So, the Academy Award nominations have been announced, and you know what that means: another article about lack of diversity in Academy Award nominations.

CNN.com points out that even Javier Bardem, up for best actor, doesn’t count, because he’s “European.”

Making him white – and of course, a monster.

Anyway, CNN frets that the diversity among movie audiences isn’t reflected in the awards, something I’d like to agree with, since I hate Hollywood.

I mean, Tinseltown is a place where if you’re in the military, you’re a psycho; if you’re from a square state, you bully gays; and if you wear a suit, you’re racist. The only person who retains any nobility in a Hollywood film these days are animated and transgendered.

So it’s fun to see the film industry get a dose of their own medicine.

Except, it’s wrong.

To me, it’s racist to assume a diverse audience expects “diverse” movies. Meaning, blacks can’t enjoy The Social Network because everyone is white; and Greeks will hate Black Swan, because the ballerinas aren’t hairy.

Fact is, all people want the same thing – good movies that tell great stories – color be damned.

Here’s my solution: get a diversity expert to assign the roles. Why couldn’t Mark Zuckerberg be played by a Korean lesbian? Frankly, The Kings Speech would have been far more entertaining if said King was played by that big gal from Precious.

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As I’ve written before, 2010 was actually a good year for movies.  The King’s Speech, The Fighter, Inception, Toy Story 3, Tangled, and How to Train Your Dragon were all great entertainment.  We’ve seen terrific starring roles from actors ranging from the heretofore unwatchable James Franco to the ever impressive Christian Bale, from the magnificent Colin Firth to the chameleonic Geoffrey Rush.  We’ve seen some actresses in supporting roles who have outshone their second-tier parts: Melissa Leo and Amy Adams in The Fighter, Helena Bonham Carter in The King’s Speech.

But when we look at the leading actresses of 2010, the dearth of great performances and great parts is stunning.  The Golden Globe nominees for best actress this year were Halle Berry in the anonymous flick Frankie and Alice, playing a crazy person in her usual over-the-top style; Nicole Kidman in the anonymous flick Rabbit Hole, playing a grieving mother in her usual cold and remote style; Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone, playing a teenage girl looking for her meth-making dad; Natalie Portman in Black Swan, playing a crazy person with a constipated look plastered on her mug; and Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine, playing a spoiled girl who gets knocked up, married, and presumably divorced.  Has anyone seen any of these women in any of these films?  And if the disastrous Natalie Portman – Queen Amidala masturbating, anyone? – is the frontrunner for Best Actress at the Oscars, how far have female figures fallen?

Far.  Quick, think of the ten greatest living film actors.  It’s not that tough – we have iconic male film stars all the time.  Now think of the ten greatest living film actresses.  Now take away all women over 50.  Still thinking, aren’t you? (more…)

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BEST PICTURE
127 HOURS
BLACK SWAN
INCEPTION
THE FIGHTER
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
THE KING’S SPEECH
THE SOCIAL NETWORK
TOY STORY 3
TRUE GRIT
WINTER’S BONE

BEST DIRECTOR
DARREN ARONOFSKY – BLACK SWAN
DAVID FINCHER – THE SOCIAL NETWORK
TOM HOOPER – THE KING’S SPEECH
JOEL AND ETHAN COEN – TRUE GRIT
DAVID O. RUSSELL – THE FIGHTER

BEST ACTOR
JEFF BRIDGES – TRUE GRIT
JAVIER BARDEM – BIUTIFUL
JESSE EISENBERG – THE SOCIAL NETWORK
COLIN FIRTH – THE KING’S SPEECH
JAMES FRANCO – 127 HOURS

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At the upcoming Academy Awards, “Crash” director Paul Haggis wants Hollywood to wear white ribbons in solidarity with Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, two filmmakers sentenced to six-years in prison in Iran for conspiring to make an anti-government film critical of that country’s regime. Well, that’s certainly a righteous cause and we were actually going to applaud Haggis for it until we read further and found the leftist, anti-American filmmaker whipping out the ole’ moral equivalence argument against the very country that’s made him wealthy while making films critical of it and the troops who defend his right to do so…

Today’s Incredible Shrinking Los Angeles Times:

Haggis, the director of “Crash,” and others are urging Hollywood stars to pin on white lapel ribbons to register their opposition to the Iranian government’s treatment of acclaimed director Jafar Panahi (“Offside”) and fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, who were sentenced last month to six years in prison and banned from making movies for 20 years. …

Though Haggis does not know Panahi and Rasoulof personally, and the Iranian government is notoriously resistant to outside pressure, he said he felt compelled do to something when he heard the news.

