“You do the work. That’s all that matters. The rest is someone else’s business,” — Robert Redford accepting his Riviera award at the Santa Barbara Film Fest.
It’s easy to forget that there is value beyond the awards race. I know, silly coming from one of the people who built the monster, but it is easy to forget – we are driven by the notion of winning. Not winning and losing but winning. This is probably true of humans all over the world. It is probably built into our DNA. But for me, it never really resonated as much as it did when watching the Robert Redford tribute at the Santa Barbara Film Fest.
I’ve been writing about the Oscars for 15 years. I started in 1999 with a one-year-old infant I was raising alone, living in a guest house in the back of my sister’s house in Van Nuys. My reasons for starting the site were twofold: track the race from beginning to end to find out why the awards went the way they did in order to discover why Citizen Kane did not win Best Picture but How Green Was My Valley did. I also started the site because I loved movies. Women aren’t really supposed to be film geeks. They’re supposed to be the girlfriends dragged along wherein the plot would be explained later, over coffee, pie and a blow job.
The Oscar watching I’ve done has, in a way, destroyed much of the love for films I used to have — when it’s a contest there have to be winners and if there are winners there have to be losers. You start to hate the winners just because they’re winning. That’s my problem to solve, not the Academy’s.
I have helped to build an era where films and performances are validated or not validated by the awards attention they receive. But the focus should never be on whether the work itself was good enough to appeal to the consensus. The focus should be on whether the consensus itself should be an arbiter of the “highest achievements in film.” The arbiters of taste reside in your own head. As Bob Dylan would say, “you don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows.”
But it is easy to get caught up in the contest as if it means anything. It’s a consensus vote of roughly 6,000 half-working, half-retired, middled aged, hetero white males, some women, some people of color, lots of actors, lots of British people. Their taste is reflected every year in the kinds of films they like. What do we know about them? Well, we know they like nostalgia. We know they like movies driven by actors, directors and writers, less so visual effects. We know they are fond of war movies. We know they like happy endings where the control male figure is a good guy overcoming obstacles. We know they like directors who aren’t overly praised. We know they like films that make sense. We know that they pick what they like, free of obligation to do the right thing. We know the heart wants what it wants.
The q&a was intro’d by festival director Roger Durling. If you’ve never met Durling he looks like he stepped out of a Jean-Luc Godard film. Lean body, hair swept back, trademark tinted glasses (which he needs for medical purposes, by the way). This is someone who loves film so much it took him out of Panama as a young gay man and to a place where he could immerse himself in the appreciation of it. Durling has been doing the festival now for a while. He has a knack for selecting participants who end up figured into the Oscar race. It took months for Redford to be convinced. But Redford wasn’t doing any publicity. He wasn’t doing it because he’s been acting for seven decades. He’s an actors actor. He is the last person who is going to chase Oscar. He did the requisite publicity but there was no way he was going to be . shaking every hand, doing every promo, laughing and chatting with the Broadcast Film Critics. For some people winning an Oscar at the end of your career is a meaningful thing. For Redford, he would only want the Oscar if the voters felt he deserved it.
What he didn’t realize, what he couldn’t possibly realize, was that most voters probably never watched the movie. They couldn’t confront the notion of ninety minutes of silent contemplation. All Is Lost was a ballsy endeavor, one of the standout cinematic experiences of the year, one that never could have been made without Redford. And yet, in the end, we measure success by how many people see the movie, how much money it makes, and whether it gets any awards attention. Ironic, don’t you think, when butted up against what the film is about? But in the end, Gravity sort of obliterated All is Lost by kind of doing a similar thing — one person stranded in space trying to get home. Gravity gives you answers to the questions All Is Lost asks. There is no ambiguity in what Sandra Bullock feels, thinks and does. All is Lost, however, is open to interpretation. Gravity made money, All is Lost didn’t. Gravity represents Hollywood’s modern vision of the future, All is Lost hearkens back to old school – cameras, script, actors, editing. If any juxtaposition of two movies this year illustrates how much Hollywood has changed, it’s All is Lost and Gravity’s trajectories in the awards race. Was a time when actors would reward what Redford did with that part.
Everyone knows what it takes to keep the momentum going, to get that nomination – the depths to which a person has to sink, the awful ways it makes you sell yourself out as an artist all for what, for a little more power in Hollywood? To help the others who got the film made? That’s probably the best reason. This was a man who made The Candidate and All the President’s Men — did anyone really think he was going to sell out all of that for the chance to win another Oscar?
