The Academy Awards show has a fine tradition of pampered celebrities popping off with something stupid when they hit the stage.  It must be something about TV cameras and the opportunity to make damn fools of themselves before tens of millions of people around the world that the Hollywoodoids find irresistible.  Notice how you never hear any fallout from the “technical awards” ceremony?  You know, the non televised ceremony recognizing the boring technological stuff that actually makes movies possible that is usually held at the Beverly Hills Elks Lodge with hosts Steve Guttenberg, Charo and/or one of the lesser Sweathogs.

Some of the past magic moments are legendary.  Remember back in 1993, when Tim Robbins and his then-gal pal, tranny vomit insanity enthusiast Susan Sarandon, harangued the crowd about the detention of Haitian refugees?  Of course, right after that these stars led the way by opening up the grounds of their mansion to these huddled Haitian masses.

Roberto Benigni engaged in memorably tiresome antics after winning “Best Foreign Language Film of 1997” for the Worst Film of All Time, the insanely appalling Life Is Beautiful.  Life has certainly aged well, and Benigni’s shtick has only gotten fresher, contributing to the runaway freight train of success that his career has become since then.

Another highlight was the 1973 appearance of Indian activist Sacheen Littlefeather to accept Marlon Brando’s Oscar for The Godfather.  Of course, after that powerful indictment of American society, things began to change.  Her earnest speech was the inspiration behind the movement to allow Native Americans to reject reservation socialism, to fully embrace the free market model, and to find prosperity delivering quality entertainment, gaming and vacation opportunities to their fellow Americans.  Or so I’ve heard.  Little known fact:  She convinced Brando to let her accept the award by offering him a muffin.

Occasionally the real people who actually make movies happen – the teamsters, the grips, and the other hardscrabble folks behind the scenes – will make their presence known during a particularly stupid speech.  For example, back in 2003, Michael Moore decided to use his win to spout off as America headed to war in Iraq.  Running down our country in front of a teamster?  Bad, bad idea.   The thunderous booing of these all-American Joes and Janes humiliated the clown who fancies himself their voice – not that he’d be caught dead within a dozen miles of blue collar Americans.  It also led to Steve Martin’s joke about Big Mikey being helped into his limo’s trunk – a zinger on a couple levels.  Moore was lucky to get out of there without an Oscar suppository.

So who is going to spout off this year?  Oh, the competition is fierce.

Let’s look at the Best Picture nominees.  There’s what – 37 of them this year?  So many opportunities to say something dumb.  

The Blind Side and Up are positive pictures with important messages of hope, so we don’t need to bother with thinking about what happens if they win because they won’t.  A Serious Man takes religion kind of seriously; count that out too.

The same with District 9, though if it does sneak through – remember 3-6 Mafia – then expect the producers to repeat, in an indecipherable Boer accent, its profound message that apartheid of intergalactic crustaceans is very, very bad.

Up In The Air is a movie about (among other things) the trauma of losing your livelihood.  Don’t hold your breath for an unflattering reference to the current Administration’s campaign of employment extermination.  At best, watch for an “It’s still all Bush’s fault!” sideswipe if George Clooney takes Best Actor.

The same is true of the urban nightmare Precious.  As we know, the ghetto was a fairytale wonderland before the BusHitler contingent came in and ruined it.

A win for An Education, a tale of a teenage girl having sex with an adult, is the perfect moment for a shout-out of solidarity with Roman Polanski – who, after all, is the real victim.   

If Inglorious Basterds wins, look for lots of log-rolling about how brave the Academy was to choose it, with its graphic violence, interminable stretches of over-praised dialogue and coherence-optional story line.  The courageous ballot-casters of Hollywood are the real heroes.  And heaven forbid chatty Quentin Tarantino win as Best Director.  First, he’s an overpraised hack.  Second, his speech will take 20 minutes out of our lives that we’ll never get back.

You’ll hear plenty about how the producers “support” our soldiers if The Hurt Locker pulls off Best Picture.  It would be nice to hear some support for servicemembers not just as tragic victims but for their performance in winning the war they found (and still find) important enough to volunteer to go off and risk their lives fighting.  In the off chance that someone, somehow should utter the word “victory,” watch the entire proceedings come to a flying stop.

If Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win Best Director, expect lots of talk of glass ceilings, breaking barriers and “the pioneers who came before me.”  That’s all okay – she really is a trailblazer, you know, kind of like Sarah Palin.  Nice to see Hollywood finally catching up with the Republican Party on gender diversity.

Now, if Jeremy Renner wins Best Actor for The Hurt Locker, I expect nothing but class.  This is a guy who seems to have worked hard, perfected his craft, and finally caught a break.  In interviews he seems not entitled but – gasp! – grateful, and he always gives credit to others like Anthony Mackie, his co-star who was freakin’ robbed of a Best Supporting Actor nomination.

Similarly, if Sandra Bullock wins for her role as a decent human being – for many other actors, this is a huge stretch – I expect a classy speech.  The same is true about Meryl Streep and the rest of the Best Actress contenders.  However, in the Best Supporting Actor category, we might have some awesome opportunities for inanity. 

Matt Damon is nominated and he’s sure to pick up Tim Robbins’ Torch O’ Stupidity and carry it aloft.  There’s health care reform, climate change and, of course, supporting the troops but not the war – it’s a cornucopia of topics upon which he can offer the full benefit of his inexperience.

Woody Harrelson plays a soldier, so should he win, look for some “We support the soldiers but not the war” nonsense – assuming he moderates his pre-ceremony bong hit intake enough to find the stage.

And then there’s Avatar, the bête noir of Big Hollywood.  Will we see James Cameron issue a humble statement of regret that its giddy depiction of American soldiers being slaughtered was misconstrued?  Doubtful, since it hasn’t been misconstrued.  Cameron’s petty god complex has been in full effect for a couple of decades now, so don’t look for humility.  More likely, if the King of the World wins we’ll see shrill crowing about his come-from-behind triumph over the unnamed “critics” who refuse to suspend their disbelief and love of country and embrace the magic that is his masterpiece, Space Fahrenheit-Pocahontas 9/11.  

And, no matter what, to the extent it comes up, he’ll “support” the troops.  They always support the troops.  Just not anything the troops actually do.

The question and answer period quickly descended into the kind of self-flagellation that white liberals and modern academia have come to demand whenever we discuss the issue of race in America. It’s important to fact check these types of speakers because they allow so much misinformation and disharmony into our culture.

Ask yourself: Why is an author of a book designed to empower black people so wrong about their accomplishments and history? Could it be that she is profiting off of showing a slanted view? I took a detailed recording of Sapphire’s talk, so that it could appropriately discusses and ultimately rebutted, if necessary. Among several of the ridiculous things that Sapphire blamed on the white man was the disintegration of the black family from slavery, but in reality, slaves actually had stronger marriages than Sapphire would have us believe:

Sapphire: In any article in the New York Times, Ishmael Reed who is criticizing Precious mentions that incest is not confined to one group of people.

I agree, but I argue that it does have a different place in the African-American culture than it does in white American culture where it is equally as prevalent. During slavery, many black women were impregnated by their masters who were often their fathers. The white male was literally the master of the plantation. He had sex with who he wanted to – black women, children, and men. This was the family structure most slaves were exposed to. Black men were not allowed to act out the role of the father. They themselves were raped like women in addition to being turned into stud-like breeders. Black people I would argue as a race have yet to accept the fact that our men were treated like “bitches” during slavery. Nor have we dealt with the impact that has had on the generations of us that have come out of slavery.

Fact check: The black family was disintegration long afterward, thanks to the Great Society programs.

From Pages 188 to 189 of Thomas Sowell’s Ethnic America: A History (Paperback) [Internal citations omitted] [Emphasis mine]:

The black world was ultimately the only world in which slaves could find emotional fulfillment and close attachments, and to become a pariah there meant personal devastation . . . Incest taboos, for example, were more widely observed among slaves than among contemporary whites. Marriages between first cousins were common among white slave owners, but very rare among black slaves, in keeping with differences in incest taboos between Europe and Africa. . . . Even slave owners found it expedient to accommodate the wider incest taboos of black by allowing marriages between their slaves and slaves who lived on other farms and plantations, even when there were eligible mates (by white standards) in the slave plantation community. In one rare case of nuclear family incest, the slave owner was forced to sell a father who made his daughter pregnant, for other slaves had threatened to kill him.”. . .

