RT @seanspicer: Next up at @gop #rncwintermeeting @therealbencarson cc @Reince pic.twitter.com/RVx1HJAxFj
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZitoTrib) January 15, 2015
Almost certainly not what Dr. Carson is telling Reince Priebus:
“It was easy for white people to approve of 12 Years A Slave — that was all so long ago, and it involved people you couldn’t possibly have met or known. Selma just didn’t have that gauzy antebellum scrim to protect your tender feelings.”
(Context: David Sims, in the Atlantic, “The Oscars Haven’t Been This White in 19 Years“)
************
Apart from bitching about the Oscar nominations, or the RNC meeting, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
jeffreyw
Stir fry. Finally got around to doing those green beans I’ve been promising myself.
Edmund Dantes
One of the things that apparently hurt Selma was a refusal to send out free screeners to the voters.
Mudge
I guess one reason they expanded the number of nominees was to be able to amplify the lack of non-white nominees.
Sad_Dem
@Edmund Dantes: No free screeners? That’s like not validating parking. Baaaad for business. I wonder why they made that decision.
sharl
I finished a long read earlier today, from a young woman discussing her efforts to come to terms with the consequences of the (female) genital mutilation [FGM] she was subjected to at age seven, and my reaction was the same as this tweeter’s:
It is indeed all of that, and packs one hell of a wallop.
Sad_Dem
And in other news, Marjory Wentworth, South Carolina’s poet laureate, got cut from the inaugural for some reason.
lamh36
@Edmund Dantes: actually screeners were sent out to a academy members and golden globes members.
They weren’t sent to all the various guilds or they were screened or sent “too late”
Yet the movie warranted Best Picture yet no one saw it? So that makes it a token nom which, IMHO makes it worse.
But whatever, it is as it always had been and it always will be.
I have my theories but I’ve given up on sharing them in certain circles.
My hope is that people like me go see the film this weekend and give it a boost to show white Hollywood we don’t need their approval and when given quality product we spend our money accordingly
Elizabelle
@sharl: Bookmarked it, but think I’ll wait a few days. Thank you for the head’s up. Good writing rocks, but difficult subject and will get through the weekend first.
the Conster
CBS evening news with Bob Schieffer just covered the social media “uproar” over the nominations being all white people. I guess that’s progress – I can’t imagine that it would have ever occurred to Bob Schieffer by himself that all the nominees were white. I think pointing it out does help to make the fish begin to understand that they’re swimming in water.
Elizabelle
@lamh36: I think it’s a problem that studios release their big Oscar pics so late in the year.
Find it interesting that Boyhood and Grand Budapest Hotel came out on July 11 and March 7, respectively. Both very good films, and enough time for the audience to see them, let them resonate, and judge other films by them.
This releasing a movie and the Golden Globes voters are selecting winners before most of the country ever got to see it — who came up with that?
Elizabelle
It seems the Best Supporting Actress category is more spectacular than Best Actress.
Scout211
I am connecting to the Internet via my bright and shiny new ISP, a local radio frequency (?) service that just put up a local tower.
After 61/2 years of living out here in the boonies with no other options other than crappy satellite internet with sloooooow speeds and usage caps, we now have speeds high enough to watch streaming media and we have no usage cap.
You have no idea . . . It was so awful.
We feel like we have jumped into the 21st century . . .finally.
Rural customers really get screwed. How the satellite services get away with metered service makes no sense.
Violet
I was appalled Selma wasn’t nominated in more categories, given the good reviews and the significant subject matter. It’s such a game, the awards nominations. Maybe the producers aren’t as experienced in how to play it (the screeners not being sent to the right people or whatever). Or maybe it’s good old fashioned racism. Or some of both. I don’t know. Sucks.
I happened to catch a clip of the nominations and could not believe how white they were. They had the faces of the Best Actor nominations and they are just so white. I’m sure they all did a great job, but it’s such a narrow view of the world.
@Elizabelle:
I don’t understand this at all. Julianne Moore is nominated for “Still Alice.” I happened to catch a bit of an interview today with Kristen Stewart who apparently is in that film. At the end the interviewer said, “‘Still Alice’ opens in New York and L.A. this weekend and nationwide on [whatever the date was].” WTF? How is it eligible for the Oscar for last year when it hasn’t even opened yet? How does that work?
Marc
@Edmund Dantes: The other thing was smearing LBJ in an industry whose professional association was once run by Jack Valenti.
This ain’t rocket science, people.
Mike J
@Marc: Had it been about Vietnam, I doubt that a dim view of LBJ would have been a problem. It did seem stupid to make him a villain on one of the things he was absolutely good about.
And not sending screeners to any and every one who normally gets them the day the movie came out is just suicidal. They needed somebody like the Weinsteins to wage their Oscar campaign.
kc
@the Conster:
Last year the social media uproar was when that bastard Brad Pitt shoved that black director, Steve McQueen, out of the way and seized the statuette and the microphone.
lamh36
@Elizabelle: but see the movie gping public arent academy members. Based in the academy breakdown, older than 50, predominantly whitw and male arent going to movie theaters to see released films.
The point of screeners they can watch at home.
So release dates are relative. The buzz from Selma begin way before it was released on theatres and we’ll before voting started and critics had screened it well before then as well. Then the LBJ article by the white LBJ guy in the same demo as Oscar voters came out to almost to the day when Oscar voting began. Then more and more of those articles came out and then you begin to have more and more articles and even of the article was to praise the film, the tag became Selma and contraversy and it took off like a freight train. As the accuracy freight train continued and theartened to overtake a film that deserved better it was too late, thenjoy u began to see article about screeners and late this and all that…but you follow all this like I have you see the timebomb for Selma went off with that first LBJ critique.
