When Hollywood Doesn’t Like Itself in This Picture

The Oscar nominations were announced this morning, and there are plenty of articles telling you about the snubs and surprises. If we want, we can get granular on who deserved to be nominated and wasn’t, and who pulled out a nomination but perhaps didn’t deserve it. We should always remember that on an individual level, the awards are kind of meaningless. Maybe one person just campaigned more; maybe one studio spent more money than another. Maybe the rules are just outdated (Anatomy of a Fall earned five nominations, but not for Best Foreign Language Film because France chose to submit The Taste of Things instead as their country’s movie).

Instead, I think it’s worthwhile to pull back and see that Hollywood is not happy if you make a movie calling out Hollywood. They’re fine if you want to say that despite the trials and tribulations, Hollywood is a place where you can find success (hence the success of The Artist and Argo), but you don’t get to call out Hollywood as exploitative. Last year, Nope was shut out of the Oscars despite making a thoughtful argument about who gets to participate in entertainment, who gets discarded, and who gets to play the hero in the industry. The film was a critical and commercial success from a previous Oscar winner (writer/director Jordan Peele won Best Original Screenplay for Get Out), but critiquing Hollywood is not allowed.

We saw that again this year where May December only received a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. It’s important to remember that actors represent the largest branch of the Academy, and that aside from a handful of categories, each branch only nominates its own nominees (actors for actors, writers for writers, etc). May December is pointed in how it shows acting research as an exploitative means that’s ridiculous at best, and apathetically cruel at worst. Actors like to crow about the research they did to “become” the character, and yet May December asks what purpose such investigation really serves if it evades the truth in favor of self-serving accolades.

While May December clicked with critics groups, I’m not surprised that the Academy largely decided to discard the movie. May December, like Nope, represents the industry in a way they don’t care to think about, and the Oscars are, above all else, a celebration rather than an interrogation of Hollywood. Furthermore, with Hollywood at such fragile state right now, there was no way the industry would celebrate a streaming movie that critiques method acting. If you’re going to be a streaming movie, you better be Maestro where Bradley Cooper spent six years learning how to conduct a six-minute scene as Leonard Bernstein that tells us nothing about Bernstein or conducting. That’s what the Oscars want.

Recommendations

I’m still pretty new to Beehiiv, so no recommendations this week in terms of individual newsletters, but I’ll hopefully have a publication worth recommending next week.

Over in physical media, there aren’t any amazing deals, which is probably because we’re on the other side of the holiday season. I am intrigued that Major League is coming to 4K even though it’s not exactly what I would call a visually stunning movie. Still, it’s a good sports comedy. It also amuses me that it reteams Tom Berenger and Charlie Sheen just three years after they co-starred in the Oscar-winning Platoon.

Note: I receive a small percentage of sales made through my Amazon Associates links. 

What I’m Watching 

We finally finished Seinfeld, and I didn’t realize until I returned to it (easily more than a decade after I used to watch reruns on cable) how much it crafted my sense of humor. While I have a lot of love for comforting comedies like The Office and Parks and Recreation, the “no hugs, no learning” credo of Seinfeld allowed me to relish its dark absurdities. The show certainly became more cartoonish in its final few seasons, but even that I think was to its benefit. The finale is a still a dud (it feels like a narrative suited to a clip show rather than anything that resembled a typical Seinfeld episode), but overall, it was fun to revisit the show.

What I’m Reading 

I finally wrapped up Dune, which I think at 800 pages is the longest novel I’ve ever taken on (people who casually read fantasy tomes are laughing at me). I liked it a lot, and I’m curious to see how Denis Villeneuve tackles Dune: Part Two since the novel backs off from the palace intrigue stuff and leans more into some stranger aspects as well as wrestling with Paul’s fear of creating a galaxy-wide jihad. But I also think that what makes the book so interesting is that author Frank Herbert shows how his characters are simply moving through history, and despite their power, they can’t fight larger forces moving them to circumstances beyond their control. I don’t know how soon I’ll get around to reading Dune Messiah, but it’s on my list. 

I’ve now moved on to Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. One of my goals for this year is to make my way through Rick Perlstein’s series on modern conservativism, which starts with Before the Storm, then goes to Nixonland, The Invisible Bridge, and Reaganland. It’s a lot of reading, but I feel like it’s important to understand how we got [gestures at everything] here.

In other reads:

My Unraveling by Tom Scocca [New York Magazine] – This article made me really sad. Part of it is just the subject matter—Scocca had a terrible ailment that no one could easily figure out, and he was also unemployed to boot. Our healthcare system is a nightmare, and Scocca’s a talented journalist who couldn’t find work. But what really made the article so sad is how alone Scocca is in dealing with his issues. He’s married with children, but in his telling, he’s drifting out in space. That’s not to say his wife was unsupportive, but it seems like Scocca had no support system outside his immediate family. There were no friends to take him to the hospital or to stay with him and be his advocate with doctors. While the point of the story is how fragile our circumstances can become in America, the subtext running through Scocca’s narrative is one of loneliness. 

‘America Is Under Attack’: Inside the Anti-D.E.I. Crusade by Nicholas Confessore [The New York Times] – I don’t know how good this article is even though it’s well-reported. For starters, it seems pretty obvious that if you’re crusading against D.E.I., you’re a person who doesn’t like what D.E.I. stands for, literally: “diversity, equality, and inclusion.” Uncovering a trove of emails showing that the people behind these initiatives are your typical bigots isn’t that surprising, although it is unnerving how well-organized they are. Also, while they’ve had some successes, the article also points out that what they’re selling continues to poll poorly with a majority of Americans. Where the article falls short is in ignoring the media strategy of the anti-D.E.I. group as if The New York Times didn’t spend weeks running stories against Claudine Gay, who had a pro-D.E.I. agenda. The part that’s missing from Confessore’s story is that the awful people he’s chronicling have willing handmaidens in self-proclaimed centrists that will buy the lie (“We just care about academic freedom!”) to push the outcome (“only white, male, conservatives should hold any position of power”).

What I’m Hearing

Anamanaguchi mashing up Scott Pilgrim with the Mortal Kombat theme? Yes, please!

What I’m Playing

I feel like I’m at opposite ends of the spectrum right now. I’m playing Super Mario Bros. Wonder, which is an absolute delight. It’s easily my favorite Mario game since 2006’s New Super Mario Bros. for the NintendoDS. I’ve also started playing The Last of Us Part II: Remastered, which I know (based on everything I’ve heard since the game was released in 2020) will bum me out despite being an incredible experience. I also need to find some time to squeeze in a replay of Final Fantasy VII Remake before Rebirth comes out at the end of February.

Over on Decoding Everything

Dave is still recapping his time at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, so be sure to take note of the indies should be on the lookout for later this year.