Bill Maher draws a parallel between the mass hysteria and purity tests afflicting the Democrats (we’re doomed, folks) and the mass hysteria and purity afflicting the Oscars. As you all know, I’ve been writing about this for a while now, and many people agree with this sentiment — it’s just that they’re too afraid to say it out loud. Why are they afraid? Because who wants to be called out in a Twitter swarm of outrage and get, god forbid, hashtagged? The high status film tweeters lead the charge and many follow in blind obedience. Most won’t push back, at least publicly, out of fear. In Salem, no one did either, until it got to be so bad that one man finally stood up and said “this is bullshit,” in so many words. Then they all had to lift in the aftermath of having been caught up in fear and panic and acted irrationally. Who knows where this is going. I do think people believe themselves to be on the right side but, as Bill Maher points out, we have no choice but to eat our own because the Right is immune to our public protests.
As for the Democrats, well there are too many people running, each of them way too easy to sabotage. Our outrage machine shows no signs of slowing down. The trolls are out there sabotaging, the GOP is ratfucking. It’s hard to imagine unity. It’s as broken as it was heading into 1972.
And so it goes. One more week, folks. One more week.
Oh and I hope Green book wins. Its’ actually my number 2 of the year after Roma but I;m so tired of Green Book whining I wouldn’t mind seeing it winning.
Democratic party unity is not going to happen.
[I’m going to post these in a number of places, in an attempt to get as many of the people who voted to see them…]
Results for my 8th Annual Best Picture Preferential Ballot Simulation:
Some quick details about the process, first… I posted the request for ballots in 11 different threads at Awards Daily, as well as in one thread in the Movie Awards Redux forum (where a lot of the old Oscar Buzz gang from the now defunct IMDb message boards have relocated, as far as I can tell). I collected, in total, 45 ballots from Awards Daily and 28 ballots from Movie Awards Redux, plus my and my mom’s, for a total of 75. Three more than last year. As I’ve done in the past, for the separate counts, I assigned my mom’s ballot to the Movie Awards Redux lot, and my own to the Awards Daily lot. In any case, at least this year, the final result 100% would not have changed, for either, had I assigned both to one place or the other, or neither anywhere. I have, as always, a full list of the user names of the people who took part (and to whom I am genuinely grateful), which I can share with anyone who would like to look it over. (I’ve never had such a request, but I’ve always compiled the list anyway.) Nobody’s ballot got counted twice. (Unless somebody voted both places, under different user names, and didn’t tell me about it. Which I doubt.)
All that out of the way… well… 🙂 I have the results, and they’re, perhaps, unusually interesting. (I might go so far as to say they’re definitely that, but that could just be me.) In the overall count, the winner was, EASILY, The Favourite, by a final score of 45-30 over Roma. The two had almost 75% of the total #1 votes. The Favourite was ahead 31-24, and its lead never diminished one bit, but rather increased steadily. BlacKkKlansman finished a very distant third, with A Star is Born fourth. Fourth out (so, finishing in fifth place) was Green Book, third out was Black Panther, second out was Vice and first out was Bohemian Rhapsody, with a lone first place vote. More details on all of this can be found in the round-by-round breakdown below, which I provide every year.