Now you have people like Chris Hayes who was just shocked that the movie was snubbed but then also saying he always thought it was “uneven” (when pressed to say why he found it uneven you get crickets) …
..Ya know what I’m gonna just stop right now. Cause there is no point.
It is what it is and had always been. As usual POC take it in stridea and keep it moving. I’ll do the same, but I will say this is why we still need award shows like NAACP Image awards and the like, cause we need to acknowledge our own…
kc
Yeah. It might be a great flick otherwise, but that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I’d rather they left LBJ out of the picture altogether than cast him a false light as the antagonist.
Bobby Thomson
@Elizabelle: Americans have the memory of a gnat. I present the 2014 elections.
kc
I see “American Sniper” was nominated. Barrrffff.
Otoh, I haven’t seen it (or any of the nominees) so maybe it really deserved it . . .
eemom
Not that anyone’s paying attention to this anymore — least of all, no doubt, the two asshole queens of last fall’s threads on this episode — but the UVA frat of RS fame has been cleared.
Violet
@lamh36: As I said above, the awards are so political–I mean within Hollywood political. People like the Weinsteins know how to play the game. Did “Selma” have a team like that running their Oscar campaign? You can’t just make a good movie and hope it sells itself. It doesn’t work that way in that business. The article from the LBJ guy could have been coincidence or he could have been “encouraged” to write it by a rival movie’s team. It’s as cutthroat a business as any out there. I wouldn’t be surprised by anything that happened related to the film. It was a front runner for Best Picture and other awards, so it had to have people looking to take it down so their films had a better chance.
What I don’t get is that if the issue is the unfair portrayal of LBJ, then how is the movie nominated for Best Picture? Why not a nomination for David Oyelowo for Best Actor, since his performance is unrelated to how the film dealt with LBJ? It makes no sense.
kc
From the article: The Best Picture rebuff of The Dark Knight spurred the expansion of the Best Picture field to 10 nominees
Is THAT why they expanded the field? Because a farkin’ crappy overpriced Batman flick didn’t get a nomination?
Elizabelle
@lamh36:
I look forward to seeing “Selma.”
To get attention, maybe they should have set it in Los Angeles.
/snark
(Thinking of “Crash” and of “Argo” — Teheran, but about movie people skills. No effing way Argo was the best pic that year.)
the Conster
@lamh36:
The local public TV station, WGBH, had a panel segment on about the #blacklivesmatter protests in Boston today, featuring local black activists, followed by a black pundit comparing the accolades The Help got, to Selma. He made the obvious point about liberal Hollywood’s self aggrandizement and really, there’s nothing more to say.
kc
@eemom:
Thanks for that. I haven’t seen anyone talking about it anywhere else.
Wonder what that reporter, Sabrina Erdely, is up to these days. We haven’t heard from her since the article.
OzarkHillbilly
@Scout211: I know your pain. I am still on satellite.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@lamh36:
I will say how it looks from this white person who works (as a tiny cog) in the entertainment industry: it was safe to award a film made by a British Black director, but not an American Black one. McQueen (who is enormously talented) is a foreigner and thus safe to reward, not a “real” black person who makes them feel guilty about their own (white American) recent past.
ruemara
@Violet: It had a special limited release for consideration requirements. That’s how. Which is why it’s bullshit that Selma opened too late in the year. People have been pulling that one for years.
mai naem mobile
@Bobby Thomson: don’t be insulting my pet gnat.
Mike J
@kc:
Such a pity that when he was killed there was nobody around with a gun to protect him.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@kc:
From a moviemaking point of view, there really is no other available antagonist to stand in for the Establishment, though. MLK never had a cozy sit-down with George Wallace or Bull Connor.
I think what people don’t like is that LBJ is used as a stand-in for complacent white people, and they don’t like the way they look in that mirror.
SiubhanDuinne
@Edmund Dantes:
Wonder why? That seems self-defeating and counterintuitive.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sad_Dem:
Such cowards.
JPL
@Violet: American Sniper picked up several nominations. I have no idea why. Maybe the academy hasn’t moved on from the Bush years.
Mike J
Meanwhile my opus about the social upheaval caused by mounting my gopro on the mast during Tuesday night club races is still at least two months away from going into production.
I am working on storyboards for some how-to videos about rigging, but I’m thinking about using a more standard camera for those. Lack of viewfinder and zoom are perfectly acceptable when strapped to something for action shots, not so great for composing closeup shots of knots.
JPL
I haven’t seen Selma, but when the oped pieces came out critical of the way that LBJ was treated, I thought that someone wanted another movie to win.
Elizabelle
@JPL: I think there’s a “Americans at war” category that goes unmentioned. Because we’ve had Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Hundred and lots of other contenders.
Obviously, being outfitted with military gear makes you much more courageous than walking over a bridge or standing up for civil rights. Being jailed for same. Writing a great letter from jail. Meh.
Mike J
@JPL: It’s hardly a rah-rah feel good let’s all go to war flick.
Elizabelle
@JPL: Clint Eastwood directed American Sniper.
You would think the sniper getting murdered at a gun range would have taken some of the bloom off, but no …
kc
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
If you buy the simplistic moviemaking convention that you need one powerful bad-guy individual as an antagonist, maybe. I personally don’t think it’s necessary to make shit up about LBJ – one guy who was actually RIGHT on these issues – in order to show the resistance and hatred that MLK and the marchers faced.