Still, Redford finally agreed to do the Santa Barbara Film Festival. It was the only publicity he would do. The Oscar nominations were announced, Redford’s name was not among them. Heads shook, fingers wagged. And there it was — that Santa Barbara Film Festival tribute, one of the final stops before Oscar glory, hanging there, off the edge of a cliff. Would Redford still do it? That was the question. Emma Thompson had already dropped out (though frankly who could blame her). Nevertheless, I then learned Redford would attend. Really? I thought. How unusual. Doing a tribute when there is no potential Oscar payoff?
The festival hummed along nicely – there was Cate Blanchett, there was David O. Russell, there were Marty and Leo. There was a tribute to the virtuosos. Half of the ones not nominated for Oscars were no shows — Adele Exarchopolous, Oscar Isaac and Daniel Bruhl. Half of them did show up, Brie Larson, Michael B. Jordan who were not nominated, and Jared Leto and June Squibb who were.
Redford was the second to last of the major tributes. He drew a huge crowd of appreciative movielovers, filling the Arlington. “I wonder who is going to present the award to him,” someone asked me. I didn’t know. Usually there is a high profile celebrity who does the introduction, like Rooney Mara or Jane Fonda (who was down with the flu for Oprah’s tribute). Leonard Maltin and Redford began an involved discussion about everything from the business of Hollywood to the importance of his friendships with Sydney Pollock and Paul Newman. He said everyone told him working with Barbra Streisand would be a pain in the ass. But he said his time with her was one of the best working relationships he’d ever had.
After a few film clips it was clear Redford was getting tired. They skipped ahead before ending the night with the introduction of the award. Out steps Roger Durling. Durling was the one who would present the award? Maybe that meant a higher profile person had also gotten the flu. Durling was fighting back tears during his presentation, talking about how Redford was his inspiration with the Santa Barbra Film Fest because he’d wanted to do what Redford had done with Sundance, how he had pioneered the whole idea of a film festival here in the states. Durling talked about how cripplingly shy he’d been his whole life. Growing up a gay man in Panama was not easy. Redford is also notoriously shy, but he overcame that to become of the greatest actors and directors working in Hollywood, and, of course, Sundance.
Finally, Durling said that it was the high point of his life that Redford could have chosen anyone to introduce the award but that he specifically chose him. At this, Redford gave him that famous half-smile, as if to say, well who else would I have chosen? Redford said while holding his award, soon to join a shelf full of them, that he wanted to participate in the Santa Barbara Film Fest because it is about what the community had built and that community was based in large part on Durling. He believed in rewarding the strength of community. That is the real legacy Robert Redford leaves behind.
So there they were, two shy men from different parts of the world standing on stage together, facing a standing ovation, in celebration of the community spirit.
When the story of the 2013 Oscars is told, you’re going to read about how Redford, despite his achievement, failed to get a nomination for All Is Lost. You’re going to read the same about Oprah Winfrey. This will be described, somehow, as a failure on their part. You might not read about how they came out to honor a commitment when they could have easily bailed. You might not know that both of them had so much to say they never got around to talking about the Oscars.
You do the work, the rest is someone else’s business.
This is true however history has proven that us the pple that give movies it prophet hence their relevance as a artform shape what film last the test of time. Once upon a time the academy used to be in lock step with us now today it like sadly they were beamed up abducted chewed up by aliens with them experimenting and extracting their brain and reassembling it in a confused contradictory jumbled way before deploying the entire academy administration and members back on earth:P dnt u think?
Box office is money
Awards are advertising (and money)
To me only two things measure a movie’s true worth:
A) The singular, subjective, intimate individual emotional/intellectual experience between the movie and that viewer out there in the dark.
B) Time – no one can predict what movies today will stand the test of time, what we will still be watching and talking about with our friends over and over and over for decades. But the great ones (and different movies are great for different reason) stay with us – awards and box office bedamned.
Sasha what are you talking about with respect?
It our problem? not oscars problem? there only one way to interpret that claim…that is it a symptomatic consequence of the public being forced to accept oscars ignorance, selfishness and i owe you culture…and of course we like sheep that have to follow the heard…with teh sheperd leading the way up and round a merry garden path.
Everyone knows the academy are delusional…this reflects that. no wonder science fiction films or science themed films will never win oscar..cos oscar decisions making is precisely as this oscar race attests to with 12 yrs a slave sp if it wins best picture this year that oscar are over a hundred years behind thematicallly embracing the future..
They only care about their future and is it any wonder their public domestic ratings are on the slide overall?