Now, one might come up with the theory that The Favourite winning is mostly due to the votes from Movie Awards Redux, but this actually turns out to not quite be true. The margin is a result of that, but not the win. Counting only the Movie Awards Redux votes, The Favourite wins 20-9 over Roma in the final two – the same margin it had on #1 votes. But the even more interesting news comes from counting only the Awards Daily ballots, where Roma was in first place on #1 votes, 18-14, but only picked up three more votes along the way, losing out, in the end, by the same margin it had originally led by, four votes – 25-21. Not something that happens a lot in these simulations, and, I’m sure, not something most people would have guessed might happen: The Favourite benefiting copiously from the preferential ballot…
Now, why I find this to be potentially relevant even from a predictions perspective: in the previous 7 editions of this simulation that I’ve done, the Best Picture winner has NEVER finished in second place. Not once. It finished in first twice. This, of course, may well be random (the sample is still very small, and the expectancy about one second place), but, on the other hand, what would worry me about it, were I a Roma supporter, would be that it, at least in my opinion, makes a lot of sense that this wouldn’t happen. The Best Picture winner is either a movie that isn’t among the big favorites of the internet community at all (like The King’s Speech, Argo, Spotlight or The Shape of Water – or, apparently, 12 Years a Slave, which finished a rather distant third, tied with The Wolf of Wall Street) or is a movie that’s so popular/beloved, not just by the Academy, that even said community likes it more than everything else (Birdman, Moonlight). It’s true, Birdman DID beat Boyhood by just the one vote, but, nevertheless, it did beat it… And this is not the case this year. Roma lost by a very clear margin. So, maybe, as I and others believe, it is, indeed, a very vulnerable front runner for Best Picture, and The Favourite or Green Book or, who knows, something else entirely, might win instead… Or maybe it just breaks the streak. Equally plausible. However, I would like to point out one more interesting tidbit which isn’t in Roma’s favor: every single DGA winner that went on to lose Best Picture at the Oscars in the modern preferential era (whether it won or lost the PGA) has finished dead second in these simulations. Gravity, The Revenant, La La Land. True, Gravity was tied for first, but lost out fair and square (to Her) via the same tie-breaking method the Academy uses.
I give, again, the results of all of these simulations (this year’s included), for further reference and verification of my statements directly above:
2011 The Social Network —– details not saved (second place was Black Swan, I believe)
2012 – not held –
2013 Zero Dark Thirty ——— 37-24 over Silver Linings Playbook
2014 Her ————————– 33-33 tied with Gravity, won 19-18 on total first place votes
2015 Birdman ——————– 62-61 over Boyhood
2016 Mad Max: Fury Road — 51-37 over The Revenant
2017 Moonlight —————— 41-32 over La La Land
2018 Phantom Thread ——— 39-33 over Call Me By Your Name
2019 The Favourite ————- 45-30 over Roma
The breakdown
Round 1
The Favourite 31
Roma 24
BlacKkKlansman 6
A Star is Born 4
Green Book 4
Black Panther 3
Vice 2
Bohemian Rhapsody 1 OUT!
Round 2
The Favourite 31
Roma 24
BlacKkKlansman 6
A Star is Born 5
Green Book 4
Black Panther 3
Vice 2 OUT!
Round 3
The Favourite 32
Roma 24
A Star is Born 6
BlacKkKlansman 6
Green Book 4
Black Panther 3 OUT!
Round 4
The Favourite 33
Roma 25
A Star is Born 6
BlacKkKlansman 6
Green Book 5 OUT!
Round 5
The Favourite 35
Roma 25
BlacKkKlansman 8
A Star is Born 7 OUT!
Round 6
The Favourite 37
Roma 26
BlacKkKlansman 12 OUT!
Round 7
The Favourite 45
Roma 30
Note that some Brits like me, and possibly some BAFTA voters, may have secretly loved The Favourite but would not vote for it in 1st or 2nd place for fear of appearing jingoistic.
Very interesting! That would certainly be consistent with what happened at BAFTA. It’s SO unusual for them to give a movie 7 awards but not Best Film…
In fact, the previous eight movies that won at least 7 BAFTA’s all won Best Film.
I would gladly replace 3 or 4 of these ‘Poor widdle Green Book!’ articles for one — just one — on ‘Not since the year 1950 has the Oscar field been led by not one, but two films entirely focused on the lives of women with almost entirely female casts’ and what that means, in contrast, when few actual women themselves are nominated in directing and writing categories. (You even has some interesting parallels between All About Eve and The Favourite.)
ESPECIALLY since we are bombarded with actual Green Book advertising.
This extreme focus on negative campaigning to the exclusion of almost everything else has only drawn attention to it — when, in the end, it won’t matter and very rarely ever matters in the first place.
I like that all this foofaraw involves going to bat for two films that shouldn’t be anywhere near the Picture race because of their own mediocrity, regardless of any problematic messaging on their respective parts (which I think both suffer from, but I’ll set that aside for now).
I’ve seen 105 films I rank for 2018. Right now Green Book is #83 and Bohemian Rhapsody is #96. Green Book alone is the weakest nominee in six years and BR the weakest in seven.