Well, that’s some weird psychoanalysis. Maybe you’re projecting. It could just be that some people think the movie’s treatment of LBJ is flat-out wrong.
lamh36
@kc: my first question to this train of thought is, have u seen the film? If you haven’t because of what you read about the LBJ portrayal, that says something about you. Lincoln pretty much forgot about Frederick Douglas but I still felt DDL as Lincoln deserves to be seen. the movie was what, 2hr, the scene with LBJ were maybe 20-30min in total.
Not if you have seen the movie, my next question did the LBJ portrayal in total overshadows the work of David Oyelowo? Only about 3 men have stepped into the shoes of Dr King for films and done him justice. If you saw the film I’d contend that David O was phenomenonal in Dr King’s shoes.
To be honest the best pic nom was because academy probably based on critic and advocate voters. The original song nom was because of the mention of Ferguson IMHO. The song had been written about a lot and it’s reference to Feguson made natonal news.
Ill be rooting for the song to win and its honestly thw best bet since the film stars and directors gwt nothing. I suspect Glory wins ao that them “Selma” folks can shut da Fuq up.
kc
@Mike J:
Ugh. You know, all I know is that he was killed at a shooting range in the US by another vet. I sort of wonder why, but I don’t want to start googling his life and getting all depressed by his prodigious kill count.
Bob In Portland
Fourteen years late, but, heck you guys won’t even read Newsweek. After all, they’re part of the mighty Russian propaganda machine.
Hal
Sigh. Movie after movie that focuses on actual historical events have flaws or portrayals that do not always take into account the full breadth of the people they are trying to portray. Does LBJ actually come off as a villain in Selma, or are some people pissed that he isn’t portrayed as a shining white beacon of hope to the black community? This isn’t a film about LBJ. It’s a 120 minute movie that cannot possibly show everyone involved at their fullest and most complete. Make a damn LBJ film if folks want the complete pic.
Kathryn Bigelow can direct a film featuring effective torture that saves lives, or A Beautiful Mind can air brush John Nash’s life, no big deal. But Glob forbid Johnson, who was problematic at times during the civil rights movement, regardless of his ultimate reasoning and support, doesn’t get the complete saintly treatment, and suddenly historical films have to be one hundred percent accurate? OK then.
Peniel Joseph has a pretty good article up over at NPR on the subject.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2015/01/10/376081786/selma-backlash-misses-the-point
Marc
@Mike J:
In the sense that it would no longer have been a smear, sure.
Agreed.
Mike J
@kc: I would have thought the guys with the german shepherds, fire hoses, and billy clubs made for pretty good antagonists.
Villago Delenda Est
@Edmund Dantes: You mean not suck up to the worthless parasites?
For shame, Oprah. You know how the Hollywood game is played.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@JPL:
Because Clint Eastwood directed it. That’s the other part of the problem — Hollywood is still very much a Boys’ Club and the director of “Selma” is a woman. Remember, Kathryn Bigelow was only the 4th woman in the history of the awards to be nominated, and her ex-husband had to publicly signal that it was OK to vote for her, he vouched for her. Similarly, Brad Pitt vouched for Steve McQueen by producing the film and making a cameo.
One of the reasons it’s so hard for minorities to break into Hollywood is that it’s all about who you know, and Oprah doesn’t count in Hollywood. The filmmakers didn’t know the right people or submit the film to voters the right way, so they got snubbed. It’s political on multiple levels (racial politics but also workplace/industry politics). Both/and, not either/or.
JPL
@Mike J: I have no idea since it hasn’t been released yet but my comment had to do more with revisiting the Bush wars.
Marc
@Hal:
This would be a better comparison if Lincoln had included Douglass, but presented him as a defender of slavery.
Peale
Still trying to figure out what the Lego movie did to get knocked out. I guess boxtrolls represented a different style of animation, and the academy needs to give one slot to anime each year. I would have slotted in Lego Movie and Book of Life for consideration over Box trolls and How to a train your dragon ii.
jl
Hey, wait a minute, didn’t this blog have a post a while back with some white middle aged man saying that white middle aged man stuff was a marginalized genre at the point of extinction? (Edit: maybe even it’s an oppressed group now… hmmm…. just maybe…?)
I am very confused and surprised.
But I’m not surprised that Oscars can still veer very far into middle class middle age white person only stuff in some years.
Good they have separate awards for women actors that they have to give out, otherwise it would be far worse.
SiubhanDuinne
@lamh36:
It’s interesting, more and more I feel like a POC. I mean, I’m a 72-year-old white woman but more and more I identify with racial/ethnic minorities. I’m old enough to remember when it was a genuine shock to the system to see AA people on television (except on the news, as rioters or protesters) — I remember when Bill Cosby in I Spy and Diahann Carroll in Julia were kind of shocking to see on TV, solely because of their blackitude. I don’t remember the first time I saw a black person in a commercial but I’m sure it was also a very surprising sight to behold. Well now, it’s just the opposite. When I see a group of people — congressional leaders, cultural icons, even just a random group of office mates or sports fans, whatever, who are all white (and/or all male) — I have a visceral reaction that “This is just not right.”
Peale
@Marc: or had Douglass debate Lincoln using the debate format named after the other famous Douglas of the time.
OzarkHillbilly
@kc: If Clint wanted to do a movie on a real American hero (small “h” ’cause Desmond would be embarrassed otherwise) he should do a movie on Desmond T. Doss. a man who refused to carry a gun in battle, a conscientious objector.
“And when I looked at that picture, I came to the Sixth Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ ” Mr. Doss told Larry Smith in “Beyond Glory,” an oral history of Medal of Honor winners. “I wondered, how in the world could a brother do such a thing? It put a horror in my heart of just killing, and as a result I took it personally: ‘Desmond, if you love me, you won’t kill.’ “
And he didn’t. What he did do was save the lives of 75 men. (he later said that the number was probably closer to 50. )
Read the obit, he was an amazing man. There is a documentary out there about him, but I am too tired to find it now.