Slave marriages and slave family relations had no legal standing, but usually lasted for decades, if not a lifetime. . . . Sometimes slave marriages were forcibly terminated, usually by the sale of one of the partners. Most of these forcibly terminated marriages had also lasted many years. . . .

Later on to a question of how to fix public education in the inner city, Sapphire said that the problems of the inner city could be solved with reduced class-size.

Fact check: There’s little evidence that class size has anything to do with educational attainment.

University of Rochester economist Eric Hanushek examined 277 separate published studies on the effect of teacher-pupil ratios and class-size averages on student achievement. Only 15 percent suggested that there is a “statistically significant” improvement in achievement, 72 percent found no effect at all, and 13 percent found that reducing class size had a negative effect on achievement.

. . . Although American students lag behind other students in international testing, American classrooms have an average class size of 23 students, incredibly few compared with the averages of 49 in South Korea, 44 in Taiwan, and 36 in Japan. Washington has an average class size below the national average, yet ranks near the bottom in academic achievement. We shouldn’t forget that average class size in American schools dropped from 30 in 1961 to 23 in 1998, without any improvement in standardized-test scores. (Source: Casey Lartigue, Education Week, September 29, 1999).

Sapphire said that she was taking some notes and planning to write a new novel featuring the real lives of black women. Maybe she should take some notes from Zora Neale Hurston, who she lionized after responding to a question about the similarities between Push and Their Eyes Were Watching God: “I’m so into Zora Neale Hurston that for a little while I was telling people to call me Zora,” she said.

The real Zora Neal Hurston would be disgusted at the kind of poverty novelty that Sapphire exploits.

She wrote, in her famous essay, How It Feels to Be Colored Me:

I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. . . . I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature has somehow given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it.

It’s the old idea, trite but true, of helping people to help themselves that will be the only salvation of the Negro in this country. No one from the outside can do it for him.

Now wouldn’t it be cool if they made a movie about that?

From ABC’s 20/20 segment on “The Blind Side”:

Deborah Roberts: There are some black people who feel a little uneasy about the notion of the wealthy white family comes in to help the poor black kid…

Michael Oher:  I don’t understand why people would feel that way because as long as somebody’s, uh, somebody’s helping somebody and taking, you know, somebody off the streets,  I don’t care, you know, black or white, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Two powerful and very different movies dealing with the problem of neglected and abused children in America were honored at this year’s Golden Globe Awards.  Precious is a very difficult and painful movie to watch, depicting the utter devastation wrought in the horrible life of Clareece Precious Jones, a fictional but utterly believable character with countless real-life counterparts, while The Blind Side is perhaps the prototypical feel-good movie of the year (and a crowd-pleasing $200-million blockbuster), dealing with the success story of the real-life Michael Oher, who was adopted by a middle class white family and went on to play college football and become an NFL star.  But the two movies starkly show two distinctly different approaches to the problem.

Bluntly stated, Precious presents the liberal solution — let the government do it — and The Blind Side presents the conservative solution — do it yourself.

Precious, an illiterate, pregnant sixteen-year-old girl, trapped in a public school system that passes her along even though she has learned nothing, raped repeatedly by her father resulting in a mongoloid child at age 12 as well as  her current pregnancy, beaten and humiliated her entire life by the sick beast who bore her, is the end product (sadly, one of thousands upon thousands) of one of the greatest liberal crimes of the 20th Century: Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

When the Johnson Administration expanded the AFDC program (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) in the early 1960s to include any household with children in which a male breadwinner was absent (theretofore it had been restricted to widows with children), the devastation it brought to inner-city family life was pervasive and undeniable.  As Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen described it in A Patriot’s History of the United States,  “The war on poverty managed to destroy black marriages and family formation at a faster rate than the most brutal slaveholder had ever dreamed.” (p. 688)

By creating an incentive for poor  women to remain unmarried so that they could receive taxpayer-funded subsidies, and by further increasing the amount of aid for every additional child they birthed, government assistance from 1965 to 1975 nearly doubled the illegitimate birth rate among blacks from 28% to 49%, reaching a staggering 65% in 1989.