I like them not. That’s just my opinion. But what are the Oscars but the opinions (some very carefully considered, some not) of several thousand people?
I love green book but a lot of people are going to bat for it because of smug and exhausting film twitter people who are only interested in examining if the film is a appropriate in their eyes for today.
Which is an even WORSE reason to nominate it. If they’re only voting for it out of spite that young people with a more diverse world-view found it problematic (and more damningly: pedestrian), then what does that say about its place among the best movies of the year? (Also, hi Blake! :D)
Bill is right. The left sensitive snowflakes will nitpick, complain and whine about everything. Even if you’re not Republican you still find them annoying and tiresome. This is why Trump will most probably win again.
The Right have their own version of purists. They had something called the Tea Party, and tried to rid their party of so-called “RINOs”. I’m sure Bill Maher doesn’t find the purists on the left anywhere near as annoying as he finds Republicans.
But they are winning.
They just lost 40 seats in the House. In the next cycle, with a better Senate map, Democrats are expected to win there, too. Trump’s popularity ratings are abysmal, so he could lose the White House soon.
I’m not sure about the Senate. There are a lot of Republicans up for reelection, true, but most of those are in very red states. Dems would need to flip 3seats plus the White House, or 4 seats, to get a majority. And Doug Jones may very well lose his seat. It’s not an easy map.
I follow the Senate races a lot. It’s a passion of mine, getting on RealClearPolitics and so forth. It’s likelier based on the map that the Republicans will retain the Senate.
BR just won Sound Mixing at CAS. People need to understand First Man and A Star is Born aren’t winning the Sound categories at the Oscars.
Sound Editing is a different story than sound mixing though.
Tomorrow BR is probably winning over ASIB at MPSE as well. If First Man wins the Foley category than you can predict it in Editing but I really think BR being a BP nominee, having the BAFTA for Sound and MPSE for Musical stands more chances of winning.
I’m hoping for Roma to win Sound Editing.
Better to predict Roma than First Man anyway. BR, BP or Roma will win Sound Editing.
Cinema Audio Society winners:
Animated: Isle of Dogs (an upset brewing, as Art Directors Guild also went for IoD???)
Documentary: Free Solo
Feature: Bohemian Rhapsody
As a Progressive, and a candidate running for Congress in 2020, I feel obliged to point out that this kind of strawmanning is exactly what leads to the wrong people getting elected (i.e. Trump). It would be nice if we could all just stop politicizing movies and just enjoy ourselves. That’s what movies are for. Movies are not meant to be purely educational. But they do offer a window into their resepctive subject matters from which point the viewers can engage in their own research to get the full story. Bill Maher is mostly a partisan hack who is always preaching to Progressives “Just shut up and settle for shit!” He has called out some prominent Corproate Democratic leaders on occasion and I give him props for that. But what he fails to understand is that in a TRUE Democracy, the will of the people takes precedent when it comes to public policy. That’s why we have elections. We’re sick and tired of being forced farther and farther towards Oligarchic Authoritarianism by only being afforded the lesser of two evils. Evil is Evil, period. The lesser Evil just means the path to total destruction is merely being slowed down, but we’re still heading down that road nonetheless. So, Bill Maher is totally clueless and refuses to acknowledge that the political climate in the U.S. is shifting in a direction he didn’t grow up learning was acceptable. This is not 1992. Democrats can’t win on Corporate Centrist ideology anymore. The best thing would be to have Ranked Choice Voting, where the whole “spoiler” factor no longer exists and every party, including Independents, are guaranteed equal representation.
Marcus, Bill Maher has done more for democracy than you ever will. Your comment sounds like it comes from the exact same kind of whiner he rightly pans. He is far from a corporate centrist. He’s a realist. Your far flung ideals aren’t realistic, and people like you led to Trump.