Sad_Dem
@SiubhanDuinne: Indeed. The poem isn’t exactly a call to arms. But I guess mentioning the past and suggesting forgiveness is just too damn political for a political ceremony.
Laertes
Given the subject matter, I was disappointed to see American Sniper getting such good reviews and a bunch of nominations. I haven’t seen it, though, so I suppose what might be going on there is that it might be a well-made movie.
@lamh36:
To be clear: The charge against Selma is not that it “pretty much forgot” about Johnson, but that portrayed a friend as an enemy. The comparison to Lincoln would be more apt if it had portrayed Douglass as a Confederate.
kc
@lamh36:
The issue for me is not that LBJ only had a few scenes, that seems entirely appropriate; rather, it’s that the filmmakers apparently turned him into an antagonist when that is decidedly not the case.
Also, if you wanna play like this: “If you [haven’t] because of what you read about the LBJ portrayal, that says something about you” then you won’t mind my saying if you don’t give a shit that the film portrays LBJ in a false light that says something about you.
I don’t know why you’re asking me that. I haven’t said word one about David Oyelowo’s work. If he gave an Oscar-worthy performance, which by all accounts he did, he should have gotten nominated imo regardless of the other stuff.
I do want to see this movie, because it sounds like it’s really, really good in other aspects, I just wish that the filmmakers hadn’t opted to misrepresent LBJ’s position.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@kc:
As far as I’ve been able to tell, the only thing that can be said to be made up is LBJ authorizing Hoover to send the tape to Coretta King. Otherwise, everything seems to be quibbles — yes, LBJ did ask them to wait before starting the campaign, but he only asked them to wait a few months! Etc.
LBJ was a supporter, but he also had his own agenda and job — as the character says in the trailer, “You have one thing on your plate, I’ve got a hundred and one.” Unless that’s followed by an evil laugh, I’m not sure how you get “villain” from that rather than “opposing force.”
So the movie shows LBJ as a complex and conflicted man who had a lot of competing interests fighting for his attention, and that makes him a “villain”?
Marc
@Peale: And his talking points, too.
kc
Exactly.
Mike in NC
@JPL: Clint Eastwood has a lot of fans in Hollywood, and after his antics at the GOP convention they must think he’s basically lost his marbles. Sentimental favorite?
kc
@OzarkHillbilly:
Wow, fascinating. I’d never heard of him. Thanks for that story.
ruemara
I had no idea that LBJ was such an adored icon. He didn’t come off as an evil man, just one that put other priorities ahead of what a subgroup of the nation wanted. But ok, Selma doesn’t deserve a nod because LBJ was not appropriately lauded for his work.
kc
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Please don’t put words in my mouth. Thanks.
kc
@ruemara:
Damn, who said that?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@ruemara:
At least two weeks ago, G turned to me and said, “Why does it seem like so many white people have a problem with ‘Selma’?” So it’s not like it’s gone unnoticed.
We don’t go out to the movies much anymore, but we will probably make an effort to see this one. I’ve seen way too many people misinterpret or misremember films to take the complaints seriously until I see it for myself.
lamh36
@Marc: the film did NOT portray LBJ and some obstructionist against Voting Rights….IT DID NOT VILLIFY HIM, contrary to what some people seem to want to believe. It portrayed LBJ much like progressives portray Obama, ie “dragging his feet” or Obama having to be made to focus on say climate change instead of whatever by activists.
Was it sympathetic in a film where LJB was only present in like 4 scenes, sure I’ll grant that TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEEN THE FILM instead of just repeating what they heard.
But if you come away from seeing Selma, and your first thought was “it’s a shame how mean they were to LBJ”…then there really isn’t anything to say to you.
raven
@ruemara: fuck lbj
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@kc:
Yes, it’s true, “antagonist” =/= “villain.” In fact, a strong antagonist can have just as much right on his/her side as the protagonist. But given that you agree that LBJ’s portrayal is similar to showing Frederick Douglass as a supporter of slavery, it doesn’t sound like you think LBJ is that first kind of antagonist.
Hal
@kc: No. This is not a accurate portrayal of the film or of the way the film portrays LBJ. To some up better than I can:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/17512/selma_criticism
lamh36
@kc: you wouln’t have to say apparently, if you had seen the film. What I am saying to you is that you are taking what you have heard and deciding the film deserves the critque regardless. What I contend is the majority of the people who have made the critque you have, have ALSO not seen the film.
People who have seen the film, and had issue with the portrayal of LBJ, IMHO are at least critiquing it from their own eye and ears and impressions, not because they read some articles about it.
kc
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
If you want to know what I think, ask me, and I’ll tell you. I’d really appreciate it if you’d stop making shit up about my opinions. I don’t do that to you. Please don’t do it to me.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Hal:
I guess a white guy in a Hollywood film can only be shown learning something from a black guy if the black guy is his caddy:
http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0146984/
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@kc:
Okay — what is your opinion? I am reserving judgment until I see it because I’m hearing very different reactions from different people, but the pro-LBJ articles so far have been pretty weak sauce.
Violet
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Isn’t that an example of the “Magical Negro” concept?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Violet:
IIRC, it’s the movie that inspired movie critic David Edelstein to coin the term.
kc
@lamh36:
I have not seen it yet. What I have heard is that the film depicts LBJ as opposing voting rights at a time when he in fact supported them.
You’ve seen the film. Tell me if the depiction of LBJ’s stance on voting rights is accurate.