By making black men irrelevant to the support of the children they fathered, and attempting to replace their contribution to the family with a welfare check, liberal policies inflicted nearly permanent damage to the very people they sought to help.  These policies have metastasized into a permanent underclass, dependent on subsistence level funding from taxpayer monies, and forever after terrorized by exploitative politicians tightening their grip on power by promising  their payments would decrease or stop altogether if they did not continue to vote for them.

And so we get Precious. Trapped in an apartment with her government-subsidized mother, who allows her boyfriend (Precious’ own biological father) to do unspeakable things to her from infancy onward; lost in a school system that ignores her, and bound by her own ignorance, she escapes the horrors of her life by living in a fantasy world of pop culture dreams that flicker across her television, and she is utterly failed by every government system created to save her.  The government monopoly on public schools fails to educate her; the Social Services Department fails to protect her; the welfare system fails to lift her out of poverty.

But if Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was instead the secretary of Health and Human Services, undoubtedly she would say,  “The system worked.”  It certainly worked for Precious’ mother, who knows exactly how to work the system, as we see whenever she bats her eyes and plays the victim for the social workers who fall for her act and keep the checks coming.

And in fact, in Precious, the system does work in exactly the way it was designed.  The system was created by liberals to make themselves feel good, not to bring any actual benefit or relief to victimized children like Precious.  She and her countless counterparts are doomed by dangerously mistaken liberals who think:

“I will vote to create taxpayer-funded bureaucracies that will fix this problem by taking up a forced collection from all my fellow Americans, and I will never have to get my hands dirty or do something disgusting like open my home to her, or actually do anything to help her myself.  I will let the government take care of her, and since I vote for Democrats who create these bureaucracies, I have helped her, and I am better than those selfish Republicans.”

And if you think that assessment of liberals is too harsh, just remember:  these are the same people that define their goodness by their Prius and their mulchers, and the way they meticulously sort their trash into different colored bins.  When you think you can save the planet just by carrying your reusable bag to Trader Joe’s, there’s really no need to do anything really difficult or icky like becoming a Big Brother or a foster parent or adopting a child.

Which brings us to those awful conservative Christian Republicans  in The Blind Side. Michael Oher, one of thirteen children born to a drug-addicted mother living in public housing, whose life up to that point had probably been somewhat similar to Precious’, is walking down a freezing cold Memphis street in only a T-shirt when Leigh Anne Tuohy drives past him and says to her husband Sean, “Turn the car around.”  His life is changed forever, by an awesome act of love and kindness from a private citizen.

The insane and utterly racist backlash from some quarters against The Blind Side seems to boil down to this: rich white people shouldn’t be adopting poor black kids.  And as usual, this stupidity does not come from the right, but from the  bigoted statists on the left, who want to protect the government mechanisms they have constructed to keep these problems out of their sights.

Left out of The Blind Side, apparently, were the long lines of   black families that the Tuohys elbowed out of the way in order to get their white hands on Michael Oher.  What sort of person could argue that Michael Oher — or Precious, for that matter — would be better off staying in the system if the alternative is to be taken care of by white people?  And what kind of an idiot would think that a family would take on the responsibility of another human being and feed him, clothe him, pay for a tutor to help him learn, all just to get him to play football for their alma mater?

The best way to deal with this hateful nonsense is to dismiss it completely, as Leigh Anne Tuohy demonstrated, in her inimitable style,  on 20/20:

Deborah Roberts: What do you say to people who say they feel a little offended that this white couple took this black kid in and tried to kind of mold him into what they wanted?

Leigh Anne Tuohy: No one has the guts to say that to my face. No one has ever said that to my face and if they did I would tell them don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

At the end of Precious, a bracing dedication comes up on the screen:  For Precious Girls Everywhere.  Perhaps the saddest fact in the comparison between these two films is that this might be one instance where the fictional character is more real than the true-life character.  After all, there is only one Michael Oher, adopted and loved by Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, now the Baltimore Ravens’  left tackle.

But how many Precious girls and boys are still out there, trapped in a system that works only to keep them in it, waiting for a Leigh Anne Tuohy to say, “Turn the car around?”

Ed. Note: This post has been updated to repair a broken link.

At the beginning of the show, the Globes did just that but there were other times (including the conclusion of the program) when undeserving victors beat out more worthy competition.

