As President Obama readies for his second inaugural (he’s officially been sworn in but the ceremony is Monday, January 21) it’s hard not to think of President Lincoln’s. Lincoln gave his second inaugural speech on March 5, 1865. He was shot on April 14, 1865. President Obama will give his speech on Martin Luther King, Jr. day. King was shot on April 4, 1968. Why all of this maudlin attention on the eve of President Obama’s celebratory moment? It’s only to point out the state of the things right now in America. There is so much conflict now, so many angry citizens who can’t accept that 150 years after Lincoln’s assassination, a black man is our President. Tavis Smiley’s commentary on Obama and Martin Luther King points to how much change is still ahead, pointing to drone strikes and continuing poverty. He’s right, of course, but you have to start somewhere. Lincoln might be a little stunned to see where America is on January 21, 2013.
In the meantime, the ending of Spielberg’s Lincoln pointed very specifically to Lincoln’s second inaugural address because he throws the ball back to us Americans and calls for a lasting peace:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
What does any of this have to do with the Oscar race? Why, everything, of course. Either the politics and conflicts of today will resonate with voters or they will do what they’ve done in the past during times of strife and fling themselves into the feelgood rom-com. We don’t yet know but it is probably human nature to back away from the flame, whether an enduring one or not.
My goodness, how did this turn into a debate on Silver Lining Playbook? I thought the topic was Lincoln?
And Sasha, if you ask me, I think the Oscars have been devolving since The Greatest Show on Earth.
I guess what I’m saying is…we all go a little mad sometimes…
wow…every year there is a movie in the race that people choose to despise and I guess this year it’s Silver Linings Playbook. A film that I thought was a really solid film, with terrific performances. The hatred being spewed at the film is unwarranted. It comes from the film not living up to an expectation you built up in your own head (well in Sasha’s case she hated the film before seeing it – I got this from the comments she made about the film being “cute” and “lightweight”). You wanted a serious film about mental illness? Sorry, they didn’t make that film this year but why hate the film if that’s not what they set out to do?
The movie is a romantic comedy, as with most films in that genre, there’s a certain amount of suspension of reality that the viewer must have. Unlike most rom coms this one was actually well acted.
Ryan, what Pat did to his wife’s lover is wrong and he deserved to be go to prison – I don’t think anyone is arguing that…I think some people would agree that in the moment, that is how many of us MAY react – therefore we sympathize with the fellow. It’s fine if you are the kind of individual that would never attack a person to that level – good for you, but it’s unfair to morally judge someone for doing so (legally we can judge because it is against the law to assault someone to a bloody pulp)
Did you even watch the movie?
He didn’t attack his mom. He was scuffling with his dad, who has a history of violence, and she got too close to the action and was accidentally hit by Pat Jr.
He is not depicted as going into “full-blown mania” in the film.
That might even be kinda neat, if there were a bunch of genetically psychic manipulative girls in every town across America who possessed the superpower to bust in and fix seriously dysfunctional families by reeling off a lot superstitious hoo-ha about how she can cast a magic spell to influence sporting events.
Well, she is an X-man. 🙂
Fine, severe enough to cause him to attack his mom and get the cops called to his house. His is not a minor case; he is depicted as going into full-blown mania in the film.
No the main problem most of you have with SLP is that it may win over your baby Lincoln.
Pat wasn’t institutionalized because his bi polar was so severe. His time in the hospital was part of a plea bargain due to the fact that he beat someone up. It was a deal to avoid jail time.
Having worked at a psych clinic for 8 years, I can safely say that bipolar disorder so severe that the protagonist had to be institutionalized would rarely — if ever — wind up resulting in a fun dance competition in which the patient goes home with Jennifer Lawrence (even with medication compliance). Unless of course, its all in the patient’s head and his psychosis has been terribly misdiagnosed as bipolar.
That was a great analysis Antoinette.
It’s kinda annoying how people say that SLP has no depth and is too light to win best picture.