“When I see something like this, it hits pretty close to home,” said Haggis, who with Sean Penn, Martin Scorsese and producer Harvey Weinstein joined with Amnesty International to condemn the sentence and sign Amnesty’s petition calling for international pressure on Iran to lift it.  

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When the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, announced that they were going to remake True Grit, it sparked all of the usual arguments about the merits and demerits of such undertakings.

The first film, released in 1969, sits in the mid-upper tier of movies made by its star, John Wayne (as well as winning him his only Oscar), and as such has achieved a kind of classic status among both Wayne fans and lovers of good westerns. There is a brand of theatergoer who maintains that there is no need to craft fresh takes on successful pictures, any more than we need new painters to dutifully re-imagine a masterwork like Da Vinci’s Last Supper.

On the other side of the debate are those who see good reasons for taking another swing at this piñata. Ever since the appearance of Wayne’s Grit, many fans of the novel — which first appeared forty-two years ago as a Saturday Evening Post serial written by Charles Portis (1933–) — have been keen to see a cinematic version that hews far closer to the plot of the book. Others see remakes as akin to a contemporary orchestra re-recording — and in the process re-interpreting — a famous piece of classical music, imbuing it with their own particular sonic signature. Seen in this light, the announcement of a new True Grit was a welcome one.

So now that the movie is out, who is right? Is the remake ill-advised, or a welcome addition to the western canon? Does the 2010 version have what it takes to make it a classic in its own right, or is it destined to be forever overshadowed by the 1969 original? (more…)

Hollywood head scratcher of the day:

James Franco and Anne Hathaway will co-host the 83rd Academy Awards in February, the producers of the Oscars show announced Monday. …

Hathaway, on her fifth appearance when she takes the stage on February 27, is currently in “Love and Other Drugs,” and was nominated for an Oscar in 2008 for her lead performance in “Rachel Getting Married.”

“James Franco and Anne Hathaway personify the next generation of Hollywood icons — fresh, exciting and multi-talented,” said telecast producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer.

“We hope to create an Oscars broadcast that will both showcase their incredible talents and entertain the world” when stars and industry chiefs gather for the show at Hollywood’s Kodak Theater.

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WARNING: ‘FLORA & FAWNA’ IS CRUDE (and this is even cruder than the last one)

Striving to outdo a rival celebutard at the 2010 Slammy Awards, Flora and Fawna debut a radical new eco-trend: The Booty Blast Blocker which traps CO2 emissions of a decidedly personal kind.  But the ass-blast trapping trend backfires in ways the girls may never be able to live down.

YouTube FLORA & FAWNA - Gasbags

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It’s been roughly a week since actress Sigourney Weaver blamed his lack of breasts as the reason James Cameron lost out to Kathryn Bigelow in the battle for the Best Director Oscar.  Yet, there’s been no media feeding frenzy as a result, even though Weaver essentially said Bigelow didn’t really deserve her Oscar – it was simply a matter of gender politics at work.

Shouldn’t women’s groups be outraged by such a remark? Or did they see a kernel of truth in what Weaver said?  The National Organization for Women has nothing about the incident on its web site.

So Big Hollywood reached out to several women connected to the film industry to get their thoughts on Weaver’s accusations.

Ally Acker with Reel Women Media says politics play a factor in why certain people win that golden statuette: “When Mo’Nique said at the Oscars, ‘I would like to thank the Academy for showing that it can be about the performance and not the politics,’ she must have been delusional,” Acker says. “Her performance was good, but her award was all about politics.” (more…)

The 2010 Oscar ceremonies have come and gone without a word spoken about “The Stoning of Soraya M.” The searing drama, based on true events, follows the torture of an innocent Iranian woman charged with adultery. It’s the kind of message movie Hollywood doesn’t much care for, stories showcasing horrors that can’t be directly blamed on western culture.

