Oscar Nominations: beating the hell out of snub

So, the Oscar nominations came out yesterday and once again there are a slew of complaints of potential nominees being either overlooked or snubbed.  I always have to laugh at these since most of the whiners simply have problem dealing with the number issues.  There are only so many votes to go around.  Just because your favorite doesn't get enough votes to receive a nomination doesn't mean he was snubbed.  To snub someone to to purposefully stop that person in his tracks because you don't like that person.  By any other name, snubbing is just being rude, or possibly hateful, or maybe viciously angry.  "Lincoln" received twelve nominations, had it only received eleven, with no nod to Spielberg, that would have to be considered a snub.  People need to understand the Academy nominates ten films but only five directors so that means five directors are going to get the shitty end of the stick.  Are they being snubbed?  Hell no, they just got less votes then the five who were nominated.  The truth is people don't want to be considered losers so rather then admit to that they take a bat and beat the hell out of the 'snub.'

One of the biggest and loudest whiners of all time was Leonardo Di Caprio when he failed to get a nomination for "Titanic."  His problem was he believed his own press, that all those millions of people going to see the film did so because of the love story.  This is pure horse shit.  The world loves disasters and Hollywood understands this quite well; they've been making mega bucks off of them for years.  I went to see "Titanic" with a date and I can tell you, walking out of the theater afterwards, we were not having a heart to heart conversation about the love story.  Hell no, we were talking about how neat it was to watch that ship sink.  Of course no one would ever want to admit that, so the love story became the hook.  Watch the movie again and you'll realize how wooden Di Caprio's performance really is.  He didn't get a nomination because the real star of the movie was the Titanic itself, not him.

Clint Eastwood complained that he'd been hobbited by Peter Jackson's win for "Return of the King."  Only a man who talks to chairs would have failed to realize Jackson got the Oscar for directing a 17 hour (if you count the extended version) magnum opus.  Still, for Eastwood it was a snub.  

Last year Meryl Streep won Best Actress and a lot of "people" thought Viola Davis had been snubbed. This is horse shit, too.  These "people" evidently don't know their Oscar History.  Any actor who gives a good performance playing a real person, whether living or dead, is an odds on favorite to have their name called on Oscar Night.  So, if you're an nominated actor up against a Margaret Thatcher or a Truman Capote you might as well go and enjoy the evening for what it is and remember, you're not being snubbed.

My predictions for Oscar night?  Lincoln will get eight, Les Miz will get three and The Avengers will win what ever it's nominated for because it made so much money.

The cost of Dirty Harry, celluloid phony

With Vice President Joe Biden looking at creating some form of gun legislation, the crazies are coming out of the woodwork.  Of course they've always been there, never being satisfied to be subtle presence.  They damn anyone and everyone who they think is threatening their second amendment rights.  What makes these people moronic is Harry Callahan.  There are at least two generations of Americans who know who he is or at least what he said.  Two of his most memorable phrases are "read my lips," and "make my day."  Wayne LaPierre, of NRA fame,  is actually old enough to have seen at least one of the Dirty Harry movies in the theater.  It is not too difficult for me to imagine him going deer hunting, sighting and aiming at his target, making the kill, and saying "make my day."  All you need to do is look at him and see how that image fits.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of people like him, and all of them dumb as bricks.

Dirty Harry, celluloid phony

They don't seem to understand he is a fictional character, or that all of his words and actions were first written down in a script, or that the scene was short several times and a director chose the one he liked best, or even that a film editor cut and spliced the scene to achieve the desired effect.  For them, Dirty Harry and all of his words and actions are real.  How do I know this?  I listen to the people around me, those associates I work with, and now and then those boneheads on TV who want to be deemed voices of authority.  As one example I'll give you a large woman I work with me.  After the Aurora shootings I found her standing in the lunch room reading a comment by that horse's ass Louie Gohmert.  She actually said, "if I'd been there, I'd have taken out my gun, drawn a bead on him and put him down."  The trouble with this comment is that she didn't remember James Holmes was wearing body armor (big dumb shit duh).  When I pointed this out she replied "well, I would have gotten down behind the seats, lifted my gun and fired in the direction his shots were coming from."  When I pointed out she would not only have to contend with the volume of the movie, which was still playing, but with screams, and shrieking and wailing of 200 plus movie goers she looked at me blankly.  I also noted that the people in her row would run right over her, that she would  actually become a speed bump in their exit from the theater.  Even though you could see she was absolutely clueless about what that night must have really been like, she remained adamant, she would have taken out the shooter and been a heroine.

People don't understand.  They want to see themselves standing along in the Dirty Harry spotlight.  They want to say "make my day," and read my lips."  They need to learn that owning a gun and knowing how to use it does not make you wise.  It just means they have a lethal weapon in their possession, and in the wrong hands that weapon can unexpected kill a lot of people.  Until they have actually been in this type of situation, they need to keep their mouths shut.

 

Clint speaks!!!

No, I didn't chance to hear Clint Eastwood speak during the Grand Finale of the Republican Convention, though when they announced a surprise speaker his is the name I thought of first.  Why?  Because party organizers knew he would hit a home run right into the waiting gloves of all the young Republicans watching the final nights coverage.  Actually, that's not true at all.  A lot of young people, Republican and Democrat a like, will recognize the name but will not be able to put it to a face.  Their parents are the ones who went to see "Dirty Harry," not them.  If you say to them "make my day," they look at you clueless.  If they wanted these kids to vote, the organizers should have put as many young, vibrant Republicans on that stage as possible speaking as often as they could put a microphone in their hands.  Instead, they enlisted a quiet spoken, octogenarian who evidently spoke to an empty chair.

Every Which Way But Loose

Who knows what they were thinking?  Maybe they wanted to appeal to the loyal Senior Citizen vote.  Of course, in Pennsylvania the new Voter ID law is going to keep a lot of loyal seniors from voting because at a certain age they stop driving.  This means the Republican party will save a lot of money since they will no longer need to bus Seniors from their nursing homes to their polling stations.  Of course the real reason Clint was their was because he's white, and rich, and familiar to the 50 something crowd.