If the Progressive agenda is so unrealistic, how do you explain the rest of the developed world employing it both successfully and at roughly half the cost of what the U.S. pays in it’s current system? Also, the issues on the Progressive platform are massively popular – even among Republicans. 70% of the country agrees with Medicare For All. 62% want to legalize Marijuana. 83% are in favor of a $15/hr minimum wage. 97% are for stricter background checks and tighter gun control. 81% are for ending the wars. 58% want tuition-free college. 84% are for a Progressive tax system with the highest taxes on the Wealthy Class. If this isn’t clear to you, then you’re not paying attention. Hillary Clinton was a Corporate Centrist warmonger who bathed in Wall Street money and didn’t stand for any of these things; and neither does Trump. Finally, it was the Electoral College that gave us Trump. If we had Ranked Choice Voting in place, we wouldn’t have to worry about the spoiler factor. Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes. Gary Johnson (L) got 1.5%. Jill Stein (G) only 1%. Your argument literally makes no sense.
Beautiful Mind’ Genius Nash Denies anti-Semitism”
The headline – ’02- that more or less started this nonsense. Nash was a sick man so his illness pathologies were used to help Denzel (who may have won anyway) beat R.Crowe. Vote for who you think was best!
I love Maher, but it’s kinda grasping at straws here…
Democrats are finished…your identitarianism was so transparent, it exposed your rabid anti-Semitism, your ugly racism, and your willingness to murder babies fresh out of the womb. Peggy Noonan gets it right in her column today. The Democrat party does not deserve to exist. The problem is that all you Democrats don’t deserve to exist.
That made sense.
We got us an edge lord here.
Seems we found a white supremacist Christian identitarianist. Democrats just kicked Trump’s ass in the last election bitch.
Oh no, the babies! They are slaughtering them!
Come on.
What would you do with Democrats? Sounds like you want them all killed. You sounds so Christian.
[LAST CALL for those who haven’t voted yet, but would like to – I start gathering/counting votes in approximately 3 hours:]
I once again invite all of the good folks willing to share their picks to post their rankings for this traditional BP voting simulation I’ve done pretty much every year since 2011, and, hopefully, help us all better understand how this year’s mad Best Picture race might shape up, as well as how the preferential ballot is likely to affect it. I will, as always, post detailed, round-by-round descriptions of how the count went, and so on, at the end… Many thanks to all of those who have participated in these simulations in past years, as well as to all of those who are about to, perhaps, take part in them for the first time this year!
Sometimes these are mostly indicative of the internet’s favorites, but sometimes they can also be very telling for what will actually happen at the Oscars. (Like in 2015 and 2017, when the winners were the same for both.) The four-year streak of the movie that (according to most accounts) came in second place at the Oscars each year finishing in exactly second place in this simulation ended last year, but only sort of, as Three Billboards was eliminated in third place despite being TIED with the second place finisher in that round. (Call Me By Your Name only went through after I checked to see which of the two would have lost the “final” by a larger margin. I have no idea what the Academy does in these situations – when there is a tie for precisely second place. They probably count first place votes, like they do when there is a tie for first place.) So, in any case, one can say the Oscar Best Picture “loser” has always at least tied for second place (and never come in first) in this simulation over the last five years. Therefore, it will be very interesting, at least for myself, to see what finishes in that fateful position this year…
8th Annual Best Picture Preferential Ballot Simulation:
So, please rank the eight Best Picture nominees this year, according to how much (or how little) you would like to see each of them win the Oscar! In other words, just as if you were a voting Academy member (except, don’t try to think like one of them would, but rather rank them according to your own tastes and wishes, of course)!
I would say that, ideally, a voter should have seen everything this year, or at least made an effort to do so (*cough* Roma – I know some people have had serious trouble getting through that… I didn’t, personally, though I also didn’t love it.), since most of the voters probably will have as well and, more importantly, any of the eight can be argued to have a shot at winning Best Picture. (Even though I, personally, believe only five or six of them, at most, can. And many people by now think it’s down to only two…)
I plan to keep voting open until Saturday or Sunday. I might also decide to close voting and calculate the results on Friday. We’ll see – I’ll give due notice either way, as usual.
