Home » Not watching the 2019 Oscars; thinking of Malek and Mercury

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Not watching the 2019 Oscars; thinking of Malek and Mercury — 28 Comments

  1. Sorry, We watched “Bullett” on DVD, The only movie we saw last year (and again this year) was “They Shall Not Grow Old.” We did see Dunkirk but I can’t remember if it was 2018 or 2017. We also saw “Free Solo” which won something I hear.

  2. Since you mentioned it in a previous post I rented BR on Saturday on Amazon Prime and watched it with my 7.1 surround system. I was a bit surprised the sound mix wasn’t better for a music based pic.

    Yes, someone screwed up Malek’s makeup; I agree there. I do think he did a reasonable job on the rest of the character. The movie as whole? OK. I didn’t feel I wasted my time or money, and it was good to relive some of those songs. However, it was a typical rock band biopic: band struggles, band makes it big, band fights, band breaks up, band reunites. What bothered me most was that instead of really giving the music center stage, they would give just bits and pieces of the great songs to make room for more of the “drama”. Why not play all of Bohemian Rhapsody, etc??? Only at the end where they finally made room for the complete LiveAid 20 minute performance do we get complete songs.

    I thought the rest of the band was cast very well, especially the actor who played Brian May. However, every time I see “Little Finger” (Aidan Gillen) in a different role I just can’t get past his GoT persona as he seems to play other parts the same way…bad casting in my view.

    BTW, my millennial daughters watched it and loved it. That surprised me as when they were younger it was a struggle to get them to listen to anything from the 70s or early 80s. They commented that they knew some of the music but didn’t know it was Queen and they had heard of Freddie Mercury but didn’t know really who he was and that he was the lead for Queen.

  3. physicsguy:

    Funny about Aiden Gillen, I think it might have to do with what you saw him in first. It took me several seasons of GoT to not see Councilman/Mayor Tommy Carcetti from The Wire

  4. Malek wasn’t the first choice. From IMDB:

    Sacha Baron Cohen was the original choice to play Freddie Mercury, with Stephen Frears to direct. Frears left the project due to creative differences with Brian May and Roger Taylor, who control the band’s music and film rights. The deal with Baron Cohen fell apart after May objected to the project being a biopic of Mercury only, not the rest of Queen. May felt it should focus on the other members and the aftermath of Mercury’s death. They didn’t like the original draft by writers Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson. Baron Cohen considered it a historically accurate, outrageous portrayal of Mercury that does not shy away from Mercury’s rough edges, including his well-documented homosexual encounters and promiscuity. May felt Baron Cohen was too much of a comedic actor to play Mercury well.

    I read some viewers reviews. Some Queen fans were pissed that they took such liberties with the known history. Some were upset that they white-washed what known to be more of an X-rated partying lifestyle for Mercury. (Can’t make a ton of money with an NC-17 rating.)

    Malek is the second Arab to win a best actor Oscar. Oooo! (See Michelle Yeoh’s comment on diversity awards.)
    And he marched in the Women’s March. Double Oooo!

    Malek has also won awards for his performance in Mr. Robot. That show piqued my interest because of the cyber espionage angle. Then I learned that it is the same old tired Marxist anti-corporation drivel. So I haven’t seen it. It sounds like Malek’s character is a cyber anarchist, but we are supposed to call him a vigilante. And vigilantes are now cool if the they pick the politically incorrect victims.

    Was Malek’s best actor award political? Probably IMHO. The primary reason I don’t watch the show.
    _____

    Both Bryan Singer and Stephen Frears are very good directors, but I’d give the nod to Frears. I also read that Singer was fired in the last couple weeks of filming BR, but no reasons why.

    Then there is the bigger picture with Bryan Singer. The Oscars blackout on Singer got an article here. And the tabloid skinny on Singer is here.

  5. Art Deco:

    I can think of some reasons.

    They like their music, which is very popular on YouTube (views in the 50 million plus for many of the videos). I happen to like their music; your mileage may certainly differ, and probably does.

    The early death of Freddie Mercury of AIDS was both sad and public knowledge, and created the effect that’s often the case with rock stars who die—that of enhancing the legend.

    Two of the originals are still playing at around 70, and playing quite well. They are on tour with the young guy Adam Lambert of American Idol fame.

  6. I haven’t watched the Oscars in decades. Long before it became ridiculously politicized it was obvious that it was just a movie industry insider schmoozefest with only coincidental correlation to film quality.

  7. Quit watching the pretty nauseating crap of Hollywood award shows–these way overlong exercises in bad taste, buffoonery, high fives, back slapping, virtue signalling, and with the added bonus of increasingly frequent lectures directed at us “little people” thrown in–a long time ago.

  8. There could be no better summation of what, from the evidence, are Hollywood’s and supposedly “elite” attitudes toward the people of ”flyover country” than this recent rant by Bill Mahr, quote,

    “There are no red carpets in Wyoming and no one ever asks you, ‘who are you wearing?’ because the answer is always Target,” Maher said as the audience laughed. “We have orchestras, theater districts, world class shopping, we have Chef Wolfgang Puck, they have Chef Boyardee.”