But the drama, released today on DVD and Blu-ray, deserved a smattering of Oscar buzz all the same. What other movies bring the issue of Sharia law to light in such fashion? More importantly, why didn‘t Shohreh Aghdashloo’s blistering performance earn her a place in the Best Actress category?

“Stoning,” directed and co-written by “The Path to 9/11” screenwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh, takes us to a remote Iranian village under the thumb of Sharia law. Young, attractive Soraya (Mozhan Marno) is raising four children with little help from her husband, Ali (Navid Negahban). When Ali decides he’d rather be married to a 14-year-old Iranian girl, he tries to pressure Soraya into granting him a divorce. (more…)

Usually when I’m moved to write a searingly original piece for Big Hollywood, I do a quick search of the Internet to see if my thoughts might not really be as groundbreaking as I thought. More often than not, I come across an article that says exactly what I was trying to say, only more clearly and eloquently. I then post a link to it on Twitter with the caption “good read!” and I’m done.

Blogging is easy!

Such was the case with my analysis of  The Hurt Locker. I loved the film. After watching it, however, the thing that bothered me was the quote at the beginning, “War is a drug.” In the end, it serves as the theme of the film, but I found it to be way off the mark, and not even supported by the film itself. To me, The Hurt Locker seemed to be clearly not about addiction, but about purpose. What would motivate someone to return to a horrific war zone, to face death and dismemberment on a daily basis? A sense of purpose. That is what motivates people, not “a rush.”

I set to writing. Then I read Walter Owen’s piece in Vanity Fair, who put it together better than I would have: (more…)

As we move towards tonight’s granddaddy of all awards shows, I am starting to wonder several things: First, after seeing an editorial in the New York Times and a very drab and unhappy looking professor of women’s studies on Fox News call for just one best actor and best supporting actor award to end sex discrimination in Hollywood, I am starting to think lots of people are reading my blogs. Over a year ago I poked a little fun at the politically correct Screen Actors Guild for not using the word “actress” but still give and award for a “female actor.” The left has now jumped on my bandwagon so maybe there is hope for America and Hollywood!

The second thing that has been on my mind is which brand of political correctness will prevail this year’s Oscars. Will the “I’m voting for ‘Avatar’ because it ridicules America and its military” faction be stronger than the “It’s time a woman won best director” faction?

There are other political considerations in this year’s voting but this got me to thinking about past years and whether or not the nominations and awards really are all about the art. It seems that all sorts of considerations, political, social, personalities and career get mixed in and often the storytelling gets left on the cutting room floor. In the interest of brevity I will limit my comments to the years I can actually remember, which, if I am honest, would rule out several years in the early seventies and mid-eighties. (more…)

It’s that time of the year again — Oscar time!  (Cue “Hooray It’s Hollywood!” music.)  I know it’s supposed to be uncool to care, but I grew up watching the Oscars with my mom every year, and just can’t kick the habit.

Like some grim tribal ritual whose original meaning is lost in the mists of time, I will most probably sit down in front of the tube at the appointed hour, and brace myself for the onslaught of awkward acceptance speeches, corny jokes, and interminable dance numbers (please, God, no dance numbers!).

The experts agree there are two main contenders for Best Picture.  (What would we do without experts?)  One is a movie about a peaceful, idyllic land invaded by an evil military force trying to steal their resources.  The other one is called Avatar.

The struggle between Avatar and The Hurt Locker has gone back and forth.  Avatar was an early favorite, but Hurt Locker seems to have enjoyed a late General Petraeus-like surge.

Then in the final days, an ugly controversy struck Hurt Locker as one of its producers had the gall to ask people to vote for his movie.  Imagine that!  Doesn’t he know that Hollywood is a respectable place where aggressive self-promotion and crass commercialism are strictly off-limits? (more…)

UPDATE: Welcome Farkers! Be sure to leave your snark-doesn’t-equal-intellect comments below, and we’ll forward them to the editor’s at Gawker who are always on the lookout for snark-doesn’t-equal-intellect talent. End Update

At least Bill Maher didn’t wish rectal cancer upon us. But The Least Self-Deprecating Man On The Planet does use his unlimited supply of smarmy circular logic to suggest we conservatives stop criticizing Hollywood, especially during the Oscars. His reasoning? Well, in his mind, it has something to do with liberals being smarter than us because they don’t elect unqualified celebrities to national office…or something. And how he manages to summon enough denial to spend a few hundred words on the subject of unqualified celebrities holding elected office without mentioning the words “Barack” or “Obama” is beyond me.