My mother’s ballot (I asked her to rank these after she saw the last one, shortly after the nominations announcement, because I knew she might forget how she felt about at least some of them afterwards – prescription medication, long story -, so I felt that would probably be more relevant than having her rank them now):
1. Green Book
2. A Star is Born
3. Vice
4. Bohemian Rhapsody
5. BlacKkKlansman
6. Black Panther
7. The Favourite
8. Roma
Update: I, too, can vote now, having finally seen The Favourite…
1. A Star is Born
2. Vice
3. Green Book
4. The Favourite
5. BlacKkKlansman
6. Roma
7. Bohemian Rhapsody
8. Black Panther
The roll of honor:
2011 The Social Network —– details not saved (second place was Black Swan, I believe)
2012 – not held –
2013 Zero Dark Thirty ——— 37-24 over Silver Linings Playbook
2014 Her ————————– 33-33 tied with Gravity, won 19-18 on total first place votes
2015 Birdman ——————– 62-61 over Boyhood
2016 Mad Max: Fury Road — 51-37 over The Revenant
2017 Moonlight —————— 41-32 over La La Land
2018 Phantom Thread ——— 39-33 over Call Me By Your Name
If there is still time, maybe I could squeeze in my list. I have found it difficult to vote this year, since I enjoyed all the films:
1. Roma
2. BlacKkKlansman
3. The Favourite
4. A Star is Born
5. Green Book
6. Vice
7. Black Panther
8. Bohemian Rhapsody
Still time. 🙂
Not now – when you posted, though, there was. 🙂
Even though I am late here are mine:
1. The Favourite
2. Roma
3. Green Book
4. A Star is Born
5. BlacKkKlansman
6. Black Panther
7. Vice
8. Bohemian Rhapsody
At least the winner wouldn’t have changed. 🙂 But only widened the margin by which it won…
My list:
1. Green Book
2. Roma
3. The Favourite
4. BlacKkKlansman
5. A Star is Born
6. Black Panther
7. Bohemian Rhapsody
8. Vice
Sorry I missed it :/
🙁
Which would you have ranked ahead? The Favourite or Roma? (It’s 2-2 on post-deadline ballots so far.)
1. Roma
2. A Star is Born
3. BlacKkKlansman
4. The Favourite
5. Black Panther
6. Green Book
7. Vice
8. Bohemian Rhapsody
Thanks!
What a crap year for movies
I’m late too, Claudiu.
But I like to see you that you’re getting more replies than last year. So even if you don’t have time to incorporate my list, I want to add mine to the other latecomers —
So that way I’m on record as being a big fan of all the great analysis you bring to the discussions here.
1. Roma
2. BlacKkKlansman
3. Green Book
4. The Favourite
5. Black Panther
6. A Star is Born
7. Bohemian Rhapsody
8. Vice
3-2 Roma (Bryce). Wouldn’t change the outcome, of course.
🙂 Thank you!…
It’s 2-1 to The Favourite vs. Roma (all three being first places) on late arrival ballots so far, by the way, which is consistent with what went on before.
2-2 now, since I see Bill Levin has also given a list.
lol you’re comparing the salem witch hunts to the oscars??
Does anyone here wonder why we don’t have an Oscar host? Any Oscar host? I mean, that is the canary in the coal mine.
It was too late to get another A-lister and getting a B-lister probably wouldn’t be a big enough draw to justify the paycheck they would have probably needed to cut.
The truth is that no wanted it and no one could have passed the witch trial tests.
Even Kevin Hart could have passed the “witch trial tests” if he had a bit more PR acumen outside of his bubble of fans and had shown some real remorse.
Makeup/Hairstylists Guild winners:
Contemporary Makeup: A Star is Born
Contemporary Hairstyling: Crazy Rich Asians
Period and/or Character Hairstyling: Mary Queen of Scots
Special Makeup Effects: Vice
Question on Green Book — possibly related to main topic, but not sure:
(Spoilers ahead.) I only saw Green Book recently, much later than most people, since it didn’t open in my country until Feb 1st. I was sure I kept reading complaints here last year about a kiss between the two leads, which some people felt was unrealistic. I paid close attention to the screen, but I swear there was no kiss! Did I somehow imagine all these posts complaining about a kiss? Did a kiss occur? If so, when and how did it happen? Was it on the cheek or forehead? Did it happen at the end of the journey, or earlier, when Don Shirley was having a meltdown in the pouring rain?
I can think of a few explanations for this discrepancy:
1) I have poor powers of observation. (Yet, I watched the screen like a hawk.)
2) I’m insane. I was hallucinating about all these posts about a kiss. (I hope this isn’t true.)