The awards show cast a new light on two deserving performers who were not well-known for their strong acting abilities. First, in what I thought was the highlight of the night,  Mo’Nique won the award for “Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role” for ”Precious.” She was given the first award of the night and gave a wonderful speech. In her brilliant performance, the comedienne portrayed a selfish and cold woman who abuses and enables the abuse of her own daughter. At the Globes, Mo’Nique started her speech by thanking God for “the amazing ride.” Later she spoke of all the “Preciouses” and about speaking up about abuse. It was a classy moment.

Sandra Bullock gave her own elegant speech after winning for her role in the film “The Blind Side.” Speaking about family having your back, the classy Bullock gave a shout-out to the family that the movie portrays. As I wrote previously, Bullock has been a commercial success for a long time  but now she’s receiving critical raves and awards, including her new Golden Globe. Along with Mo’Nique, she has shown critics a new way of looking at her. Both have redefined their image.

After only one season, the uplifting show “Glee” won for “Best Television Series – Comedy or Musical.” Julianna Margulies, who was previously known for her role on the show “ER,” also won an award for her role in “The Good Wife.” I previously wrote about how “Glee” and Margulies were worthy of their nominations and am glad both went home winners.

There was one major disappointment: “Avatar,” currently the second highest-grossing motion picture of all time, won “Best Motion Picture – Drama.”  Although that film is a special-effects triumph, the storyline’s disappointing and it often delves into clichés. I wish the far more deserving “Up in the Air” had won. The George Clooney film had a great story, wonderful performances, and spoke to our economic reality.

My disappointment over “Avatar’s” victory, though, will be short-lived. Last night, Mo’Nique and Sandra Bullock were recognized for strong performances and now have a new light shining on their careers. Additionally, “Glee” and Margulies were able to garner more attention from the public. Those awards are something to celebrate.

As far as “Avatar” goes, the James Cameron picture may not be able to maintain its momentum for the full awards season and with the Academy Awards still several weeks away, the winners of that prestigious award ceremony are still “up in the air.”

A lot of my slack jawed knuckle-dragging conservative friends ask me why I remain a member. If I ever want to work in film or television again I have to be a member. The “art” of  television and film-making is a closed shop. I do get a really cool card to carry around in my wallet and I get to vote on the SAG Awards every year. Getting to vote on the SAG Awards has a great perk; I get screener copies of a number of the nominated movies. I got “Up in the Air” and “Precious” today. Most of them are films I would never pay $12 to see in a theater. I usually see a lot of  the nominated films during downtime on ships or airplanes.  For example, I recently saw “Inglourious Basterds” on a plane. I thought the first scene was compelling and then the movie disintegrated into mess which couldn’t decide if it was a farce or a Sam Peckinpah homage.

I understand that the vast majority of folks in my profession don’t agree with me when it comes to politics or art. Many of the films that get nominated for awards make less money than General Motors, and that isn’t easy. Also, in Awardville, making money and entertaining people are almost grounds for disqualification from receiving accolades unless, like James Cameron, you throw in an anti-American undercurrent. Then, of course, there is the question of values in films.

The liberal elites that run the entertainment industry tend to “pooh-pooh” films that have what they consider to be pedestrian middle-class values. Apple pie, motherhood, traditional marriage, fidelity and patriotism are a one-way ticket to being ignored. But… Putting a gay couple, a woman with a stripper pole or a heroin problem or anything that says America is the bad guy at the center of your film usually means a seat up front at the Kodak Theater in April.  

This is probably why the two best films I saw in 2009, “Up” and “The Blind Side” got a total of one SAG Award nomination. I don’t think we’ll see a lot of support at the DGA or at the Academy Awards for these or any other “family” films, either. 

The best award will come when they’re released on DVD and thousands of us out here in Flyover Country watch them at home.

Avatar vs. Dances With Wolves

Comparing Kevin Costner’s elegant and moving Oscar-winning Western to the junk that is “Avatar” is unfair. There are similarities in the messaging, but when it comes to the execution and storytelling – the only thing that counts — the juvenile “Avatar” is a Scooby-Doo episode compared to “Wolves.”