SPOILERS FOR SLP
I kinda thought “the shower” was a huge traumatic event for him that instigated whatever mental illness he had. I think if he had killed both of them right then and there he could have gotten off with a heat of passion excuse. Instead he “went crazy”. He couldn’t accept that it really happened. He knew it did but he kept thinking he could fix it and his wife would come back. That’s how it tied in with the football juju, imo. His dad clearly had OCD and tried to control everything including the outcome of football games by holding the remote controls in a certain position as if they were antenna that he could find the winning signal with. If you think that every slight move you make will be responsible for things outside of your control, like a football game, you think wrong. His dad basically taught him to think wrong. It all came together when his wife cheated on him. He thought that was his fault. So he was trying to lose weight and read the books from her class to get it just right to get her back and fix everything. Reading books and losing weight had nothing to do with it but to him it was the magical answer. They needed Lawrence’s character to give them a way, through the parlay, to put things back into something they could actually control. Getting a 5 in the dance contest was something they could actually do. She used the juju against them to get him to do something good for himself. So she did fix them. Dad was able to concentrate on his silver lining after losing his pension. By winning that bet, he could be in control again with the money for the restaurant. Cooper was able to let go of his wife. No more juju.
She used the juju against them to get him to do something good for himself. So she did fix them.
It’s possible that I missed it, because I was so fed up by the end. But seems to me dad never let go of that lucky handkerchief superstition. So I had the impression that dad is still wacky about the handkerchief, and that’s hardly what I would diagnose as ‘fixed.’ But we’re supposed to think a stern talking-to from a stranger who crashes into the living room is all the intervention anybody needed to get their heads screwed on right?
That might even be kinda neat, if there were a bunch of genetically psychic manipulative girls in every town across America who possessed the superpower to bust in and fix seriously dysfunctional families by reeling off a lot superstitious hoo-ha about how she can cast a magic spell to influence sporting events. But I think the main problem most of us have with that plot point is that it’s pure absurd fantasy.
Well, yeah, LEGALLY you can’t hit a guy because it sets a precedent the law can’t handle but from an in-the-moment standpoint, that’s a reasonable response. In a criminal court, you can’t legally beat up someone for taunting you with epithets but if it happens, I wouldn’t blame the physical attacker.
Now, I’d certainly divorce my wife but only after the shock and ensuing aggression against the guy IN MY OWN SHOWER TELLING ME TO WALK AWAY brought me a degree of satisfaction. A huge part of SLP is self-improvement, and Pat feels that his own instability and weight issues led to his wife’s cheating. Insecurity is a long-running theme in the film. If I was overweight and tenuously employed and my wife left me, maybe I’d feel as though her infidelity was my own fault. Why do people stay married despite infidelity? Insecurity, and SLP does a great job dealing with the subject. From the perspective of an audience member watching the film, OF COURSE it seems pointless for Pat to pursue his wife. But Pat obviously loves her and at some point won her over and he’s doing his best to recapture that moment because his life didn’t offer him another solution toward happiness. When Tiffany enters the picture as an alternative, it takes him a while to realize it.
Well, yeah, LEGALLY you can’t hit a guy because it sets a precedent the law can’t handle but from an in-the-moment standpoint, that’s a reasonable response.
Stand your ground. Definitely let’s encourage people to believe violence is the reasonable response. If the spontaneous impulse to inflict pain and potentially lethal injury on another person makes you feel good in-the-moment, hey, that’s a really reasonable response. Any guy dares to touch his dick to something you think belongs to you, sure, perfectly reasonably to try to kill the person attached to that dick.
you can’t hit a guy because it sets a precedent the law can’t handle but from an in-the-moment standpoint, that’s a reasonable response
Let’s stop taking about what you would do or what I would do.
We’re talking about one guy in one particular situation in a movie.
We’re not talking about a bitch-slap or a black-eye or a punch-in-the-nose situation.
We’re talking about Pat losing his mind in a rage so intense he can’t even fully remember what he did. We’re talking about an assault that was apparently brutal enough to get him arrested and incarcerated in a mental institution, locked up.