Why can’t oscar be like the nobel prize or Guggenheim awards and function as a publicly respect arts insitution answer? tjhey too busy correcting wrong and snubs in their past to function normally tkaing into account the public.
that the ONLY plausible reason therefore you would say that Sasha cos oscar makes the public think that way and it very very sad…that it come to this….from our point of view the and incresing wedge between the public perception of best picture and theirs
“That is a different topic. We’re not talking about a film with best picture heat – we’re talking about a singular performance that was hard to get people to see. It’s a no-brainer if you’re part of the cool crowd to be worshipped by a consensus vote. Best Actor was extremely competitive. Bale is perfectly fine. Oscar-worthy? No.”
I know, but unless David O. Russell has a gun to the Academy’s heads every year, you can be in a movie with Best Picture heat AND be likable and still miss out — see Tom Hanks. Point is I don’t think further promotion would’ve helped a star of Redford’s magnitude for a film this esoteric. Enough people were aware of the movie and did not like it enough for him to be nominated, period.
That goddamn Cary Fukunaga
Jerry Grant, I feel exactly the same way. No one I’ve ever known has ever felt that women aren’t meant to be film geeks. Actually I’ll get teased by my friends BECAUSE I’m a film geek and I’m a guy. More to the point I will then get criticized (like some of my other friends who are film geeks) for over analyzing a film and ruining the experience, which sort of segues into my next point, more on that later. So I disagree with Sasha in that film geekism, by the general public’s standards, in gender based. It’s not. I think the general public sees film geekism as a collective whole and not, “Only men can truly like movies.”
Sasha, you hit the nail on the head with Oscar watching ruining how you watch movies, or the way you view old classics now. It’s so tough for me to go back to oldies. Honestly, seeing Platoon in 10th grade maybe 12 years ago is what made me love film. I watched it maybe 15 times in 4 years and then don’t watch it again until a few years ago and it’s definitely different now. I almost don’t want to watch it again so I can preserve what I love about it. I don’t want to go back and see what I love for what it could be, something that distorted itself to get me to love cinema. If that’s a bit confusing, it probably is because I’m trying to find ways to write down how I feel.
Your problem Sasha is that you desperately want to be approved by people who see movies in terms of business and rarely in terms of art, personnaly i dont’ give a damn if the academy picked The English Patient in 96 and Titanic in 97 for best pic,i’m convinced that Lone Star or The Big Night along with Boogie Nights or The Sweet Herafter should have won.
I never chanaged my mind over the years, and didn’t wait 2005 to know that PSH was a great actor, i knew it since i had seen “Scent of a woman”, being faithfull to your taste is the key, the rest is crap.
OT: 1st trailer for TWO FACES OF JANUARY
Trailer is terribly put together, but you get to see quite promising glimpses. I’m such a fan of Kirsten Dunst as of late. Oscar Isaac, customarily sexy af
http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=40097
OT – not as many surprises in the 2nd round: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/fullpage/best-picture-time-oscar-bracket-abc-news-21639617
Maybe Gladiator beating Titanic, but that’s not much of a surprise, as Titanic gets a lot of hate too. Maybe Ben-Hur beating The Bridge on the River Kwai – that’s my vote for biggest upset, though this one isn’t any kind of a major surprise either, of course.
We’re heading for a clash between the two Godfathers in the quarterfinals! Can’t wait to see how that one turns out (the smart money’s probably on 1, even though I’m rooting for 2). The Godfather 1, Lawrence of Arabia and The Silence of the Lambs are clear favorites to make the semifinals, in my opinion, and for the last spot, I think it’ll be The Return of the King, because I think it’s got fewer detractors than The Departed.
For the win, it must be between The Godfather (or Part II, if it gets through) and Lawrence of Arabia. I’d bet on Lawrence of Arabia.
(I’ve not seen All Is Lost yet either, so I don’t feel qualified to comment on any of that – I definitely mean to see it some time before the Oscars, though.)
“The Oscar watching I’ve done has, in a way, destroyed much of the love for films I used to have.”
Sadly, same with me.
I remember when still growing up in Brazil, not even able to speak English and when no “Oscary” movies had even opened over there yet, how exciting the whole things was. You watched those films because they won oscars and that was just a niche. The others movies you saw for the pleasure of it. Now is all so stressful!
“Women aren’t really supposed to be film geeks. They’re supposed to be the girlfriends dragged along wherein the plot would be explained later, over coffee, pie and a blow job.”