In the first twenty-minutes (heck, in the trailer), the ham-fisted James Cameron telegraphs every plot point, character arc and moment, right down to the natives’ trendy spiritualism and insufferable sanctimony, all the way through to the protagonist’s eventual decision to turn on his own people and fight for his nobly dull new friends. The climax of “Titanic” is more surprising than ”Avatar,” and there are drivers-ed films with more humor. 

“Wolves” is nothing like “Avatar.” Costner’s timeless epic not only gave the Sioux very human and relatable qualities but also a winning sense of humor. The eventual confrontation with the whites in “Wolves” is not telegraphed Avatar-style. Which means that when the Union soldiers do arrive it’s a major shock to our system. Wisely and intentionally, Costner doesn’t give the audience any more information than our protagonist. We are completely with John Dunbar and living in his mindset, and for two majestic hours we forget all about the whites and are just as drawn to and emotionally invested in the Sioux as he is.  This is the difference between dull, childish preaching and mature storytelling, the difference between characters reduced to pious symbols of leftism and real living beings.

All the 3D and CGI might make the initial attack on the Na’Vi Home Tree “way cool” for people who like to watch other people play video games, but the actual moment is so preordained that on an emotional level it rates a just below a zero. Compare that to when the Union soldiers first arrive in “Wolves.” The moment is emotionally devastating. Our own harmony and peace is as shattered as the characters in the movie. We’re just as caught off guard as they are.

It’s also worth mentioning that in “Wolves” the first threat to the Sioux’s way of life are not whites but another tribe of Indians; the bloodthirsty Pawnee who are just as “imperialistic” in their goals to steal land and take slaves as any white man.

“Wolves” is a legendary piece of filmmaking and much more complicated and worthy than some of my fellow conservatives give it credit for.

Precious

In my review I called “Precious” pointless and all but said the story was nihilistic. Those who disagree say that’s unfair because the protagonist overcomes her abusive life and heads down a road towards becoming a good mother to her two infant children. Yes, that’s true, but near the end of the film, in one final ugly and pointless twist, we learn that when she was raped by her father, Precious contracted AIDS.

“Precious” is set in the eighties, so the screenplay has just intentionally handed the poor girl a death sentence. Which means that all that escaping abuse and trying to be a good mother stuff is now pointless. Those kids won’t have a chance after their mother’s dead. Where are they going to go?

As the end credits rolled, in my mind I fast-forwarded a few years and realized that in all likelihood the children would either end up in foster care or in the exact same situation Precious escaped from: living with Precious’ mother — their grandmother — a sexually and physically abusive welfare-addict from hell.

Giving Precious AIDS undercut the theme of the film and struck me as reaching for importance at the expense of  what would’ve otherwise been a hopeful and uplifting narrative. It was as though someone looked at the story and saw that all the politically correct boxes had been checked except AIDS. 

Up in the Air vs. Shampoo

After years of enjoying emotional detachment from the world as he made a healthy living flying around the country firing people, Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) predictably meets his match in Alex (Vera Farmiga) and predictably falls in love with her. My review went that far but what was so disappointing about the film I felt I had to leave out.

Once Bingham realizes he loves Alex and needs her to fill his empty life, he dashes through an airport, shows up at her house unannounced, and discovers that she’s happily married. A few minutes later we fade to black basked in the irony of Bingham staring at a list of airplane flights with no idea where to go.

What should’ve been an emotionally devastating turning point for the character (and the audience) is handled with cliches (running through an airport?) and that infuriating detached irony that’s starting to define the adult drama (which is one reason the genre’s failing).

In my review, I compared Jason Reitman’s film to Hal Ashby’s masterpiece “Shampoo,” a similar character study of a womanizer (the fantastic Warren Beatty) who prides himself on his casual emotional detachment and uses his job as a hairdresser to target sexual conquests.

But watch the last sequence in “Shampoo” (above) when the Beatty character realizes he’s in love with Julie Christie and and begs her to marry him. Suddenly this crude, R-rated and very adult dramedy turns downright sentimental as Beatty’s character completely breaks down as he confesses his love to her. The moment is heartbreaking, poignant and … real. No irony, no too-smart-for-itself reach for an iconic moment.

Detached irony is lazy and takes no courage to execute. If it works on paper it will most likely work on film because it’s only about that particular story beat and requires nothing more from the actor than remaining safely understated. On the other hand, Beatty’s performance took real courage. Scenes like that walk the edge of a cliff where mawkish and over-the-top are a constant threat. And Hal Ashby has to be right there with him making sure no one falls. 