(In the book, he was locked up for 4 years and couldn’t even recall what year he was living anymore because he had lost all sense of time passing. That was homogenized into a cute-looking rehab getaway spa situation in the movie, but make no mistake, he was sent away and locked up.)
Nobody is going to be sent away to Camp Calm-the-Fuck-Down for punching some other dude in the nose during a momentary temper flare-up.
It was assault and battery. It was attempted manslaughter. And that’s not reasonable in the eyes of most civilized humans.
LEGALLY you can’t hit a guy because it sets a precedent the law can’t handle but from an in-the-moment standpoint, that’s a reasonable response. In a criminal court, you can’t legally beat up someone for taunting you with epithets but if it happens, I wouldn’t blame the physical attacker.
How would this be: 50,000 people show up for an Eagles football game at Lincoln Philly Stadium or wherever and 50,000 people start tackling each other and beating the living shit out of one another anytime a cross word is uttered that rubs somebody the wrong way.
Had the movie showed how difficult it was — REALLY — to overcome bipolar, duh, maybe I could have bought it. As it was, DUH, it was a fantasy that can’t just have its cake and eat it too.
All over this! Insultingly simplistic film.
OT:
London Critics’ Circle award winners
http://screenonscreen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/london-critics-circle-awards.html#more
So everybody who is against Obama is a racist? There are millions of us who simply don’t like his leftist policies.
So everybody who is against Obama is a racist?
no. just the racists.
but please flip out anyway.
Ah, Kevin sort of beat me to it. And yeah, Pat wasn’t violent too his mother; it was an accident.
What’s wrong with beating the shit out of a guy who’s nailing your wife in your own shower? Jesus, I’m not walking away going “Hmm, this is an unpleasant way to conclude my afternoon. I daresay divorce papers are in order.”
What’s wrong with beating the shit out of a guy who’s nailing your wife in your own shower?
Ask the cops, ask the prosecutor, ask the judge, ask your fellow inmates.
Jesus, I’m not walking away going “Hmm, this is an unpleasant way to conclude my afternoon. I daresay divorce papers are in order.”
no, of course not. You’d definitely just want to stay married to a thoughtless unfaithful person. You’d for sure want to chase after her long after she was fed up with your crazy behavior, after she tries to move on, tries to find happiness without you.
Duh, he was institutionalized after the mauling incident! Duh, psychiatric cases are always potentially violent to self and to others. Duh, if the movie dwelt on how to solve Brad’s sickness in strict accordance with actual medical practice, it won’t be a rom com. Duh, duh and more duh!
I saw a documentary about psychiatric treaments years ago on HBO. I couldn’t tell you the title or who made it. Anyway there were three cases. One guy got a brain operation, the next guy got shock treatment type therapies, the last guy was on all kinds of medication. It turned out nothing worked for any of them. A year later they went back to check on them. The first two were the same, but the third guy was doing much better. They asked him what was different and he said he didn’t know. But the people making the doc commented that when he came to the interveiw he brought his girlfriend, that he hadn’t had the year before, with him.
I don’t think SLP is a fantasy. But most of my favorite films are fantasy/SciFi so that’s not a negative thing to me. But as I’ve said before, I have my favorites and I know the difference between my favorite films and what’s best. I can objectively look at movies I don’t like and see their merits and faults. I think that SLP is a better film than LINCOLN though neither are close to being favorites of mine.
A Beautiful Mind is based on a real story, and screw the inaccuracies, it feels real. Silver Linings is a story that has so many holes, it doesn’t make sense in the real world, and yet it’s supposed to be about everyday people.
Silver Linings Playbook won the Peoples Choice Award in Toronto, has Harvey Weinstein behind it and is a great film
One of these reasons is not like the others.
I don’t have a problem with SLP being “fantasy”. It’s a made up story not pretending to be reality. Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty and Argo present themselves as true “history” but actually are way more “fantasy” than SLP could ever hope to be. I personally know people that are severely bi-polar that learned to control their disorder with exercise and a healthy relationship.
