Ok, I know lisa b. already posted about this, but at least I'm posting! How is it possible that Crash won best picture? Was any character in that movie even remotely believable? Hi, I'm Matt Dillon and I'm the white bigot who despite my racist ideology can still be moved by human suffering. An entire movie of mouthpiece performance just doesn't work for me. I think the movie won because we acknowledge that it might benefit our culture to talk about race, to speak frankly about issues that we can pretend don't exist. But there's a difference between
talking about race and talking about race with some level of integrity and believability. And then there's the improbability of the plot connections. Most of them I was willing to accept, but the plot line involving Thandie Newton and Terrance Howard strained believability: a couple gets assaulted by white police officers, then the wife gets in a major car accident (which husband seems totally unaware of) and gets rescued by white police officer A, then husband gets carjacked and gets rescued (essentially) by white officer B, who then later kills one of the carjackers. Come on. I had a disagreement about this with film prof. C who told me that I needed to be a little flexible, that this was a movie, not reality. But when the elements of a plot are entirely manipulated in order to assert an argument about race, the thing becomes polemical, not cinematic.
I am delighted, though, that the screenplay for Brokeback won. I was amazed by how well the screenplay matched the pacing of Proulx's story, an impressive feat for a short story, and a spare one at that.
My favorite John Stewart lines of the evening:
Walk the Line is
Ray with white people.
It just got a little easier out here for a pimp.
I hope Johnny sticks with the Daily Show, though. I'm just not sure the Oscars is the right millieu for him.
