This is gonna be my last post about the movie Brokeback Mountain, I’ll admit that I haven’t seen it yet, and more than likely never will. I’ll take Michael Medved’s word that it is actually a good movie, well made by Ang Lee, well acted, great score, yada yada, with a few hard-to-take scenes of man-man sex that makes a lot of viewers uncomfortable. Like I used to say to my best man, I know that you and Mark are lovers, but spare me the play-by-play ’cause that’s TMI, (too much info!).

Evidently, even in UberLib Hollywood, the gay cowboy movie was TMI, at least for Academy voters, as they broke ranks, instead of backs, and declared that Crash was “best movie of the 2005″. I don’t know about that, but at least I did see that one, on DVD at home, and even though it’s take on race matters in today’s LA is definitely from the far left spectrum, it was an interesting and enjoyable movie for me. After 11 years of liberal arts university learning and teaching, I can entertain arguments from other perspectives than my own, especially if those arguments are entertaining. But for some liberal apologists on the Left, especially Kenneth Turan, main movie critic for the LA Times, the snubbing of Brokeback by the Academy was akin to the worst kind of traitorism. Here he is in today’s Calendar trying to put a smiley face on the loss to Crash.

Sometimes you win by losing, and nothing has proved what a powerful, taboo-breaking, necessary film “Brokeback Mountain” was more than its loss Sunday night to “Crash” in the Oscar best picture category.
(…)
More than any other of the nominated films, “Brokeback Mountain” was the one people told me they really didn’t feel like seeing, didn’t really get, didn’t understand the fuss over. Did I really like it, they wanted to know. Yes, I really did.

In the privacy of the voting booth, as many political candidates who’ve led in polls only to lose elections have found out, people are free to act out the unspoken fears and unconscious prejudices that they would never breathe to another soul, or, likely, acknowledge to themselves. And at least this year, that acting out doomed “Brokeback Mountain.”

Looks like our good Mr. Turan has a few issues involving voting booths in general, like maybe 2000 and 2004? To understand just how out-of-touch with the general populace he is, look at his statements “was the one people told me they really didn’t feel like seeing, didn’t really get, didn’t understand the fuss over” after just stating “nothing has proved what a powerful, taboo-breaking, necessary film “Brokeback Mountain” was more than its loss”. Kind of his way of telling us to eat our movie spinach — ’cause it’s soooooooooo good for us!

And what does he think about the winner, a film that was very disturbing to this ol’ Okie, even though I watched it twice, and enjoyed it better the second time?

. . . [T]he 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.

I guess that if I had done my moral duty and gone to see Brokeback, had my buttons pushed real good, and my preconceptions about gay-themed movies reconfirmed, Mr. Turan would be happy with me? Doubt it! You see, with folks like this, the only conceptions that deserve confirming are Liberal conceptions. All else is close-minded, mean-spirited, non-progressive conservative hogwash. At least my inner pigs are clean.

I was ecstatic that Munich and Paradise Now didn’t win anything — they are both so dishonest that they don’t deserve Academy recognition, plus the second one, a glorification of Palestinian violence against Israel, shouldn’t have been nominated in the first place — but that’s Hollywood Liberals for ya! Guess they never met a suicide bomber they didn’t want to try and understand, get into their tortured psyche, get to know and like — before the poor mis-understood bomber turns them into so much unidentifiable dead goo! I’m sure that Kenneth would disagree with me on this as well, so I’ll give him the last word, maybe.

Hollywood, of course, is under no obligation to be a progressive force in the world. It is in the business of entertainment, in the business of making the most dollars it can. Yes, on Oscar night, it likes to pat itself on the back for the good it does in the world, but as Sunday night’s ceremony proved, it is easier to congratulate yourself for a job well done in the past than actually do that job in the present.

I can’t do it — not after that. So Kenneth, if Hollywood would have done a good job last night, they would have given awards to two anti-Israel films, and forced American movie goers to feel obligated to see a couple of range-rowdys hump each other by calling Brokeback the year’s finest film.

Maybe Academy members aren’t cowards Kenneth, maybe they’re just a bit more in touch with reality than you seem to be. (db)

Technorati Tags: Brokeback Mountain, Los Angeles Times, Calendar, Kenneth Turan, Paradise Now, Munich, Academy Awards, Oscar

This entry was posted on Monday, March 6th, 2006 at 11:55 am and is filed under Media Bias. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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