In an otherwise good piece, that’s definitely a WTF sentence, somehow managing to be offensive to both men and women. This sounds like exactly 0% of any man or woman I have ever known. Women aren’t “supposed” to be film geeks? Women don’t explain the plot afterwards to the men? That’s definitely not my experience when we go to the movies. What women are we talking about here? The Stepford Wives? Are male movie geek filmgoers in this alternate reality cherry-picked from American Pie: Beta House? Maybe there’s an attempt at over-the-top exaggerated humor there, but blech.
Tom O’Neil feels it was all about Redford’s not campaigning. Not the small, indie film company that O’Neil felt did everything they could to promote “AIL”, but they had only ONE person to “work” with. And he was a reluctant participant, to put it mildly. And J.C. Chandor was EVERYWHERE, working it. But they needed RR THERE, on the stump. Like Bruce Dern was and he got his nomination, because, again I’m paraphrasing Tom O. “He showed them he WANTED IT.” TO is promulgating a theory that yes, the Oscar race has changed and now, yes, you HAVE to campaign for it.
And yes, Christian Bale didn’t but was nominated anyway in the most competitive year ever, but, as Sasha wisely points out, he didn’t have to, because he was in a Best Picture contender.
Bradley Cooper, OTOH, is a indefagitable(sp?)campaigner, and I don’t think his rather flat performance(despite the pin curls) would’ve got him in, but he LOVES the Oscar Race as it is per se today. He LOVES it.
I still love it, too.
“Women aren’t really supposed to be film geeks. They’re supposed to be the girlfriends dragged along wherein the plot would be explained later, over coffee, pie and a blow job.”
The vast majority of men feel this way?
Unlikely hood,
I know you were. I’m just playing along.
Sasha says ” I talked to Carol about it and she said he was still doing it”
How the f*** does the reader know who Carol
Is? Geese…
Mark, thanks for catching that. Sasha and I have both been trying work the site from mobile devices all day and a line got dropped between revisions. It’s ixed now.
Sasha, your silence about the controversy surrounding the best song category is deafening. Is there anti Christan bigotry in Hollywood and the academy? I would like your take on this.
Bryce I was kidding. I replied to you on another thread a few days ago – you said you detected anti-gravity sentiment and I said I detected an anti-gravity toilet. No, that’s not exactly right but I did tell you I loved the film and had just paid $16.50 to see it again.
Hoping for gravity or 12yas. AH is the only potential spoiler – the other definition of spoiler
As soon as the nominations for the Oscars were announced and people (myself included) were peeved over Redford’s snub, I knew that it had to do something about campaigning.. and then I read that quote from him after he was asked about it at a Sundance presser
“Hollywood is what it is. It’s a business. And so when these films go before to be voted on, usually they’re heavily dependent on campaigns that distributors provide. There’s a lot of campaigning that goes on and it can get very political, but that’s OK because it is a business [..] Would it have been wonderful to be nominated? Of course. But I’m not disturbed by it or upset by it, because it is a business and we couldn’t conform to that.”
Then reading this piece by Sasha about this award, who he chose to present it and how no Oscar talk was mentioned .. respect for the man has gone through the roof for me. He’s the real deal and it’s awesome.
Goes without saying that I agree with Sasha as well on ALL IS LOST being one of the greatest cinematic experiences of last year (greater than GRAVITY …. is that considered stupid?) but letting it sink in and reading about Redford’s reactions and his whole relationship with Hollywood and the film industry, it makes complete sense that he was ignored and it makes complete sense for none of us to mind it but to just continue watching and learning from his movies. That’s what really counts at the end of the day.
“SAG and the other consensus voters mostly fall in line per the buzz of Oscar season.”
Then Redford should have been nominated in a cakewalk because he had LOTS of Oscar buzz. Why I have no idea.
Eh, not at all about your opinion, Sasha. I even said I haven’t read your piece yet. I haven’t seen ALL IS LOST so I’d rather not read takes on the film for now.
I was actually thinking exactly what m1 just wrote. :/
My mother’s all time favorite movie is How Green Was My Valley. Just sayin…
Just because you didn’t get it doesn’t mean it wasn’t great.
Very classy, Sasha. Accusing someone of not “getting it” when that person disagrees with your opinion.
Unlikely hood,
Reconsider, man. Works better if think of Dr. Ryan Stone as the granddaughter of Baby Jane Hudson. Clues are there.
Steve,
I’ll be alright. Oscars are next Sunday, no?
