Today's Los Angeles Times Calendar section contains a most enlightening, amusing, and doubtless accurate summary of the Oscar Nominations and their place in the history of Oscar-giving, at least in recent times. They don't mention that Garbo never got one. She more than just ornamented Grand Hotel (1932) which won Best Picture. I've wondered if she quit acting at age 37 because she was simply under-appreciated? She died quite old, loved, and very rich. May God bless her.
La Times points out the most amusing fact that the (Oscar Winning?) documentary March Of The Penguins earned more money than today's Nominated Feature movies combined. Well of course! The love making, the ceremonious love making of the penguins shames the current male to male gropings which have Hollywood giddy, ha ha ha ha. In other words the public overall doesn't give a damn about these Nominees so the ratings for this year's Oscar telecast will be thin to invisible.
Wasn't there a now-forgotten shibboleth oft quoted in Hollywood: "If you want to send a message call Western Union"? (for the very young: in other words a telegram.) LA Times calls the Nominated movies 2005 "Message movies." I suppose the 'message' of Brokeback Mountain is that bad grammar is cute and gays deserve our respect and admiration 'cause they have feelings too. In passing, let me note that women staffers on the Times have managed to insert a small piece about the neglect of women in the screenplays of Nominated movies this time 'round.
I've always gone to the movies to drool over the acting of the actresses, beginning with Garbo, then later Liv Ullman (sigh, groan, weep) Maria Schell, Liz Taylor, Ingrid Bergman, Judy Holliday (Wow!) When my present wife watched Casablanca for the first time, as an adult, she gasped when Ingrid Bergman made her first entrance, to Rick's. So, of course women enjoy good actresses too. Movies can give women the courage to be bold, feeling, adventurous, strong. Even the elementary instruction that men will move mountains to get the woman of their dreams. (I didn't move mountains, but I did travel 28,000 miles to nail it down. The other day she said, "I only got married to get away from my mother." Sure honey! Ha ha ha ha ha. Women sometimes like to remind their man to not be too cocksure.
Okay, so the Times regrets Hollywood's neglect of women viewers through peddling movies for men, not women. Big mistake. Hollywood has totally forgotten that other shibboleth (actually the product of the pen of a good writer, (Paddy Chayevsky) the guy who wrote The Goddess, a movie vehicle for stage actress Kim Stanley, movie leading ladies should have, "a quality of availability." Today's women stars are not 'available' because they were chosen by belligerent, gay, male Hollywood. Now it's balls-to-the-wall, pay up time. In other words there is now in place in Hollywood a new breed of gay male executive: the militantly gay male. The earlier breed of gay male director/executive fully understood what hetero males responded to. It isn't, never has been, such technicians as Nichole Kidman, brilliant actress but cold as ice onscreen, which is why she was so perfect as (a screen version of) Virginia Woolf.
In short, 'available' women will return to the screen after a few more shakeups in Hollywood, where turning the world gay will be found to not make money. Women, Hollywood, are definitely not interested in 40 year old male virgins. Count on it. That's what gay men are interested in. Boxoffice: the great leveller.
Barry
3 comments:
Thank you for mentioning Judy Holliday. She was one of my favorites, too, and I'd almost forgotten her. She was brilliant, in ALL senses of the word.
~~Silk
that is so true about the box office being the great leveller. My pastor sat one time next to a Hollywood producer on a flight. (He didn't say which producer so I have no idea). As they were talking, my pastor knew the type of movies this man produced and they were of questionable subject matter. He asked him why they didn't make more wholesome movies and the producer (or maybe it was director, I can't remember) said "because no one wants to see a movie like that". All about money......
betty
I believe movie audiences can smell out the
degree of passionate involvement of the director
and the actors. I've read that Kazan fed Jimmy
Dean the idea of speaking profanely to God-fearing
actor Raymond Massey resulting in Massey
becoming truly angry, not just 'movie-angry.'
Similarly, Kazan allowed, is my guess, Jimmy Dean
to lie on the sidewalk with his windup toy and place
his hands between his legs, after his fruitless visit
to his black-gloved mother in the brothel, in the
movie EAST OF EDEN.
Thanks for your Comment.
Barry
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