This Oscar line-up is better than last year’s. But overall I much prefer 2011 in film.
A Beautiful Mind sucks ass
Good thing it didn’t win Best Picture.
Oh wait.
Sure Zach because all a schizophrenic needs is the right woman to love him and then he can function in the world and not hurt himself and others. Both movies have flaws but at the end of the day they are just movies trying to uplift and entertain.
Last year was so weak, Christopher Plummer would have won anyway.
Also, A Beautiful Mind >>>>>>>>>> Silver Linings Playbook.
A Beautiful Mind sucks ass
P.S. I happen to agree 100% with the critique that SLP’s view of mental illness is as problematic as in A Beautiful mind. Very unrealistic.
Bryce Forestieri,
Are you forgetting about The Kids Are All Right. If that film had been made about a straight nuclear family would it have been nominated for BP, best actress? Would WEEKEND had been so loved in the Indie community if it were about two heterosexuals? Would Christopher Plummer have won an Oscar if his character was just a heterosexual old man starting dating life again in Beginners? My guess is no. What I think people like about SLP is that it is very much about America and American optimism: you can change your life, you can find love, you can move on and be a different and better you. It’s uplifting and encouraging. THAT’s what makes you finish watching with a smile on your face and a kick in your step. Not an erection from PG level content. You can get an erection 24/7 from the internet, whenever you want.
@g: SLP is a fantasy, people with mental illnesses are magically cured for a happy ending! David O Rusell had to make Jennifer Lawrence a whore for the movie!
God forbid they portray whores on film!
We don’t mind whores in movies but I prefer the movie whores who do more whore stuff than just TALK about being whores.
Screenwriting 101
Show, don’t tell.
SLP didn’t work on me, I liked Weaver and Tucker..the rest..they were ok, not deserving of nominations IMO, also the movie was just ok, not a BP worthy film.
SLP is a fantasy, people with mental illnesses are magically cured for a happy ending! David O Rusell had to make Jennifer Lawrence a whore for the movie! Give me a break…
@Sasha: No one really seems to notice that Bradley Cooper’s character is violent – to his wife’s lover, to his own mother.
Duh, he’s bipolar.
@Jerry: This critique of the film has always baffled me to be honest.
It’s not really critiquing, it’s trying to bring down the film. Throw everything including the kitchen sink at it.
I can’t believe I’m defending a film I actually don’t like.
@Sasha: No one really seems to notice that Bradley Cooper’s character is violent – to his wife’s lover, to his own mother.
Duh, he’s bipolar.
Duh, they try to solve it all with pills. Anyone who knows anything about bipolar knows it is never that simple. Moreover, not all bipolar people are violent. If they are, it’s a dangerous place for anyone to be and they should proceed with caution. Proceeding with caution, by the way, the opposite of chasing after, stalking to be your boyfriend. Had the movie showed how difficult it was — REALLY — to overcome bipolar, duh, maybe I could have bought it. As it was, DUH, it was a fantasy that can’t just have its cake and eat it too. DUH. God, I hate assholes.
It’s not really critiquing, it’s trying to bring down the film. Throw everything including the kitchen sink at it.
Bullshit. It’s being repulsed, as is our wont, at how the Oscar race can devolve so dramatically in certain years.
Here’s a thought: what are all the election-year Best Pictures?
+ = upbeat
– = downbeat
(NOT a holistic analysis)
2008 – Slumdog Millionaire (+++)
2004 – Million Dollar Baby (-)
2000 – Gladiator (+)
1996 – The English Patient (-)
1992 – Unforgiven (-)
1988 – Rain Man (+)
1984 – Amadeus (+ overall)
1980 – Ordinary People (-)
1976 – Rocky (+++)
1972 – The Godfather (+ overall)
1968 – Oliver! (+++)
1964 – My Fair Lady (+++)
1960 – The Apartment (+ overall)
1956 – Around the World in 80 Days (+)
1952 – The Greatest Show on Earth (+)
1948 – Hamlet (-, I guess, but not much of a downer)
1944 – Going My Way (+++)
1940 – Rebecca (+ though disturbing)
1936 – The Great Ziegfeld (+ though a snoozefest but for the cake)
1932 – Grand Hotel (+, entertainment value outweighs somberness)
1928 – Wings (+)
Well, there’s no science to this, but it seems that most of the election-year winners are upbeat. Most of the politically charged Best Pictures did not win in election years. Some of the most controversial Best Pictures or competitive races also took place in election years and resulted in the least offensive, most upbeat or entertaining films winning.