In order to hold tight to this theory, Maher has to dismiss Ronald Reagan as “Bonzo’s buddy” and Sarah Palin as “Miss Wasilla.” Someone might want to remind the former comedian that in order for jokes to be funny they should illuminate truth not attempt to hide it. But here are a couple of my favorite lines from his Variety article, the ones that reveal so much about their author:

Politics has become the safety school for show business washouts who are just looking for a way to stay in front of the camera[.]

Maher thinks he’s talking about people like Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger who seek elected office. What he’s really doing, though, is engaging in the art of projection. Unfortunately, Bill Maher doesn’t have a fraction of the self-awareness necessary to realize how well that statement describes him and his. After all, where would Maher be if he hadn’t turned into a nasty leftist politico — if the show business washout hadn’t become just another Hollywood Frat Boy who turned to politics in order to — how did he phrase it? — oh, yes: stay in front of the camera. (more…)

For the past few years I’ve avoided watching the Academy Awards having finally gotten the message that they’re just a big fat marketing tool that have nothing to do with quality filmmaking. My self-imposed boycott of the televised event was difficult in the beginning for this diehard movie buff but became easier after the dismal fare gave me no films to root for. This year I will be watching just to witness the outcome of what has truly been an amazing year in films. Forget the two billion dollar box office for “Avatar.” No-the big question is does Hollywood have the cojones to pick “The Blind Side” as Best Picture? Nah! 

C’est impossible for the far left industry to award a film that actually has a Republican lifetime NRA member as its heroine. I just recently managed to catch the film that was budgeted at $29 million and has earned over $240 million so far and was blown away by Sandra Bullock’s performance. This savvy actress supposedly took a pay cut and opted for a percentage. I hope it was for the gross as Hollywood accountants tend to bilk those who choose a percentage of the net. 

Bullock has been nominated for Best Actress but if she wins I’ll be pleasantly surprised-no- I’ll be shocked. Her competitors are more in line with the ideologues who vote for their peers. There’s uber-liberal Meryl Streep whom I loved as Julia Child in “Julia & Julia”; Helen Mirren a great actress who had no problem playing lewd in her earlier career. Then there’s Gabourey Sidibe for “Precious,” who represents the victimized black girl who ironically could have used a savior like Leigh Anne Tuohy, Bullock’s real life character in “The Blind Side.” (more…)

How did the film industry get so screwed up and turned upside down that the only feeling the annual watching of the Academy Awards elicits from me is dread? Every year, three things hover on my calendar like a big black rain cloud: prostate exam, tax season, Academy Awards — and the  metaphorical similarity between all three is somewhat striking.

Obviously my career choice makes viewing the ultimate Hollywood award orgy necessary, otherwise I would return to what is my default emotion for most things: utter indifference. But how sad that it’s come to this. Going back to Johnny Carson’s hosting straight through to Billy Crystal’s, the Oscars were once one of the top three high points of the television viewing season, right after “Battle of the Network Stars” and “Dick Clark’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes.”

Maybe I’m the one who’s changed. Maybe the ceremony was always filled with a striking lack of class – with sanctimonious preening and political abuse hurled at me and mine. Regardless, over time those nine hours have simply gotten more and more torturous to sit through. You’re either on edge waiting to be insulted or on edge hoping one of the few movie stars you still hold some affection for doesn’t disappoint in some way. (more…)

On Sunday, March 7th, 2010, the best picture winner at the Academy Awards will be announced. Although there are ten nominees in that category this year (up from the usual five), they will likely not include the following:  “Twilight,” “The Hangover,” “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” “The Proposal,” or “Star Trek.” Undoubtedly, none of the “Twilight” pictures will ever be recognized by the Academy, though one of them was named best movie of the year at the People’s Choice Awards (PCA) last week.  Looking at the list of acting nominees and winners from that award show,  it seems unlikely that many of those nominees will receive Oscar nods, but one person who might be able to get nominated for both is Sandra Bullock.

