Monday, February 27, 2012

Fuck Hollywood

So it's Oscar night again, or, as I call it, Sunday.
Hollywood's greatest and brightest toast themselves; congratulate each other on their fantastic achievements, and some idiot host makes slightly risque jokes at the expense of people the rest of the world has long stopped caring about.

But do these people deserve to be congratulated?

I remember, a few years ago, the academy (as these well-respected scholars of uh, nothing, call themselves) refused to invite Larry Flynt, even though the movie that Hollywood made about his life was nominated by that same academy for several awards. Their problem was that dear ol' Larry's business is pornography, and that's a big non-no.
Aside from the blatant truth that Hollywood has always used sex to sell its movies, the thing that makes this really ridiculous is the fact that the academy nominated (and awarded) Roman Polanski's films several times. Sure, he lured a thirteen year old girl to the house he was staying in, drugged her, raped her, and then fled to France (where he struck up a relationship with a fifteen year old); but hey, it's not like he prints pictures of naked ladies in magazines, right?

Then there's The Hangover: the producer's apparently didn't want to have Mel Gibson in the second part because he left some nasty messages on his ex-wife's answering machine, but they had no problem with Mike Tyson being in the first film. Tyson is a convicted rapist, but unlike Gibson of course, he's still bankable. And that is what really matters.

They try to criminalize the whole world for downloading a movie, "lobbying" (aka buying) politicians to introduce ever-more idiotic legislation, which only ends up costing honest customers more of their hard-earned money, while the pirates continue to laugh at Hollywood's technological incompetence.

They routinely take money from the Pentagon to make America's wars more palatable to the public, yet claim to be liberal pacifists. See the following link for an excellent example:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/may/15/iraq.usa2
Turns out Jessica Lynch wasn't really a hero. What a surprise, right?

And then you kinda think, why am I bothering to watch these people? What makes them better than the rest of us? Well, nothing really; except maybe their awesome acting skills.

But have you ever thought about what acting really is? Is not every five year old who has ever managed to convince his parents that the did not take a cookie out of the jar when he in fact did, a better actor than 90% of the people attending the show tonight?

At least with the Grammys, you can wait for Tom Petty or indeed the Foo Fighters to do their thing and then go to sleep.

But why are we watching the Oscars then? To see if Jodie Foster's tits will  fall out of her dress? Well, if you wanna see that kind of thing, you could just save yourself three hours of watching friends of child rapists shake hands and buy a Hustler magazine.