Now here’s how I’d rank the Best Picture nominees this year on this makeshift scale:
Silver Linings ++
Life of Pi + though the end confuses, may feel like a cheat
Beasts of the Southern Wild + even though I didn’t really think so
Lincoln + despite the assassination
Argo + though somber
Django +, but so over-the-top and unfounded in the violence against certain characters that it overstays its welcome, not to mention a key death takes away the movie’s sense of fun
Les Mis – for me, sorry
Zero Dark Thirty: I still haven’t seen it, so I can’t gauge whether the real-life “happy ending” outweighs the torture controversy, but apparently not, so I’m giving it a – for now.
Amour —
“Silver Linings Gaybook wouldn’t have made the slightest blip on the Oscar radar”
True that
@Ryan
I’ve seen it. So would dramedy not be a valid way to portray troubled gay people in messed-up relationships?
So would dramedy not be a valid way to portray troubled gay people in messed-up relationships?
Sure. But I don’t know any gay directors who would waste their time trivializing mental illness.
But you raise a great point, Bryce, If SLP was a gay movie with the exact same script and all the same casting except it starred a sexy talented up-and-coming gay actor as Wooffany instead of Tiffany then Silver Linings Gaybook wouldn’t have made the slightest blip on the Oscar radar.
@Jerry
If SLP was a “gay comedy” with the exact same characters, story, and behaviors nobody would fret over it. Not that many do anyways.
If SLP was a “gay comedy” with the exact same characters, story, and behaviors nobody would fret over it.
And nobody would nominate it for 8 Oscars. And nobody would be spending $50M see it, because it would never even get made.
Want to see how gay directors make movies about troubled gay people in messed-up relationships, watch Keep the Lights On.
Whose fantasy is Tiffany in SLP? I don’t know any real life guys who would go for her. Even Bradley Cooper when asked at the Globes said he would not date Jennifer Lawrence because he is old enough to be her father. http://m.nypost.com/p/pagesix/bradley_cooper_on_jennifer_lawrence_T1U1lIK2jBUxS8uxF3WpTM
—Lawrence in SLP is like rated PG in terms of skin exposure. A guy can take 5 seconds to look up a hotter completely naked 20 year old on the Internet. So I really don’t know who these guys getting off on SLP are. Do they not have Internet or access to men’s magazines? Don’t go to the gym where young ladies are in skin tight outfits all the time? This critique of the film has always baffled me to be honest.
Jerry, he actually said grandfather. Oh lots of guys. She was voted Most Desirable on the cover of Vanity Fair by millions of votes.
First of all, I love this site and I love Sasha’s passion for film and story and its connection to life, to real issues and to politics. In my opinion, the best writing on film on the internet! Go Sasha! lol
I do have some beef with everyone and anyone that thinks that the reason Lincoln will or won’t win BP is bc of politics or what is going on in the world. Do films that remind us of real life goings on or our own personal trials and tribulations resonate with us more? SURE! That’s what is great about movies! But you also have to to look at the parts that make up a movie. A movie does not win BP anymore without winning at least a couple more statues. A finished product is usually as good as the sum of its parts. That being said, if a movie has the best production design and is the best edited film and is the best written and the best directed and the best acted, it is probably the best picture! I think a movie can resonate with the Academy without it winning big on Oscar Sunday and vice versa–just bc a movie does not win big at the Oscars doesn’t mean it didn’t resonate with them!! They probably really loved Moonrise Kingdom and The Dark Knight Rises etc. but they just thought that there were BETTER made movies this year! I think Lincoln is the Best Picture of 2012, not bc the politics of the 1860’s is reminiscent of today’s, (though it is..), but bc IMO, Lincoln is the best directed, acted, written, photographed, scored, designed and editing picture this year.
