Movie Greats
I agree with much of what Jeremy Clarkson had to say about Oscars and the movie industry because there's a definite prejudice against sci-fi and foreign language films when it comes to winning big awards.
For example, the best movie I've seen in a long time was 'Inception' a dark tale starring Leonardo Di Caprio about the business of infiltrating people's dreams to influence future events; a spectacular tour de force if you ask me.
And Clarkson makes a really good point about 'Untouchable' which is a hugely enjoyable 'feel good' movie rivalled in my view by a Belgian production "Come As You Are' which tells the tale of three disabled young men who set out on a road trip to Spain to lose their virginity.
I haven't managed to catch 'The Theory of Everything' yet, but I have seen 'Selma' starring David Owelojo, a British actor, who plays the part of Martin Luther King Jr at a key point in the struggle for civil rights in 1960s America.
By Jeremy Clarkson - The Sunday Times
Let’s be clear from the outset. The Theory of Everything is a lovely film and Eddie Redmayne’s portrayal of Professor Stephen Hawking is extremely warm and wonderful. No one would think, apart from the other nominees, that the best actor Oscar he won last weekend wasn’t entirely justified.
And I’m sure the same can be said of Julianne Moore, who won best actress for her role in Still Alice. I haven’t yet seen it but I’m sure it will be thought-provoking and very interesting.
What I find annoying, though, is that I predicted long before the ceremony that both would win, in the same way that I predicted with confidence last year that Leonardo DiCaprio wouldn’t.
He had been majestic in The Wolf of Wall Street, a film I thought was an absolute epic. But there was no way in hell it was going to be an Oscar phenomenon because it was a homage to the imaginary love child of Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Gekko. It was full of inverted snobbery, greed, lust and screw-the-little-man excess. So it was always going to lose out to 12 Years a Slave, which was about how slavery was bad and wrong, and Dallas Buyers Club, which was about the early days of prejudice against HIV sufferers.
In Tinseltown, slavery and Aids are going to trump Thatcher and Gekko every day of the week, and twice on a Sunday night in February.
This year, Rosamund Pike went all the way to Los Angeles having been nominated as best actress for her role in Gone Girl. But this was a waste of an air fare, because, good though she was, a whodunit thriller has no chance against a film about the awfulness of Alzheimer’s.
And it’s exactly the same story with Bradley Cooper. Did he really think, after playing an American sniper, that he was going to beat someone who had made a film about motor neurone disease? Don’t make me laugh. Redmayne’s only real competition came from Benedict Cumberbatch, who had played the part of a man whose homosexuality drove him to suicide.
To win an Oscar these days, you have to be good at your craft, let’s be in no doubt about that, but, more importantly, your film has to be lifted directly from a point midway between a sixth-form debating society and a Guardian leader column.
This means no one is going to win an Oscar for playingCaptain Kirk in a Star Trek film. If you utter the words “Eject the warp core”, or “Secure the perimeter”, you know that at no point in your near future will you be saying, “I’d like to thank the academy”.
Star Trek films contain many important messages about race and women’s rights — actually they do — but as long as they feature men rushing about on a spaceship, stunning Romulans with photon torpedoes, then Chris Pine and Simon Pegg can book holidays in the Bahamasaround Oscars time, safe in the knowledge they won’t have to cancel them.
In the past 35 years, Star Trek movies have won only one Oscar — and that was for best make-up. This is because the academy doesn’t care for science fiction. Gravity won best director last year — deservedly — but Alien, Star Wars, ET and 2001: A Space Odyssey missed out on the big awards. Not even John Carpenter’s Dark Star was recognised and that was a gem.
There’s a similar problem with horror movies. If your film features a girl hiding in a cupboard, all wide-eyed and breathless with fear, and then falling over while running from an unseen monster, she is not going to need a new frock next February.
And that’s before we get to the comic-book superhero movies filling the multiplexes every Saturday night. Robert Downey Jr in Avengers Assemble was brilliant. He gave as fine a comedy performance as Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda — which I reckon is the best comedy performance of all time — but was Downey nominated for a best actor gong? Was he hell.
Whizzing about in a metal suit, kicking people in the face and saving your own life every few seconds with bits of mysterious tech: these things are of no use in an industry where the politics is as red as the carpets at their back-slapping awards ceremonies.
Next time the Avengers assemble, one should be in a wheelchair, one should have a muscle-wasting disorder and they should use that flying aircraft-carrier thing to rescue noble locals from ebola-based tyranny in west Africa.
That’s what tickles the voting bones of the great and the good in Los Angeles: films that deliver a message, clearly and simply, in a way that can be understood by everyone in the English-speaking world.
Which brings me on to the film Untouchable. It should have cleaned up in 2012 because it was brilliant; a thought-provoking lesson in how to stir the soul and make the heart sing. It told the true story of a fantastically wealthy quadriplegic who became close friends with a dope-smoking down-and-out ex-con from the ghetto.
