CULTURE STOP : And the Oscar Goes To...
What is "Mainstream Cinema"?
The Daily Beast ran an article this week about what will happen to the physical statue if Heath Ledger wins an Academy Award this weekend. The first reader comment under the story was posted by a reader who called him/herself Issywise. It read like this:
I, for one, walked out of that little bit of "superhero" nonsense.
For the sake of our culture, let's hope nobody in that film wins an Oscar. Such an award would be evidence of cultural decline. When one dimensional, hero fantasy movies based on kids comic books are taken as serious art, the artistic soul of movie making has been shown to be a vacuum.
For the sake of our culture, let's hope nobody in that film wins an Oscar. Such an award would be evidence of cultural decline. When one dimensional, hero fantasy movies based on kids comic books are taken as serious art, the artistic soul of movie making has been shown to be a vacuum.
Caligula's plan to make his favorite horse Incitatus a consul was proof of cultural decline in those times. Giving awards for making movies like Batman--The Dark Night is proof of cultural decline in these times.
How irrelevant and silly--indeed childish, can Hollywood get?
Making this particularly interesting is the fact that Time magazine just this week ran an article from critic Richard Corliss positing something of nearly the exact opposite sentiment. Corliss softly criticizes the Academy for usually choosing movies he calls "TV movies: sensitive explorations of major political themes, little pictures on big subjects." He contends that because moviemakers make up the Academy they approach movie watching completely differently than the average moviegoer, and thus reward films using a completely different set of rules than an average American consumer would.
Can we assume the commenter of The Daily Beast site might be a member of the Academy?
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