Sometimes I just think you have to look at film both subjectively and objectively. If Lincoln does not win BP it’s not bc of the politics. It’s bc the Academy probably thought there was another movie that was a better directed, acted, written film etc…Just a though
I saw the most diverse cast in a movie that I’ve seen in years yesterday. And wouldn’t you know it, it starred a Republican. You want politics in movies, go see the Governator in THE LAST STAND. But then again you might be entertained which would be too Pollyanna. And I hear it got beat at the box office by a movie with a bunch of white people and a ghost of some kind and all the white people who killed Bin Laden. Yeah, nevermind, skip it.
Antoinette, you write things off too quickly and easily. No matter what you think we are living in a moment in history right now that can’t be overlooked. Well of course, plenty of Americans would rather watch Snookie and J Woww or god knows what else. But I’m trying to alert all involved that when we look back on 2012 and see Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty and Argo all up for Best Picture and if that prize goes to Silver Linings Playbook it’s going to make The King’s Speech look like The Godfather by comparison.
But I’m trying to alert all involved that when we look back on 2012 and see Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty and Argo all up for Best Picture and if that prize goes to Silver Linings Playbook it’s going to make The King’s Speech look like The Godfather by comparison.
Can we try to use this line as a rudder to navigate this boat back on topic. I’m so bored with explaining why I think SLP is so boring.
Bradley Cooper is so much hotter than Hugh Jackman
Very true. I think most of us either look the other way or ignore underlying racism and I believe Sasha has brought that to light well recently. Lets hope Lincoln resonates. It’s been since 2009 a best picture film actually meant something.
Well I don’t know Antoinette but you’d have to either be brain damaged or dumb not to see the correlation of a president who freed the slaves 150 years ago and a black man signing in for his second term. If you are someone who thinks about history and politics Lincoln will RESONATE more with you. But if you are hoping to get an erection again in your 70th year, Silver Linings Playbook will resonate with you.
I thought SLP was about a guy with mental problems who meets someone who helps him out. I didn’t realize it was about erections and 70 year olds. It must be my brain damage.
Silver Linings is a fantasy. If you hope a 22 year old hottie will do ANYTHING to get you to be her boyfriend this is your movie. Girls like it too, which baffles me, but most girls like the romcom paradigm. Happy ending, girl gets boy…all that matters.
Girls like it too, which baffles me, but most girls like the romcom paradigm
It’s probably encouraging to millions of crazy-acting guys and crazy-acting girls to see a movie that reinforces the idea that it’s ok to be crazy-acting, because hey, look, even your parents and friends are crazy-acting! even your therapist is crazy-acting! Just keep on acting crazy right up to the very last 10 minutes of a movie and you’ll still end up fucking the sexiest man alive or the sexiest girl alive. So long as you’ve got a great ass, just act as crazy as your crazy-ass wants to act.
No one really seems to notice that Bradley Cooper’s character is violent – to his wife’s lover, to his own mother.
Sasha is rightly concerned about a girl who hooks up with a guy who’s been convicted of attempted manslaughter who spits out the medication meant to help balance his enraged brain chemistry.
I’m concerned about a guy whose therapist and parents are as loopy as he is hooking up with a stalker girl who’s a pathological liar who runs off to a bar to get wasted and flirt with strangers whenever she gets her feelings hurt.
Just because they’re cuddling on the La-Z-Boy recliner in the last scene doesn’t mean they’ve magically fixed each other.
No, Ryan. My point is you don’t have to always have this stuff on your mind if you don’t want to. It doesn’t have to be a part of your daily life. Of course I don’t follow those people. I don’t interact with them and I wouldn’t. That’s what’s great about twitter. You can block assholes. You can do that in real life too by ignoring them. Eventually if the assholes are all alone with no followers and no friends, they could possible think better of their outlooks on life. If they don’t, then they never would anyway, and they were always a waste of our time.
