...inglourious basterds?the l.a. times' tom o'neill:
Breaking with recent tradition, a weighted ballot will be used to pick the winner this year. Thus, pundits must size up this race in new ways. I don't think "Basterds" would win under the old system, but I think it's the fave under this new one that offers 10 alternatives, thus widely splitting votes, giving the edge to the film with the most consensus support.avatar? sci-fi rarely wins, says o'niell. the hurt locker? no stars. precious? too gritty. up in the air? not enough gravitas. (last year o'neill correctly predicted 21 of the 24 oscar races.)
that leaves tarrantino, pitt, and a bunch of nazi-killing basterds to take home gold on oscar night.
I think it'll go to Precious, to make the Academy feel good about itself.
ReplyDeleteI disagree about the gravitas of Up in the Air. I think it touches something deeper than most North Americans want to admit - that we've constructed a culture of isolation and perpetual adolescence in which relationships are only as important as they are convenient and in which the only truly happy people either opt out of the dominant culture or aren't the least bit self-critical or reflective. We've built our national identity around striving without achieving (because if you achieved then you wouldn't need to buy anything) and have warped the frontiersman myth into a rootless non-existence of nowhere landscapes and homogeneous experiences.
Or maybe I'm just a chronically depressed pessimist.
"Basterds" was maybe a "C". two worthy scenes in the entire movie, including the opening scene. the movie's "a Jew's wet dream". no offense...a line used by a prominent movie critic, as well as myself (before i found out that said critic beat me to the punch). sorry, but if you're Jewish and you don't believe that Jews around the world wouldn't relish in rewriting history the way Tarantino did, then you're not Jewish.
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