*something stupid about Gravity*
Robert Redford is in a class of actors that are truly well above their peers. Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins also comes to mind. You wonder, with all the movies that Americans clearly prefer these days. (Ride Along, Lego Movie, etc), what will be the state of the movies, ten years from now.
All Is Lost is a beautiful and brilliant movie. What a shame it didn’t make more money or do better with awards. As much as I admire Robert Redford’s “who cares” attitude about the awards, he certainly could have done a little more to showcase J.C. Chandor’s brilliant film, because Chandor is not (yet) a big enough name to do it himself. I personally think All Is Lost is a better film than Gravity; it is not nearly as stunning on a visceral level, but it is more poetic, wiser, and more profound. I can understand, though, if it doesn’t reach everyone in the same way it reached me.
All I can say is… please, Hollywood, give J.C. Chandor more opportunities. He is as ambitious and intelligent and talented and promising as you are likely to see based on only two movies. He could be the next big thing.
Thanks you Sasha, another piece that moved me to tears. The comment on Streisand is interesting – Barbra has taken a bad rap throughout her career, usually from co-workers who don’t have one tenth of her talent or her passion for getting the piece right. Like Redford, Wyler, Minnelli, Kershner, Sondheim and so many others relished the working process. But then they were all secure in the knowledge of their talent.
“Didn’t read essay or comments. Only did a word search for “GRAVITY” to find if someone had said something stupid.”
Hey, I just did the same thing, too. Guess what I found 🙂
Are you gonna make it to the finish line, Bryce?
Robert Redford’s, performance was amazing even though the movie itself is very mediocre. His performance will be remembered.
Nobody’s going to look back about Oprah, though. I don’t know why to even bring that melodramatic performance up?
Oops. I should’ve written: It was hard to sit in the theater and NOT think: What would I do in that situation?
With all due respect, if you didn’t see ”All Is Lost” in a movie theater, you didn’t really get the full effect. Some pictures, often intimate personal dramas, can play on TV pretty well. Others, like epics with sweeping vistas, are greatly diminished on a TV screen. I will agree with Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere: You needed to see ”All Is Lost” IN a theater, to feel its full sense of claustrophia, of being trapped on the sea with nothing or no one else around. Without saying a word, Redford relied on only his expressions and physicality to express what he was thinking. It wasn’t a showy performance. There was no scenery chewing, but I thought he gave us the very essence of this everyman. It was hard to sit in the theater and think: What would I do in that situation?
I’ve seen reports on various sites about Academy voters who tried to watch the screener for 20 minutes, and then turned it off. They were bored. But when I saw ”All Is Lost” in a movie theater (twice), that wasn’t my experience at all. There was such an aura of suspense.
Even with all its acclaim (it rated 93% at Rotten Tomatoes), ”All Is Lost” floundered at the box office; it grossed only $6.2 million. I’ll assume that SAG and Oscar voters, etc., only saw it on their screeners, where it suffered greatly. But … among those who saw it on a big screen, Redford got nominations from the Broadcast Film Critics, the Golden Globes and Independent Spirits. And he won Best Actor from the N.Y. Film Critics (who are not exactly pushovers).
Could Redford have helped his Oscar cause more if he had campaigned as vigorously as, say, his 77-year-old colleague, Bruce Dern? Probably. For his part, Redford blames his snub on ”little or no distribution.” Even though this film turned out to be a ”Lost” cause, his legacy is legendary, and he’ll always be a winner to me.
And really, it’s not all about the promotion by an actor. Christian Bale hardly did any promotion and is less likable than Redford, yet he still got nominated, and over Tom Hanks to boot. So it’s not all about the individual actor’s promotion or lack thereof; it’s about films and performances that can win a consensus vote, which is something that All Is Lost, whether you like and respect it or not, was never going to accomplish.
And really, it’s not all about the promotion by an actor. Christian Bale hardly did any promotion and is less likable than Redford, yet he still got nominated, and over Tom Hanks to boot. So it’s not all about the individual actor’s promotion or lack thereof; it’s about films and performances that can win a consensus vote, which is something that All Is Lost, whether you like and respect it or not, was never going to accomplish.
That is a different topic. We’re not talking about a film with best picture heat – we’re talking about a singular performance that was hard to get people to see. It’s a no-brainer if you’re part of the cool crowd to be worshipped by a consensus vote. Best Actor was extremely competitive. Bale is perfectly fine. Oscar-worthy? No.