3) They didn’t think foreign audiences could handle a kiss as well as Americans, so they edited it out of the international cut.
4) They heard all your complaints, and have removed the kiss from the film permanently.
I’m not sure which explanation is correct. However, if there was a kiss, I would disagree with the complaints that it is unrealistic. Tony Vallelonga said he was a nightclub bouncer in NYC and knew the ways of the world. A friendly kiss from him wouldn’t be unrealistic, although a romantic or passionate kiss would be. I can’t say for sure though, because I didn’t see the kiss!
I don’t recall a kiss between Tony and Don. Tony kisses one of his mates as a greeting I think. Maybe you are confusing it with something from last year’s season? Call me by your name perhaps?
No, it was definitely in the discussion about Green Book. Also, I seem to recall that you live in Australia, don’t you? I see that Australia’s release date was 24th January, which is similar to ours. I would like to hear from someone in the **USA or Canada** exclusively, who saw the film before the end of 2018.
But the complaints could have been about this greeting that you mention, although I doubt it.
I saw a screener, and remember no kiss.
Thanks. And I’m assuming you live in North America and saw the screener back in 2018, too. Well, I suppose I must have misread these complaints, then. Green Book had so many varied complaints swirling around it.
I don’t want to say that it definitely didn’t happen, though. I was not keeping an eye out for it since I haven’t read anything like this beforehand, so maybe I just forgot as well.
So if anything did happen, it was unmemorable or unnoticeable. Therefore those complaints about it being unrealistic must have been wrong. I won’t get into all the other complaints around Green Book here… but I think they don’t make much sense either.
After some extensive Google searching, I think I may have solved this little mystery. After Dr Shirley helped Tony write an elaborate romantic letter, Tony asked if he should end it with “P.S. kiss the kids”. Shirley replied, “That’s like clanging a cowbell at the end of Shostakovich’s Seventh!” Perhaps this was what some people found unrealistic. I agree that it would be unrealistic for most people, but not for Shirley since he was a classical pianist and his mind would naturally turn to musical similes.
Did you see the issue raised here on this site, James? Because Disqus let’s admin search all the comments for any keyword.
I did that just now, and gave the results a quick scan.
There is no talk of a physical kiss in Green Book that I can find. I saw the film twice and remember no kiss.
There were 5 or 6 times when a reader used the phrase “kiss of death” as an idiom to refer to some PR blunder or award absence that they saw as a fatal omen that did not bode well. A couple of those “kiss of death” in our comments here were about Green Book.
I’ll look again more carefully in a little while.
Although there was no kiss in the YMCA arrest scene, physical intimacy is of course implied there. A few people raised an eyebrow that the way that scene transpired didn’t ring true. (Although both Don and Tony in real life confirmed it in memories they have that were recorded in interviews.)
Thank you, Ryan. I must have seen those complaints on other sites then, not here. I think my last post here probably solves this little mystery. My problem seems to be that I took casual abbreviations in internet posts literally. When some people complained about a “kiss scene” that was unrealistic, I surmise now that they were abbreviating “the letter-writing postscript scene with ‘kiss the kids'”. Don Shirley haughtily dismissed Tony’s postscript as unpoetic, and some people may have disagreed with him. He later accepted it though, and said, “It’s perfect”.
Why do you even use Twitter?
“One more week”
Of the season? Or of you obsessively blogging about white woke Twitter?
Twitter isn’t real life, just take your head out of that noise for a while and there is no such thing as Green Book backlash. It is simply a film that audiences flock to and more critical viewers cringe at. It is Weinstein through and through, like A Shape of Water was last year. The idea of Green Book suffering some backlash reversal is false, it has stuck the same course we’ve seen and anticipated since it won Toronto. It has none of the frenetic twists and turns of 3 Billboards last year.
