that Edward's equerry Fruity Metcalfe was actually a Blackshirt, and it sounds unlikely to me, as Edward actually repudiated Fascist support in the abdication crisis), but every other shocking fact Hitch throws out is absolutely true, including the existence of the notion in Churchill's mind, that Hitler had only one rival as a noxious, vile, existential threat to the British Empire: Gandhi.
I made a point of renting The Social Network as soon as possible after the DVD release for the same reason that I bothered to go to see True Grit and The King's Speech in the theatres: in a bid to increase the number of movies likely to be nominated for major Oscars that I'd seen before the nominations came out. Last year, and the year before, I'd only seen 3 at that point.
And this year: 3. The above 3. Run as fast as you can, you'll still be in the same place.
However, we are better off in at least one respect. In the previous two years, I found only two of the three films to be good as films. This year they were all well-made and enjoyable, on that level, to watch. The problems were different. The Social Network is about a villain who wins the game, which could be great if only the story were fiction. Unfortunately it's all too true. Better that, though, I suppose, than a whitewashing of history. I've previously alluded to to the historical howlers in The King's Speech but I tried not to go on and on whinging about it. No, I'll leave that to Christopher Hitchens, who does it better than I could. I'd quibble with some of his emphases (Edward VIII wasn't that pro-Nazi) and query one statement (I've never read that Edward's equerry Fruity Metcalfe was actually a Blackshirt, and it sounds unlikely to me, as Edward actually repudiated Fascist support in the abdication crisis), but every other shocking fact Hitch throws out is absolutely true, including the existence of the notion in Churchill's mind, that Hitler had only one rival as a noxious, vile, existential threat to the British Empire: Gandhi.
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