Unfortunately I agree that Redford did nothing nomination-worthy in All Is Lost. BIg G, exactly – what performance? I don’t think the problem was that voters didn’t see the film, because even if they had forced themselves to watch it, they wouldn’t have nominated him. And the film still got a Sound Editing nomination, so it wasn’t like no one saw it. But it takes a bigger person to promote a film after an Oscar miss, and Redford has always been the bigger person, advancing the industry rather than setting out to win Oscars. However, I don’t blame Emma Thompson for skipping out, because let’s be real: even the Santa Barbara Film Fest isn’t about the work itself but further promotion. Thompson isn’t nominated and the film is already out, so she has nothing left to promote. Redford isn’t nominated either, but it sounds like he wasn’t really there for All Is Lost but because of the heartfelt tribute from Durling. It sounds nice, but I’m glad the Academy didn’t nominate Redford for the wrong reasons.
Bryce, have you even seen All is Lost? How could you even judge the nature of this essay or these comments if you haven’t?
Didn’t read essay or comments. Only did a word search for “GRAVITY” to find if someone had said something stupid.
“did a word search for ‘Gravity’ to see if someone had said something stupid”
Hope nobody comes along to do the same thing. Now there’s something to see.
We’re just teasing you, Bryce. I love that you take it so seriously and so personally. Love that you can handle feeling embattled. Welcome to my world. Check your email.
I don’t think I follow this whole “something stupid about Gravity” but if you’re suggesting I wrote something “stupid” about Gravity that seems to be a fairly annoying take on my point of view. Anyone who feels victimized by my own opinion really needs to get a life. Or start their own site.
Finally saw All is Lost on demand and I wish I could get some of what all the people saying Redford would win Best Actor were smoking, cause it must be some powerful shite. An Oscar for that performance? WHAT PERFORMANCE? Robotic, unexpressive and unemotional. SAG and Oscar voters were right on the money for once.
Finally saw All is Lost on demand and I wish I could get some of what all the people saying Redford would win Best Actor were smoking, cause it must be some powerful shite. An Oscar for that performance? WHAT PERFORMANCE? Robotic, unexpressive and unemotional. SAG and Oscar voters were right on the money for once.
Give me a break. Just because you didn’t get it doesn’t mean it wasn’t great. SAG and the other consensus voters mostly fall in line per the buzz of Oscar season. Very little of it has to do with “deserves.”
Sasha, your site proves that I’m not the only one who follows the Oscars. Out of all the people I know, I’m the only one who does this. But I always knew I wasn’t the only one in the world. This gives Oscar nuts a place to come and mingle with like-minded individuals who share a love for film and the art and craft that goes into it.
It’s true that most people would rather watch movies like ‘Ride Along’, ‘Madea Goes to Jail’, ‘Friday’, or ‘Big Momma’s House.’ But most people don’t have the understanding and appreciation for filmmaking, or the stories that they tell. They just want something they can identify with, which is why you see a lot of these Inner-city themes appearing in greater quantities.
There is a definite lack of imagination and open-mindedness when it comes to film, as audiences are concerned. But it is because of imagination and open-mindedness that films have become one of the staples of the modern world. The Oscars presents us with a year’s worth of film work that spans the globe, showing us the variety and ingenuity that makes humanity so fascinating. Every time we see a film, we’re looking into someone else’s mind. The only thing is that nobody is always going to agree 100% on any one person’s vision. But that shouldn’t suggest that it’s bad, or wrong.
Thanks for writing this. Redford should have won Best Actor this year at the Oscars. It’s a bit ridiculous to see the Academy go so wild over Gravity when they’ve ignored All is Lost, a superior film, but a film that is a much more difficult watch.
Interestingly, Oliver Stone tweeted a couple days ago that he saw All is Lost and thought it was a masterpiece. If someone like Stone only got around to seeing All is Lost last week, it really does say that most AMPAS voters never gave it a chance.
Same goes for Emma Thompson and SavingMr. Banks…
yet another first rate essay. thank you.
“[Redford] said everyone told him working with Barbra Streisand would be a pain in the ass. But he said she was one of the best working relationships he’d ever had.”
I’m glad Redford said this. Streisand has taken a lot of criticism over the years that seems undeserved. So she’s a perfectionist whose work is quite stylized. So are a lot of others, but virtually all of them are men – most of whom aren’t regarded this way. Those who criticize are probably less talented, and probably male.
Sasha, I’m sorry to hear you express disillusionment about film in general because of the realities of the awards phenomenon. It’s a microcosm, really, of how things work in this world that I believe we must take in stride while trying to change it.