But those of us who choose to go along and be positive people aren’t ignoring the world. We know they exist. We just don’t think about it all day every day and it doesn’t influence everything we do including how we view entertainment. We just might like being entertained without having to look at everything in terms of how it relates to the politics of the day.
As an Oklahoman who’s 21 and in college, I can attest that there is true racism and bigotry (I should know) in the somewhat more rural pockets of our state but I would bet my friends and I aren’t that different than Antoinette.
would bet my friends and I aren’t that different than Antoinette.
Absolutely. I think my friends and Zane’s friends would get along with Antoinette’s friends, and we’re all friends here at AD.
If we had a reader speak up and say, “Hell yeah! all the people I hang out with are racists!” then we might be have cause to be wary of that reader.
We all build comfy bubbles of niche interests around ourselves and fill our lives with a like-minded compatible circle of friends. But just because I don’t see people on MSNBC talking about how much it bugs them to have a black man in the White House, I don’t breath a sigh of relief and assume the whole country tunes in every night to watch Reverend Al.
Antoinette. Here’s something you won’t see Brian Williams talking about on the NBC Nightly News.
If Lincoln was tied to the politics of the Obama’s re-election so too would have Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty. Based on the Oscar nominations that isn’t the case. I think Lincoln is the frontrunner based on prestige and that with the re-election of Obama there is less anxiety and strife within the Liberal Hollywood community so they don’t have to lean on simple feel-good movies like the previous two years when Obama’s re-election was so up in the air. There has been significantly LESS conflict with conservatives after the last election compared to before with fights over Obama-care, Obama’s citizenship questioned and wanting “their country back” racist campaigns.
@Marc: Yeah, let’s go to the notorious neo-Confederate to see what the REAL truth is, right?
Spielberg’s Upside-Down History: The Myth of Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment
http://lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo245.html
There is so much conflict now, so many angry citizens who can’t accept that 150 years after Lincoln’s assassination, a black man is our President.
Maybe I’m just too goofy but I manage to miss these people. In my daily goings on here in Massachusetts I don’t hear about them. I watch the news, I’m on the twitter, I check Google news several times a day and it gets past me. Maybe it’s LA. I did learn in the docu-drama CRASH that Los Angeles is probably the most racist place ever. Still.
What does any of this have to do with the Oscar race? Why, everything, of course. Either the politics and conflicts of today will resonate with voters or they will do what they’ve done in the past during times of strife and fling themselves into the feelgood romcom.
Resonate how? Okay Obama’s being inaugurated again. In fact he just took his oath of office 25 minutes ago. And as you say there are people who dislike him and the fact that he is President. How will that or how should that affect the way people vote for movie awards? It’s supposed to make people vote for LINCOLN because…? I thought President Obama didn’t pick it as one of his favorite movies of the year. Which I guess means that if he were voting for Oscar and picked one of the movies he liked then we could assume that he’s ignoring the politics of the day?
I manage to miss these people. In my daily goings on here in Massachusetts I don’t hear about them.
Mystery solved. Not only is it pretty naive to think people in Oklahoma, Alabama, Idaho and Mississippi are anything like the friends you choose to run around with in Massachusetts, it’s even naive to think that nobody in Massachusetts is any more racist than the people you choose to talk to in your daily goings on.
Do you follow a lot of racists on Twitter? If not, how the heck would you expect to see racism on Twitter? Are you waiting for the cool people you follow to RT a lot of racist insanity?
Did you not hear about any of this?
Well I don’t know Antoinette but you’d have to either be brain damaged or dumb not to see the correlation of a president who freed the slaves 150 years ago and a black man signing in for his second term. If you are someone who thinks about history and politics Lincoln will RESONATE more with you. But if you are hoping to get an erection again in your 70th year, Silver Linings Playbook will resonate with you.