Sasha, I get that your dislike of the “witch-hunt” churn of social media has become your prominent theme of the last twelve months, and how campaigns might use it to dig up and fire off, but it has come to the point that you’ve almost lost interest in the Oscars themselves. Spending most of your articles griping about the noise you perceive as bullying a particular film is beneath your talents, where have your advocating pushes for various films and performers gone? Right now you should be penning your d-day optimistic pieces for the likes of Black Panther and Glenn Close, not complaining abstractly about Green Book’s hijacked reception as endemic of America’s current disease. Us international oscar watchers come to Awards Daily for your passionate awards coverage, as much as we may grit our teeth through the Oscars-reflecting-america pieces, but this obsessive angle feels particularly obscure and out-of-proportion.
If Green Book wins, then it wins. If it loses, then it loses. Either way, the field is weak, and its main rival is less run-of-the-mill than this traditional oscar bait. Don’t lose the forest for the twittering trees.
It is the critical community’s job to vet movies to see if they’re truly worthy of praise. That’s kinda their job. You can agree or disagree with the conclusions they come to, but there’s nothing new or unusual about people having a variety of opinions about movies and expressing them. That’s not a witch hunt, that’s discourse.
I get that any issue overblown is annoying and loses gravitas but I also think the backlash to the backlash is overblown. It seems normal to me that because we now have social media, a lot of people will opine about everything and everything you do is precedent (new age/free country). Sex offenders/harrassers/racists/homophobes are being exposed, no one’s gonna shut up and take it anymore (lesson: stop committing crimes, stop coming-on to people who don’t want you to fuck w/them and keep your homophobic/sexist/Nazi rants to yourself and off Twitter or your HS yearbook or expect to go on an apology tour or people will withdraw their financial support to you);
I don’t know why I keep reading about poor Green Book – for a funny/charming well-meaning TV-movie (w/an Oscar-caliber Ali performance) it got nominated more than it should’ve at the Oscars, is probably the front-runner, Ali will win too, made decent money at the box-office, won PGA (Farrelly got “snubbed” because he was not better than any of the 5 that were, not because of the controversy), where’s the harm? a few people got mad because there were in fact (no witch hunt), some racist comments in the past that needed explaining (but ARE being forgiven by the industry and movie-goers – Melania can’t convince anyone to #BeBest either because of her support to her husband and her own birther past – rules of the game, folks) and the family was pissed because they didn’t like their relative’s portrayal (as they have a right to object), again, what’s the big deal and why should we feel sorry for Green Book, who’s life is being destroyed?
There’s a lot of damn good people, very powerful, who aren’t the center of any controversy, even though they might be a mess and far from perfect, they never wore blackface, made homophobic comments or commmited sex crimes, they’re the unheralded majority. Price of fame has ALWAYS been that skeletons come out of the closet, now there’s just Twitter to magnify. In the end, I don’t see how any damage is done, Trump is still president, Kavanaugh got confirmed, Liam Neeson will still have a career (thank God) and so will Kevin Hart like Kathy Griffin still does, nature of the business has always been ebbs and flows and then the potential criminals (K.Spacey/Singer) will have days in court, depositions, as should if you’re accused of a crime, thankfully, it’s still the court of law that decides outcomes, not public opinion.
I rambled on to just remind everyone: this is human nature, I don’t get the shock and I expect this chaos to continue because it is a movement where things are changing and people will not tolerate intolerance/crime any longer, big or small. We’ll hust have to ride it out, though I personally couldn’t care less, I care too much for victims of true witch hunts (Hillary – Benghazi) to care for outrage over legit accusations, however old. Obama’s birther controversy, really an overt racist campaign, Dr. Ford’s credible accusations to lifetime- appointee Kavanaugh I cared about, Kevin Hart not being forgiven for stupid past tweets, overrated GB being bashed because its producers also made w/e offensive comments they did make in the past and still remaining Oscar frontrunner – I don’t care to defend them and find another reason to bash the left and give power to the right. Lets pick our battles knowing we can’t control people’s reactions to shit (thank God, however frustrating, that’s freedom for ya)
Well, that settles it then. Bill Maher talks completely bollocks.
One man’s purity test is another man’s holding the bar high. I mean, who would pick a “Green Book” candidate over “Roma”. I know “Roma” isn’t perfect but it is miles better. I don’t really get the link between the two.
Sasha likes to go on about Salem but do you know the person who talks about a witch hunt? Yes, that the creep in the White House. Accusing liberals of witch hunt just because they don’t like a certain film or candidate is ridiculous.