Those final redemptive moments of “Shampoo” make you want to see the movie again and again. “Up in the Air” doesn’t have the guts to aim for an emotional target and so it shrugs instead and settles for trying to be “clever.”

What do you expect from a story where a baby with Down’s Syndrome is named Mongo?  

Though sixteen years of age, Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) is still in middle school but not for long. After it’s discovered she’s pregnant for the second time after being raped by the same father who impregnated her the first time, school policy demands she drop out. Thankfully Dad’s no longer in the picture, but there’s still Mom (Mo’Nique) to deal with, a vicious woman willing to do anything to keep her daughter from realizing any amount of happiness, much less her hopes and dreams.

Unfortunately, Precious’ hopes and dreams are as stunted as her reading scores. In-between bouts of suffering, she fantasizes about being worshipped as a celebrity. I’m not sure the film realizes just how shallow and sad this dream is, but I digress. A ray of light arrives in the form of an invitation to an alternative school for young women of similar circumstance. From here Precious finds a kind of salvation in that which only Hollywood believes there’s salvation: Gay school teachers, social workers, public education and pretty much everything else on the Big Daddy Government check-off list.  

Other than life in 1980’s Harlem being awful for a black girl ironically named Precious, there’s nothing to see here other than explicit scenes of a father raping his daughter, and the physical, mental, verbal and sexual abuse heaped on this same girl (and the audience) by her welfare-addicted mother in scene after unrelenting scene.

“Requiem for a Dream” is hard to watch, but at least there’s a point (and Keith David); it’s a cautionary tale. “21 Grams” is hard to watch, but at least there’s a theme: forgiveness. Sure, Precious tries to break free of her abuse, and with the help of her teacher (Paula Patton) and social worker (an unrecognizable but superb Mariah Carey), she’s on the right track until that one last piano’s dropped on her head.

The hostility this character’s creators hold for her permeates every frame, and when she steals a full bucket of fried chicken, eats the whole thing on her way to school and then spends a few minutes walking around with grease and chicken bits all over her face you have to wonder why they didn’t name the movie “Better Off Dead.”

There are moments of genuine power. Mo’Nique’s last scene is a true piece of bravura acting, the setting of time and place in great detail – down to the gross-out hairs on a plate of pigs feet – is spot on, and the soundtrack is one of the best you’ll hear all year. And while there are many movies that fall under the category of difficult to watch, where you say, ”Well, it was worth seeing once,” that’s simply not true for this one. “Precious” gives you nothing to take home with you … other than images best left forgotten.   

Directed by Lee Daniels and presented (for some reason) by Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, the talent behind “Precious”is not in question. Just the point of making it.

BEST PICTURE – DRAMA

Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Precious
Up In the Air

BEST PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

(500) Days of Summer
The Hangover
It’s Complicated
Julie & Julia
Nine

BEST DIRECTOR – MOTION PICTURE

Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker
James Cameron – Avatar
Clint Eastwood – Invictus
Jason Reitman – Up In The Air
Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds

BEST ACTOR - DRAMA

Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart
George Clooney – Up In The Air
Colin Firth – A Single Man
Morgan Freeman – Invictus
Tobey Maguire – Brothers

BEST ACTOR – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

Matt Damon – The Informant!
Daniel Day-Lewis – Nine
Robert Downey Jr. – Sherlock Holmes
Joseph Gordon-Levitt – (500) Days Of Summer
Michael Stuhlbarg – A Serious Man 

BEST ACTRESS  – DRAMA

Emily Blunt – The Young Victoria
Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side
Helen Mirren – The Last Station
Carey Mulligan – An Education
Gabourey Sibide – Precious

 BEST ACTRESS – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

Sandra Bullock – The Proposal
Marion Cotillard – Nine
Julia Roberts – Duplicity
Meryl Streep – It’s Complicated
Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR 

Matt Damon – Invictus
Woody Harrelson – The Messenger
Christopher Plummer – The Last Station
Stanley Tucci – The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Penélope Cruz – Nine
Vera Farmiga – Up In The Air
Anna Kendrick – Up In The Air
Mo’nique – Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire
Julianne Moore – A Single Man

BEST ANIMATED FILM

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess And The Frog
Up

FULL LIST CAN BE FOUND HERE

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.