I’ve also heard that the movie shows LBJ siccing the FBI on MLK. Does the movie show that?
I’ve also read that in screenings, some audiences hissed when the LBJ character appeared on the screen. Which suggests to me that he was cast as a villain.
Could be. Maybe I’ll watch that movie, and find out that those people who did watch it and say that it misrepresents LBJ are wrong.
Fyi, I am going to watch it.
TheMightyTrowel
The thing I love about all the carping about real-life portrayals, accuracy and Selma is that there are 3 other historical films which are at least as, if not more, inaccurate which have also been nominated for lots of awards, but because those inaccuracies are largely the sort that play on mainstream (white, straight, male) stereotypes or remove the agency and complexity of a minority group they’re just part of telling a compelling story. The deep upset felt by white people about Selma really stands out compared to the way Foxcatcher included insidious predatory gay tropes to make a character seem more evil, the way the Imitation Game slandered Alan Turing to make his life seem more appropriately tragic and the way American Sniper lionised a deeply flawed individual because oo rah! guns!
raven
@TheMightyTrowel: Are you sure that’s what Sniper is?
Violet
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I thought it was Spike Lee who came up with the term.
JPL
@efgoldman: hmmm.. It’s probably not a good idea to prevent folk from going to work. imo
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
For leaners, this article in Salon seems to articulate the arguments of both sides in the most even-handed way:
http://www.salon.com/2015/01/07/lbj_mlk_and_selma_hollywoods_controversy_and_the_search_for_historical_truth/
tybee
@sharl:
very powerful. and chilling. and a lot of other things i am unable to describe after reading that.
kc
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Thank you. That wasn’t so hard, was it? :D
I haven’t seen the movie (yet, I’m going to). From what I have read it shows Johnson as opposing voting rights when he was supportivel and also falsely shows him sending the FBI after MLK. So, either the film does or does not do these things. It’s possible that when I see it, LBJ won’t actually come off as the bad guy – though the story about audiences hissing the character don’t make me feel very hopeful about that.
I’ll reserve judgment on the quality of the movie until I see it, too, though I’ve heard good things. I’m just gonna have to disagree about your final sentence. They were the opposite of “weak sauce” to me, particularly coming from people who were THERE.
TheMightyTrowel
@raven: granted, the only one of the four I haven’t seen (because Eastwood. ew) but I implicitly trust Alyssa Rosenberg’s characterisation – she’s an old friend and usually more fair than me.
raven
@tybee: This should cheer you up:
Interview with Dr Crabtree about the Red Snapper
srv
Well, a few white men win an Oscar as Obama unemploys thousands:
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Violet:
That’s what Wikipedia says, but other sources say differently. I think Lee popularized it but never said he came up with it.
Peale
@TheMightyTrowel: yeah. I don’t think fox catcher was nominated. But the alan turing thing just bugged me. Either there was a story there, or there wasn’t. But I just lost patience after awhile with the idea that they felt that making him the victim of blackmail and some kind disorder on the autism or OCD spectrum wasn’t helpful. Nothing wrong, mind you, with people who have autism, but apparently Turing was kind of mild mannered, which didn’t need to be blown into “my peas and carrots shall not touch”
TheMightyTrowel
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): that’s a great article – thanks for linking!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@kc:
Given commenter raven’s frequent reaction to the mere mention of LBJ, I’m not sure you can assume the hisses were based solely on what’s on the screen. LBJ is still a very divisive figure to this day.
I think the conflict is between people who think movies should be “j
raven
@TheMightyTrowel: Huh, I haven’t seen it either. I do know that Kyle being killed is not in the film, only cited in the credit. The description I read seemed to focus on him as a really screwed up dude when he came home and that he pulled himself together helping other vets. Guess I’ll have to see it for myself.
raven
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): got it
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@kc:
Given commenter raven’s frequent reaction to the mere mention of LBJ, I’m not sure you can assume the hisses were based solely on what’s on the screen. LBJ is still a very divisive figure to this day.
I think some of the conflict is between people who think movies about true events should be “just the facts” and people who want to see a film that’s interesting and entertaining. If you know a huge amount about LBJ (I’ve mostly seen the articles written by his various biographers), then compressing events that took place over a period of years into a couple of scenes is going to annoy you. If you’re not intimately familiar with every detail, it sounds like most people aren’t really bothered and understand they’re watching a movie, not raw documentary footage.
lamh36
@kc: I was in a theatre with ALL BLACK PEOPLE not one person “hissed” at LBJ.
White folk, particuarly GOP, Republican, Dixiecrat Dems and the like certainly don’t like LBJ. I can certainly see that group of people “hissing” at LBJ. Maybe you should find out the makeup of the audience, cause I’d bet you…white folk were hissing.
As to the LBJ and Hoover, the movie didn’t outright have LBJ order Hoover to get MLK, but it did have scenes with LBJ and Hoover where Hoover said the US had ways of handling people like MLK, and LBJ telling Hoover that “way” was unneccssary. Hoover then mentions going after the family of MLK particularly tearing the marriage apart. Did LBJ never say “do it, tear them apart”, no…did the film show him saying “hell naw”….no. What they did do was discuss the alleged tape the FBI sent to Coretta Scott of MLK with another woman.
The movie, IMHO, did not portray LBJ as being “against Voting rights”. It did, as I said above, portray LBJ, like many Presidents, not wanting to focus on VRA so soon after such a big accmplishment as CRA. The film portrayed the urgency on MLK and the activists side.
