"Oscar winner" means "avoid at all costs"
I haven't seen a lot of the recent movies winning the best picture Oscar or even the movies with best actor (or "actress") winners. A lot of this is because I think I'll hate the subject matter. I don't like watching pretty ladies getting hit so I haven't seen Monster's Ball or Million Dollar Baby . I'm pretty sure I won't see Notes on a Scandal because our Cate seducing a schoolboy? I don't need to see that. And The Queen just continues the never-ending soap opera of the Windsors* in a way I don't need to give my $15.50 to help.
Also, I think there's so much hype about these movies that often I feel like I've seen them already and there'll be two or three thinkgs I don't know in advance which isn't good value for the price of a ticket when I can spend $11 on a secondhand book by Thackeray that will take three weeks to struggle through to the agonisingly protracted conclusion and still find a final plot twist to give our hero a happy ending.** Hooray! And other times, I think these movies are made just to attract prizes and I'd rather not see someone showing off to win a prize thank you very much when I want to be entertained by a well made but not self conscious movie.
So, I don't know why I feel ripped off that I thought The Departed winner of four academy awards was a completely overblown overacted self-indulgent pile of old codswallop. Jack Nicholson was chewing the scenery. Mark Wahlberg was off the planet with ridiculously foulmouthed rants at subordinates. Martin Sheen's Boston accent came and went as he kept slipping into President Bartlett mode. Even Leo di Caprio wasn't pretty enough to distract me from the silliness of the plots within plots of organised crime and corruption in the law enforcement agencies. The only bits I liked was trying to work out which parts of Boston they were using for locations. At one point, it looked like they used the same house for Leo that Matt Damon had in Good Will Hunting but that's another "Look at me I'm acting movie" so I really don't want to have to go and check.
Anyway, despite knowing what it was about and who was in it and that it had won all these prizes, I was STILL disappointed. So this is the very last "Best Picture" I'm going see, ever.
* There was a question in Trivial Pursuit last night asking what the surname of Princes Harry and William was (yes in that order) and the answer was Mountbatten-Windsor. Can't imagine why they need a surname but if they do, wouldn't "Windsor" do?
**It wasn't actually that good a twist. Philip was struggling in lower middle class wage slavery because everyone thought he'd been disinherited by an uncle who had a fight with him the day before he died but the most recent version of the will which gave Philip some cash was missing because the old man was thinking of changing it again so the estate was divided on the basis of an older will before the uncle decided Philip was all right. At the end there was a dramatic revelation of the newer (apparently valid) will but Thackeray didn't bother to explain how that affected the relatives who'd been merrily spending the money for the past few years. No need to go to Chancery for 25 years like in Bleak House. He'd probably filled up enough pages by then and just wanted a happy ending.
Also, I think there's so much hype about these movies that often I feel like I've seen them already and there'll be two or three thinkgs I don't know in advance which isn't good value for the price of a ticket when I can spend $11 on a secondhand book by Thackeray that will take three weeks to struggle through to the agonisingly protracted conclusion and still find a final plot twist to give our hero a happy ending.** Hooray! And other times, I think these movies are made just to attract prizes and I'd rather not see someone showing off to win a prize thank you very much when I want to be entertained by a well made but not self conscious movie.
So, I don't know why I feel ripped off that I thought The Departed winner of four academy awards was a completely overblown overacted self-indulgent pile of old codswallop. Jack Nicholson was chewing the scenery. Mark Wahlberg was off the planet with ridiculously foulmouthed rants at subordinates. Martin Sheen's Boston accent came and went as he kept slipping into President Bartlett mode. Even Leo di Caprio wasn't pretty enough to distract me from the silliness of the plots within plots of organised crime and corruption in the law enforcement agencies. The only bits I liked was trying to work out which parts of Boston they were using for locations. At one point, it looked like they used the same house for Leo that Matt Damon had in Good Will Hunting but that's another "Look at me I'm acting movie" so I really don't want to have to go and check.
Anyway, despite knowing what it was about and who was in it and that it had won all these prizes, I was STILL disappointed. So this is the very last "Best Picture" I'm going see, ever.
* There was a question in Trivial Pursuit last night asking what the surname of Princes Harry and William was (yes in that order) and the answer was Mountbatten-Windsor. Can't imagine why they need a surname but if they do, wouldn't "Windsor" do?
**It wasn't actually that good a twist. Philip was struggling in lower middle class wage slavery because everyone thought he'd been disinherited by an uncle who had a fight with him the day before he died but the most recent version of the will which gave Philip some cash was missing because the old man was thinking of changing it again so the estate was divided on the basis of an older will before the uncle decided Philip was all right. At the end there was a dramatic revelation of the newer (apparently valid) will but Thackeray didn't bother to explain how that affected the relatives who'd been merrily spending the money for the past few years. No need to go to Chancery for 25 years like in Bleak House. He'd probably filled up enough pages by then and just wanted a happy ending.
Labels: movies, Victorian literature
posted by Mary Bennet | 12:01 pm
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