He then compares the recent Oscar nominees to ones during the end of President Bill Clinton’s tenure in the White House – noting such gut-busters as “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Full Monty” to burnish his case.

Suffice to say Oscar voters have a plethora of comedies to choose from every year, but they simply go toward films which have that Academy vibe.

Biopics and Bush bashing documentaries usually lead the way.

But big screen comedies enjoyed  a renaissance during the Bush years, partly thanks to the Judd Apatow machine. Consider “Wedding Crashers,” “Superbad” and “Borat” as just a sampling of the side-splitting films from the last eight years.

And, in a just world, a smart, sweet and bawdy comedy like “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” would have earned a Best Picture nomination. Too bad Oscar voters look down their collective noses at such material.

Comedies, we’ve learned over the years, need not apply when Oscar season begins.

In fact, it’s hard to imagine a film like “Annie Hall” would be an Oscar favorite today, even though it walked away with the 1977 Best Picture statuette.

Blaming Bush for the glut of oh-so serious movies makes little sense – unless you’re writing for a magazine eager to keep slamming the former President while apologizing for the current Commander-in-Chief.

Vastly overweight and carrying her second child at the far-too-young age of 16, Precious is an African-American girl living in the Bronx who’s stuck four years behind her age group in the 7th grade, with a single mother who is verbally, emotionally and physically abusive towards her. Her father is only in the picture enough to come over and rape her, which led to her first child being born with Down Syndrome, and Precious utterly unaware of proper prenatal care or even a delivery date for her second.

The only thing that brings her any sense of joy is her imagination, which Precious uses to block out horrific moments of the past and present with visions of herself on red carpets and other glamorous situations. But when a school official steps in and orders her to go to an alternative school for troubled young women, a concerned teacher, social worker and eventually a male post-natal nurse discover the extent of Precious’ problems and help her take the drastic actions needed to save her life.

This may all sound like a vision from hell, but people like Precious exist all around us in modern society, where the welfare state and ingrained, multi-generational poverty and an often-negligent school system perpetuate rather than solve their problems. But in the new movie “Precious,” this starkly realistic portrayal of one fictional life points audiences in the direction of true hope by showing that it only takes a few concerned people to save a life and turn it around towards productivity and pride.

“Precious” has been a sensation since its January debut at the Sundance Film Festival under its original title of “Push,” which in turn was based on a cult-hit novel by Sapphire that’s been a sensation since its 1996 debut. The two books and their attendant films are drawing extensive comparisons to the classic novel and movie, “The Color Purple,” and not only due to their subject matter of African-American women learning to stand up for their dignity and self-worth – they also both feature what should be career-making performances from heretofore unknown or disregarded actresses.

The film stars the stunning, one-of-a-kind Gabourney Sidibe as Precious and longtime hack comic Mo’Nique as her monstrous mother with a tragic past of her own, in what are likely the odds-on favorite performances for next year’s Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Oscars. Yet the film also features a wonderful performance by Paula Patton as the teacher who breaks down Precious’ walls by forcing her to learn how to compose her thoughts in a notebook, and surprisingly strong yet small turns by a de-glammed Mariah Carey as Precious’ social worker and rocker Lenny Kravitz as the male nurse who is the first man ever to treat Precious with respect and friendship.

Director Lee Daniels is only making his second film here, following the barely-released and critically derided “Shadowboxer.” But his command of incredibly difficult and dark subject matter is masterful. Following the lead of classic filmmakers who understood it was more effective to leave viewers filling in their own vision of horrific details rather than hammering them with graphic imagery, he shows the bare minimum footage necessary to get the idea of Precious’ abuse across while emphasizing that hope, self-reliance and positive values are essential to overcoming any difficult life situation. And it’s those positive vibes that drew Oprah Winfrey and black filmmaking powerhouse Tyler Perry to attach their names to the film as “presenters,” in the hopes of drawing attention to this valuable enterprise.

If you can handle the depictions of abuse and frequent profanity (which declines as Precious learns to become more eloquent), “Precious” is an unforgettable experience that’s not easily shaken.