Again, IT DID NOT VILLIFY LBJ!
daverave
Wait, is that a picture of Ben Carson telling RP that ISIS is just like the American patriots of yore?
raven
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I was really disappointed when I found that the real “Butler” didn’t really have a son killed in Vietnam. I thought the film was really good and would not have suffered without that bit of fiction.
Southern Beale
Today in Irony:
Their names are Malarkey. What are the odds …
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@raven:
Gah! This is why I’m trying to get away from doing long comments from the iPhone. Hit the wrong key and posted without realizing. And I can’t delete it, either. ?
lamh36
My thinking, Selma suffered because it was just last year that 12 Years A Slave won Best Picture and picked up Writing and one actor award.
raven
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Yea, I was looking for the hidden meaning.
srv
Say what you will about LBJ, but at least some people took their Constitutional Duty to secure the borders seriously:
Marc
@lamh36:
Nice projection there. If you have to invent other people’s thoughts in order to shoot them down, then you have nothing to say period.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@raven:
That was kind of a weird one — they basically created a fictional character based on the life of the real guy and then had him interact with historical figures, but they weren’t very clear that the character was based on the real guy but didn’t show the real guy’s life story. I’m assuming it’s because most people’s life stories are pretty boring.
raven
There are millions of people who will never forgive LBJ for his policies in Vietnam. There are people here who are passionate about ONE issue and I’m one of them. It’s not everyone’s issue and that’s cool but no history lessons are changing my mind and when a post is about him I’ll be here to give my opinion. That’s what pie filters are for.
lamh36
@Marc: well then I guess I have nothing to say to you then and you can chose not to say anything to me, I’ll survive
JPL
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Your comment is great. When I watched the Imitation Game, I could pick out the scenes that were added. It did not change my view of Cumberbatch’s acting or Alan Turing’s life. Movies are movies and documentaries are documentaries. Unfortunately, A Beautiful Mind totally changed Nash’s life and I wonder if that alone made some cynical enough to nitpik.
Woodrowfan
@lamh36: thanks.
raven
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Yea, it was still a really good movie but I was left a little flat.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sad_Dem:
If all they want is bland doggerel, well, heck, I can easily provide that on ten minutes’ notice. What rhymes with “fuckers”?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@efgoldman:
In my defense, I get to drink champagne at work if at least one of the Giant Evil Corporation’s two nominees win, so I have a vested interest. ?
ruemara
@lamh36: Funny how we can live with that, especially as there’s been article after article from people whose whole complaint has been “insufficiently nice to LBJ”.
lamh36
@Woodrowfan: Again, LBJ was NOT portrayed as the villain of Selma.
Even the articles, other than the LBJ dude who gave LBJ full credit for the Selma march, have said that the film DID not give LBJ enough credit for the Selma march. Any honest critique of LBJ portrayal would NOT classify the LBJ portrayal as villainess…there was Hoover and Guv Wallace and the Sheriff and the white residents of Selma for that.
Cervantes
@Sad_Dem:
Thanks for the heads-up. Haley and her people are transparent and shameless.
On the other hand, while I did find Wentworth’s poem worth reading, I also found myself wondering if her other work is more reliably original.
kc
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Could be, he was definitely wrong on Vietnam but . . . I dunno.
Patricia Kayden
@Mudge: lol! Love the snarky comments.
lamh36
@ruemara: we live with a lot of things. You hear all these articles about angry white voters, who are angry at supposed “lazy” life and “welfare” queen life of minorities and whatever the latest white grievances is, and yet, POC, have done nothing BUT take things in stride.
Honestly, America should be very happy that Black folk willingly take so much in stride…cause if we chose to dwell on the 200+ years and the treatment of Black folk by US majority, white folk would really have that race war so many seem to think is already happening…
smdh
kc
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Well, I don’t think people are “annoyed” or whatever about compressing events to fit in a 2 hour movie; I think they’re annoyed that the movie paints LBJ as opposing voting rights when the opposite was true.
It’s not like I think LBJ was some kind of saint, btw; he was vulgar and crass and Vietnam and he used bad language blah blah blah but he did do a few truly great things at a great political cost to him and it’s kind of sad to see (a) his record being lied about and (b) people getting riled up when anyone says, “Hey, that didn’t happen.”
kc
@lamh36:
Okay. Maybe we can chat after I’ve seen it.
Violet
@lamh36: It could be a lot of things or a combination of many of them. The subject matter is difficult for the powerful in Hollywood and they don’t want to look in the mirror. It wasn’t marketed properly and/or well. The filmmakers aren’t connected to the “right” people in Hollywood well enough do the politics. African American woman director–too edgy on two counts. LBJ “controversy”. Last year’s win means “Selma” gets snubbed. Etc. Etc.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Raven’s reaction to LBJ is based on the sad fact that LBJ’s little war dragged raven off to ‘Nam with many friends, from before and during, many of whom, unlike raven, came back in body bags.
So, yes, LBJ is a very problematic figure for a lot of boomers. Especially those whose lives were disrupted by events in Vietnam.
On edit: Which raven posted above.
Anne Laurie
@Southern Beale:
You know, I’d always assumed ‘malarkey’ came from a particular individual of that name — like the original Captain Boycott. But the best my weak google-fu can establish, the word malarkey as a description for nonsense hasn’t been traced further than cartoonist T.A. Dorgan “popularizing” it. Since Dorgan was also “at the top of the list of the ten most fecund makers of American slang”, it seems possible that he was actually the first to use it… and, knowing my (Irish) people, it wouldn’t surprise me if he had a specific Malarkey in mind!
(Dorgan didn’t invent “dumbell” for a stupid person, though. Anthony Trollope used Lord Dumbello — a brutish, stupid individual who would have been totally unacceptable in society if not for his title & the money & political power that came with that title — as an ongoing character in his Phineas Finn novels going back to the 1870s.)