This year, Bullock won “Best Movie Actress” at the PCA. On the PCA website it does not clarify if she won for a specific movie or for her total work last year as a whole (where she appeared in movies like “The Proposal” and “The Blind Side”), but her performance in the latter has garnered her both commercial and critical success. In fact, “The Blind Side” may actually help to win Bullock an Oscar nomination.  (more…)

The Champ marks the third time in a row — after John Wayne and Burt Reynolds — that I’ve chosen a movie starring an actor many deride as a “natural,” a “ham,” someone who gained stardom not by skill but mere charisma. The sort of rough-hewn appeal epitomized by Wallace Beery (1885–1949) isn’t something that can be taught by Stanislavski or faked with The Method. It comes from within, and evokes American qualities and ideals that have never gone out of style.

Beery was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, the youngest son of three. He dropped out of school in fourth grade (“I was too dumb to get any farther”) and ran away for a few months, bumming around the Midwest, spurred onward not by a hatred of family but by a sense of pure adventure. At sixteen he lied his way into a job as an elephant handler with a circus, spending the next three years traveling across the country, and even crediting himself with being the first to train elephants to use their trunks to grab the tails of the elephants in front of them in order to keep them all in line. But eventually he realized that, where bull handling was concerned, “my ambition had been no ambition at all, that I was just drifting.” When Beery heard that his older brother Noah was working on Broadway in New York, he hurried there to try his hand at the acting game. (more…)

The Oscar-nominated movies in recent years have been enough to make a grown man cry… Or worse. Consider “There Will Be Blood,” “No Country for Old Men” and “The Reader” as a sampling of the morbid films jockeying for Oscar glory. This year, add Oscar wannabes “The Road” and “Precious” to the list.

Newsweek scribe Ramin Setoodeh writes about the trend in the liberal magazine’s latest edition. Setoodeh bemoans the fact that some of the best films lately take a too sober view of society. On that we can agree.

Then, Setoodeh whips out his trusty Bush bashing cudgel and starts a whacking:

You can blame Hollywood’s doom and gloom on the Oscars, but I’m not going to. Instead, I think it’s George W. Bush’s fault. Most liberal directors felt restless under his presidency, and they pushed the envelope with over-the-top, operatic tragedies. (more…)

Director Michael Moore has a new movie coming soon – “Capitalism: A Love Story.”

It could only mean one thing – OK, many, many things:

• Rave reviews from at least 80 percent of film critics. And I’m being conservative.
• More press coverage than any documentary filmmaker could ever dream of.
• Few, if any, labels associated with him in the press. Liberal? Nah, he’s a muckraker, an iconoclast, a rebel, a truth teller…
• Oscar buzz aplenty. Feel badly for any other documentary filmmaker who did great work this year. Chances are you won’t be taking home the Oscar for your troubles. Better luck next year.
• More softball questions thrown his way by alleged journalists – this time, Oprah herself will get in on the action.

Moore, who won the Best Documentary Oscar for “Bowling for Columbine” and gave us the factually challenged “Fahrenheit 9/11,” has helped shape the film industry for better and worse. (more…)

Well after its phenomenal success of eight Oscars, four Golden Globes, seven BAFTA’s, and $350 million at the boxoffice, “Slumdog Millionaire” has managed to stay alive. As much an amazing longshot victor as its hero, an urchin from the Mumbai slums cum tea server at a phone call center who wins a fortune in an Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,” “Slumdog” has kept making news in ways deeply rooted in its own depiction of the world.

Recently the film’s British director Danny Boyle, serving as jury president of the 12th Shanghai Film Festival, confided during a panel discussion that on “Slumdog” he had shed the patronizing, “imperialist” mentality, relying heavily on a local Indian crew. Boyle also observed that while it was “regrettable” that Beijing imposed censorship restrictions on its filmmakers, he’d nonetheless love to work in China, as it would be a “challenge learning Mandarin.” Boyle neglected to mention that on “Slumdog” he’d skipped the challenge of learning Hindi, necessitating an Indian co-director, and also skipped the patronizing practice of paying Western wages, and the low pay for local child actors would fuel most of the subsequent controversies. (more…)