It should have won best picture, best actor, best supporting actor, best screenplay, best everything. But in fact it won none of those things because it was French. And films not delivered in English can be considered by the judging panel only as a “foreign-language film”.
The message is clear: if it’s in a foreign language, it can’t be as good as if it had been in English. So no matter how good a director or an actor you may be, you cannot win one of our awards because you are smelly, your wife may have hairy armpits and you are possibly a terrorist.
Let’s be clear from the outset. The Theory of Everything is a lovely film and Eddie Redmayne’s portrayal of Professor Stephen Hawking is extremely warm and wonderful. No one would think, apart from the other nominees, that the best actor Oscar he won last weekend wasn’t entirely justified.
And I’m sure the same can be said of Julianne Moore, who won best actress for her role in Still Alice. I haven’t yet seen it but I’m sure it will be thought-provoking and very interesting.
What I find annoying, though, is that I predicted long before the ceremony that both would win, in the same way that I predicted with confidence last year that Leonardo DiCaprio wouldn’t.
He had been majestic in The Wolf of Wall Street, a film I thought was an absolute epic. But there was no way in hell it was going to be an Oscar phenomenon because it was a homage to the imaginary love child of Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Gekko. It was full of inverted snobbery, greed, lust and screw-the-little-man excess. So it was always going to lose out to 12 Years a Slave, which was about how slavery was bad and wrong, and Dallas Buyers Club, which was about the early days of prejudice against HIV sufferers.
In Tinseltown, slavery and Aids are going to trump Thatcher and Gekko every day of the week, and twice on a Sunday night in February.
This year, Rosamund Pike went all the way to Los Angeles having been nominated as best actress for her role in Gone Girl. But this was a waste of an air fare, because, good though she was, a whodunit thriller has no chance against a film about the awfulness of Alzheimer’s.
And it’s exactly the same story with Bradley Cooper. Did he really think, after playing an American sniper, that he was going to beat someone who had made a film about motor neurone disease? Don’t make me laugh. Redmayne’s only real competition came from Benedict Cumberbatch, who had played the part of a man whose homosexuality drove him to suicide.
To win an Oscar these days, you have to be good at your craft, let’s be in no doubt about that, but, more importantly, your film has to be lifted directly from a point midway between a sixth-form debating society and a Guardian leader column.
This means no one is going to win an Oscar for playingCaptain Kirk in a Star Trek film. If you utter the words “Eject the warp core”, or “Secure the perimeter”, you know that at no point in your near future will you be saying, “I’d like to thank the academy”.
Star Trek films contain many important messages about race and women’s rights — actually they do — but as long as they feature men rushing about on a spaceship, stunning Romulans with photon torpedoes, then Chris Pine and Simon Pegg can book holidays in the Bahamasaround Oscars time, safe in the knowledge they won’t have to cancel them.
In the past 35 years, Star Trek movies have won only one Oscar — and that was for best make-up. This is because the academy doesn’t care for science fiction. Gravity won best director last year — deservedly — but Alien, Star Wars, ET and 2001: A Space Odyssey missed out on the big awards. Not even John Carpenter’s Dark Star was recognised and that was a gem.
There’s a similar problem with horror movies. If your film features a girl hiding in a cupboard, all wide-eyed and breathless with fear, and then falling over while running from an unseen monster, she is not going to need a new frock next February.
And that’s before we get to the comic-book superhero movies filling the multiplexes every Saturday night. Robert Downey Jr in Avengers Assemble was brilliant. He gave as fine a comedy performance as Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda — which I reckon is the best comedy performance of all time — but was Downey nominated for a best actor gong? Was he hell.
Whizzing about in a metal suit, kicking people in the face and saving your own life every few seconds with bits of mysterious tech: these things are of no use in an industry where the politics is as red as the carpets at their back-slapping awards ceremonies.
Next time the Avengers assemble, one should be in a wheelchair, one should have a muscle-wasting disorder and they should use that flying aircraft-carrier thing to rescue noble locals from ebola-based tyranny in west Africa.
That’s what tickles the voting bones of the great and the good in Los Angeles: films that deliver a message, clearly and simply, in a way that can be understood by everyone in the English-speaking world.
Which brings me on to the film Untouchable. It should have cleaned up in 2012 because it was brilliant; a thought-provoking lesson in how to stir the soul and make the heart sing. It told the true story of a fantastically wealthy quadriplegic who became close friends with a dope-smoking down-and-out ex-con from the ghetto.
It should have won best picture, best actor, best supporting actor, best screenplay, best everything. But in fact it won none of those things because it was French. And films not delivered in English can be considered by the judging panel only as a “foreign-language film”.
The message is clear: if it’s in a foreign language, it can’t be as good as if it had been in English. So no matter how good a director or an actor you may be, you cannot win one of our awards because you are smelly, your wife may have hairy armpits and you are possibly a terrorist.