Citizen_X
@Southern Beale:
Shit, I could have told the kid that as soon as he woke up.
Howard Beale IV
Texas To Install ‘Panic Buttons’ In Capitol After Open-Carry Nuts Start Showing Up To Threaten Politicians
Suzanne
@sharl: That piece is unbelievably good. Just wow.
Howard Beale IV
@Scout211: Fixed point wireless, eh?
ruemara
@lamh36: Or as I’ve often said, “Black people are patient as FUCK. You’d know that if you could stop whining and listen to them”.
lamh36
Cervantes
@sharl:
That was excruciating — but thanks.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: And throw in him wearing that phony-ass Silver Star!
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale: They know their audience of marks, though. Very well.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@TheMightyTrowel:
Well, there’s the other problem with the history of The Imitation Game, namely that it leaves out large chunks of the story of breaking Enigma and gives the impression that it was entirely the doing of the British. Back when the Brits were all complaining about how U-571 was bad history because it showed the codebreaking as entirely an American affair, I predicted that there was going to be a British movie showing it to be a British effort and all of the complainers were going to go completely silent on the fact that it was the Poles who first cracked Enigma and managed to smuggle a reverse engineered machine to the FreBletchley Park were Poles who had managed to escape the German invasion.
And I think the really interesting story would be of the Polish intelligence officers who didn’t escape and were captured by the Germans but who never let on that they had cracked Enigma.
jayboat
@Howard Beale IV:
I actually thought that was an Onion headline.
Silly me.
raven
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Wasn’t that flick about the Iranian hostage thing all phony not giving credit to the Canadians?
Cervantes
@Anne Laurie:
Not sure. Could have been Dorgan. Could have been McEvoy.
Howard Beale IV
@jayboat: Indeed.
fuckwit
I’ve heard black folks complaining for very many years that LBJ gets far more credit than he deserves for CRA and VRA. Considering that LBJ never got his ass beat, chewed up by dogs, or firehosed by police, I’m inclined to accept their assessment.
Patricia Kayden
@kc: The Dark Knight was a great movie. Please repent.
Howard Beale IV
@efgoldman: What’s even better is that Texas Governor Abbott doesn’t appear to believe in local government.
Cervantes
@Violet:
Can you elaborate? Thanks.
gwangung
@lamh36:
I am going to point out in the stage play ALL THE WAY/THE GREAT SOCIETY, LBJ actually was shown to have ordered Hoover to get MLK.
ALL THE WAY won the Tony last year.
Just saying.
Cacti
LBJ didn’t get his “appropriate” role as white savior.
Hence the lack of nominations.
lamh36
Good advice from Spike Lee to Ava Duvernay. Spike knows a bit about Oscar snubs…Do The Right Thing and of course Malcolm X.
Spike Lee Blasts ‘Selma’ Oscar Snubs: ‘You Know What? F*ck ’Em’
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@raven: I have no idea what movie you’re talking about.
jl
@lamh36:
Wise words from Spike Lee. He is right.
” You can’t go to awards like the Oscars or the Grammys for validation. The validation is if your work still stands 25 years later. ”
No one cares whether some pic won an Oscar twenty years ago. Won’t make anybody watch it or not.
I thought both Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X were great films. I never understood the supposed divisiveness or reverse racism fuss about Do the Right Thing. But Spike Lee does not do Oscar friendly material. Too bad for the Oscars.
gogol's wife
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Argo.
Cacti
CNN film critic Gene Seymour nails it on the difference in Hollywood’s reaction to 12 Years A Slave vs. Selma:
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@kc:
That’s the thing though — from what I can tell, the movie doesn’t show LBJ opposing voting rights outright, but that he wanted to move more slowly on them. So you have a protagonist and antagonist who want the same result, but at different speeds.
And yet some people writing articles about the film are acting like they turned LBJ into Simon Legree. It’s bizarre.
Suzanne
@lamh36: He’s right. Lots of shitty, shitty movies have won Best Picture, certainly because of racism at times, but also because the Academy are rich old people who like to give awards to their friends, and they’ll award commercial success before any envelope-pushing, risk-taking, or complicatedness.
mainmati
@Scout211: Our home is just outside DC in MD with very good Internet. But we also have a farm in Shenandoah Co., VA next to the mountains and even mobile telephony was basically non-existent never mind Internet (and this is an area with lots of tourist destinations and wine country). We have since hitched onto a neighbor that built a big tower to capture signals so we are now pretty good on phone and Internet but its amazing how quickly connectivity falls off in rural areas in the US. This is, ironically, not the case in many developing countries that rely mainly on mobile phone because they basically skipped over the era of landline infrastructure. The US is backwards in this respect.
Suzanne
One thing I will note is that Selma is DuVernay’s first feature film, and often the Academy wants to give the big prizes to established talents. Kind of like the GOP: they give it to you when they think it’s your turn. Supporting Actress is regarded as the category that is the most receptive to newcomers, from what I understand.
lamh36
@Suzanne: actually Duvernay has 2 feature films before this one…this one so first with national subject matter people found relevant
and at lead tone documentary…Selma is her third and “big budget” even though it only cost 20 mill
Suzanne
@lamh36: You’re right, I’m sorry. I thought I had heard that she had only done “featurettes”, but I should had checked myself before commenting. She’s still relatively new and unknown, though, and the Academy really likes to give Oscars to established talents–even for weak movies, if they need to make up for shafting someone earlier. Example: Scorsese.
kc
@sharl:
That brought me to tears. Thanks for posting that link.
