Oscars

Wow, i think this is a new personal low. The only award winning movie i saw last year was Wallace and Gromit. And it's not like i stayed home every night either. Crash certainly sounds like the kind of movie i should have seen, just never got around to. I thought Woody Allen's Match Point deserved more love than it got also.

Tom Shales sucks up to the DC establishment in his review of the telecast. I guess he resented having to stay up past his bedtime to watch the whole thing.

And maybe, not having seen either Crash or Brokeback Mountain, i'm completely unqualifed to say this. But Kenneth Turan in the LA Times seems to be engaging in a bit of projection.

I don't care how much trouble "Crash" had getting financing or getting people on board, the reality of this film, the reason it won the best picture Oscar, is that it is, at its core, a standard Hollywood movie, as manipulative and unrealistic as the day is long. And something more.

For "Crash's" biggest asset is its ability to give people a carload of those standard Hollywood satisfactions but make them think they are seeing something groundbreaking and daring. It is, in some ways, a feel-good film about racism, a film you could see and feel like a better person, a film that could make you believe that you had done your moral duty and examined your soul when in fact you were just getting your buttons pushed and your preconceptions reconfirmed.

So for people who were discomfited by "Brokeback Mountain" but wanted to be able to look themselves in the mirror and feel like they were good, productive liberals, "Crash" provided the perfect safe harbor. They could vote for it in good conscience, vote for it and feel they had made a progressive move, vote for it and not feel that there was any stain on their liberal credentials for shunning what "Brokeback" had to offer. And that's exactly what they did.

Everyone i know who's seen Brokeback has said exactly the same thing - just substitute homosexuality for racism. It's a standard Hollywood love triangle, except that two of the points are facing in the same direction. Maybe people really thought Crash was the better picture. Maybe it wasn't about teh gay and liberal guilt.