If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
In my heart-of-hearts, I wanted to boycott this year's Oscar ceremony, but even if I had -- even if we all had -- that would have been too little, too late.
It's a bit absurd to hire Seth MacFarlane, watch Seth MacFarlane, and then be offended because he's, well, being Seth MacFarlane.
The orchestra hit some of the most recognizable notes in film history, the opening theme from Goldfinger, shafts of gold light spread across the stage and a shadow rose from the floor that turned out to be Dame Shirley Bassey, the song's originator and, forever, its owner.
Sunday evening was a fantastic night if you're a fan of Argo, Seth MacFarlane, James Bond or movie musicals. But it was an equally great night if you're a fan of movie math.
The Onion's joke only works because Quvenzhané Wallis is 100 percent blameless; she is the embodiment of innocence. She's the very last person you'd ever call that, and that's what powers the joke.
The ones who were less outraged -- and, in some cases, thought the tweet funny -- became driven to not only defend The Onion and the general thesis of satire and parody , but to turn tables to attack, sometimes quite viciously, those who were offended by it.
This is the movie season to consider the CIA as a benign force, occasionally stumbling but in the end, driven by good intentions. The example of Iran, where the Argo caper is set, is instructive of the absurdity of that view.
The Oscars may have been tasteless, but the twits who reviewed the Oscars were almost uniformly without taste. The proper response to Seth MacFarlane -- and this may be the professional response we in fact encountered -- is envy.
Almost as surprising as The Onion tweet? The fact that the leading media columnist in America apparently doesn't understand how privilege works.
Entertain yourself with this year's Oscar winners and nominees, but remember that however much they seem normal to celebrate the rescue of hostages from Tehran, or the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, in the real world it wasn't carried out by people half as good looking.
Unlike most of our peers, some of us don't really care about the red-carpet pageantry, or even about the nominees. We care more about all the stuff they get for free.
In a room full of stars, at a time in which the United States and Israel contemplated possible military strikes, crippling sanctions and Iran's nuclear ambitions, an Iranian man created a counter-narrative as Hollywood awarded him a Golden Globe, which he received from Madonna on stage.
Perhaps you were asleep. Or drowsy. Or buzzed from a drinking game. Perhaps you were focused on the dress. You were comparing it to all of the evenin...
Sunday night's Oscars telecast proved one thing: perhaps women should be running the show -- figuratively and otherwise.
It's very nice that Oscars made a special tribute to movie musicals. The only problem is that not a single one of the musicals honored (Chicago, Dreamgirls, Les Miz) was ever eligible for Oscar's own category of "Best Original Musical."
Here is the sad truth -- I wanted to know, in aggregate, how many people interact with the Oscars. I searched and searched some more, and the only information I could find on audience size was from Nielsen.
The 84th Academy Awards aired on ABC Feb. 26.
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