JoyfulA
@Sad_Dem: Nikki already threw off the board at USC its biggest financial contributor ever.
Betty Cracker
The only two nominated films I’ve seen so far are “Boyhood” and “Grand Budapest Hotel.” I was impressed with “Boyhood,” but I’m trying to figure out how much of its magic was based on the unique approach of filming over a 12-year period and if that’s a mere gimmick or an innovation worthy of serious accolades.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@gogol’s wife: Never saw it and I know almost nothing about it. So I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass on raven’s question.
mainmati
@Scout211: Our home is just outside DC in MD with very good Internet. But we also have a farm in Shenandoah Co., VA next to the mountains and even mobile telephony was basically non-existent never mind Internet (and this is an area with lots of tourist destinations and wine country). We have since hitched onto a neighbor that built a big tower to capture signals so we are good on phone and Internet but its amazing how quickly connectivity falls off in rural areas. This is, ironically, not the case in many developing countries that rely mainly on mobile phone because they basically skipped over the era of landline infrastructure. The US is backwards in this respect.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@lamh36:
Steve McQueen first got a lot of attention for “Shame” in 2011, so he was better-known in awards circles (if you will) than Duvernay. He got several Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for it.
And, like I said — Hollywood Boys’ Club, with Director still the biggest boys’ club by far. Duvernay just didn’t have the right anatomy to be nominated.
mclaren
@Scout211:
Unfortunately there are good solid technological reasons why satellite internet services have to use metered service.
Those satellites have very limited total bandwidth. Each satellite can only accommodate X number of gigabits per second because they’re 22,000 miles out, and radio waves tend to fade if you send ’em that far. They’re also vulernable to lots of interference.
Compare with a frequency multiplexed fiberoptic backbone cable, which is the typical broadband backbone throughout the United States. These cables contain thousands of fibers each using DWDM — Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing, in which different frequencies of light are used in the same fiber to increase the data throughput.
Interestingly, I haven’t been able to find any estimate of the total bandwidth available to a U.S. Tier 1 provider, but it must be in the exabyte range.
Another way of thinking about it is: your wifi connection will never be as fast as your home hardwired internet connection because of interference, limited bandwidth in the router in the wifi cafe, and so on. Same general constraints you encounter in satellite internet v. landline internet.
mclaren
@Laertes:
American Sniper got great reviews and boffo box office because it caters to the sick twisted sadism of the hyperpuritanical American people. The sniper film shows a guy blasting peoples’ brains out repeatedly in puffs of red mist, and reportedly the theater audience goes wild cheering each time it happens onscreen in an orgy of sadistic glee.
Americans loath and fear the human body but adore torture and death. Like all puritans, Americans recoil in disgust from sex but have a pornographic attraction to depictions of murder and torture. “No pain, no gain,” goes the American motto — suffering is good, pleasure is evil.
American Sniper does great box office for the same reason the film Hostel did — it offers sexually repressed deeply twisted Americans a perfect excuse to wallow in luxuriant onscreen depictions of death and mutilation.
mclaren
@Suzanne:
Ultimate example: the 1968 musical Oliver! won over Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Who the fuck has ever watched Oliver! since 1968?
eemom
@Betty Cracker:
um, perhaps there might be other aspects of the film worthy of serious accolades that don’t reduce themselves to that simplistic formulation?
Origuy
@mainmati:
Much of Shenandoah County is in the United States National Radio Quiet Zone. Radio transmissions in this area of Virginia and West Virginia are tightly restricted.
raven
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Um. Argo, it won THREE Academy Awards.
VFX Lurker
@Peale:
In the spirit of the original post, I will point out that the main characters in THE LEGO MOVIE were non-white (Emmett, Wyldstyle, Vitruvius) instead of white (Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Han Solo). ;-)
In seriousness, I do not know why THE LEGO MOVIE did not get a nomination. My VFX friends on Facebook have been bitching all day about it not getting a chance at the Oscars.
Maybe the Academy judges honestly hadn’t seen the movie.
The “anime” film in question was directed by Isao Takaharta. His past work includes GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES. The animation studio was no less than Studio Ghibli. PRINCESS KAGUYA not only used hand-drawn animation (a fading art for feature films in the United States), but it attempted a new style of hand-drawn animation that resembled brush painting.
BOXTROLLS, for its part, reached the heights of stop motion animation by the great artists at Laika Studios. Its intricate ballroom dance sequence alone would have been a killer for most shops. Even the littlest shots featured significant attention to animation detail, such as the myriad bugs that crawled around a Boxtroll’s box as he offered the despondent Egg food. Each of those bugs represented an additional creature to track and animate in the shot — they were not done in post.
I also think HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, PART II deserves an Oscar nomination on its strength as a film. It has moments that made it feel like a classic Studio Ghibli feature, full of wonder and joy. It also put a serious test on the friendship forged in the first film.
For what it’s worth, the Annie Awards did include THE BOOK OF LIFE and THE LEGO MOVIE as nominees for Best Animated Feature. So those films are getting recognized outside of the Academy.
Betty Cracker
@eemom: Hence the phrase “how much” in my comment. I didn’t mean to suggest that was the only good thing about the movie, which I liked, but it was definitely the aspect that generated the most buzz.
Cervantes
@mclaren:
I have, actually — mostly because I like some of the songs in it.
Sad_Dem
@SiubhanDuinne:
I won’t call ya chicken pluckers
’cause you don’t work that hard–
but you are cowardly fuckers
to pull a poet’s card.
Sad_Dem
@mclaren: That’s my go-to example too. Freakin’ Oliver! ???
Sad_Dem
@JoyfulA: Why did she do that?