    The host continued, “Our roofs have solar panels, theirs have last year’s Christmas lights… the flyover states have become passed-over states, that’s why red state voters are so pissed off.”

    “They don’t hate us. They want to be us. They want to go to the party. It’s like we’re the British royal family and they’re Meghan Markle’s dad,” Maher asserted. Maher concluded the brutal mocking by suggesting Amazon relocate to a red state in order to bring those voters more prosperity.

    “If you leave the red states behind, they’re going to keep getting angrier, crazier,” Maher declared.”

    See: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/let_them_eat_chef_boyardee.html

    The despised and mocked flyover people, whose hard work, of course, keeps things going, and produces a lot of the things that make it possible for the “elites,” those people who mock and despise them, to” live the good life.”

  9. I haven’t watched the Oscars for at least 4 decades. But was glad to learn Green Book won best picture. We saw it last week and enjoyed it. Of course we figured Hollywood changed the story some what, but even so, an interesting story and a positive story about race relations after 8 years of the messiah’s race mongering.

  10. I share similar sentiments of Malek’s performance. Guy looked uncomfortable with those prosthetic teeth in. But it’s a running joke that there isn’t much variation to get nominated for. The chances of you being nominated for an Oscar skyrockets if you play a Jewish person during WWII (The Pianist), a black oppressed person (Moonlight), a famous dead person (Stephen Hawking), a white person dealing with white people problems (Lady Bird) or a period piece. Everyone now and then you might get an inspired nom (Slumdog).

  11. Snow on Pines,

    As long as the elites keep flying over, I don’t care what they think. They are far less in touch with reality than they could ever imagine. They live in a bubble. Where does the food they eat, the electricity that powers the lights in their homes, and everything they rely upon come from? The ‘red’ people of course. They assume they don’t need us and we want to be them. Nothing could be further from reality. We don’t need them, they need us. Let them pay attention to the crease of pants and the thrill up their legs while we live successfully in the real world. My contempt for them is so strong that if one of them spontaneously burst into flames I wouldn’t piss on them to put out the fire.

  12. Parker–Much as I despise this whole supposedly “elite” crew and their attitudes, you do see where this increasing disdain, hatred, and division–bi-coastal elites vs. the interior, Left vs. Right, this Race vs. that Race, Women vs. Men, etc. and, for the most part, the elite’s creation–is likely to end up, don’t you?

    If things keep on this trajectory, the increasingly likely outcome–somewhere down the road, maybe sooner, maybe later–is going to be some sort of violent conflict, perhaps even a Civil War, with all of the death, destruction, and misery that will bring.

    And/or perhaps, as well, the possibility that the U.S. will suffer a permanent fracture, breaking apart into two or more separate entities–a realignment–with the decline in cohesion and power that that development would likely cause.

    Just the outcome that our enemies–both foreign and domestic–would want.

    You are also perhaps aware of this 1787 quote, attributed to Scottish Professor Alexander Fraser Tytler from the University of Edinburgh, and said about the demise of the Athenian Republic but, I think apropos of our situation today as well, that–

    “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse doe to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

    Candidates bidding for the votes of constituents by promising, higher and higher amounts of free stuff, of government benefits, our massive annual deficits, but more importantly, the resultant public debt, that has climbed to unprecedented and frighteningly high levels. A total amount that it actually may be impossible to pay down.

    That certainly seems to be our situation today.

    Could our time be up?

    I don’t know, but the trends are not looking good.

  13. Parker–Tytler’s quote was also echoed by Benjamin Franklin, who said that:

    “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”

  14. Yeah, like I’m going to take my cues from the silicone people of Hollywood, who attended the Oscars.

    Take away all that silicone, and it would have been far from a pretty sight last night.

  15. parker on February 25, 2019 at 6:57 pm at 6:57 pm said:
    I haven’t watched the Oscars for at least 4 decades. But was glad to learn Green Book won best picture. We saw it last week and enjoyed it. Of course we figured Hollywood changed the story some what, but even so, an interesting story and a positive story about race relations after 8 years of the messiah’s race mongering.
    * * *
    Saw this on PowerLine and had to chase down the links to see what the movie was about, but Mr. Green’s point was well taken.

    https://spectator.us/green-book-lying-white-guilt/

    Dominic Green

    But did Green Book really deserve to have the title of its Wikipedia page changed to Lying White Guilt Trash, which is what happened after it won Best Picture?

    When Green Book came out, the Guardian called it a ‘charming Deep South road trip’, and preached that it served a ‘significant purpose’, to ‘remind white audiences of the difficulties faced by those of color’. This morning, the Guardian says that giving Best Picture to Green Book was a ‘slap in the face’ that ‘undid all the good work of a hitherto progressive show’. Until the final reel of the Oscars, the Academy had made ‘an obvious but admirable bid to give airtime to people of color’, and was ‘in step and progressive’. Because giving airtime on grounds of skin color, and giving prizes as rewards for ‘progressive’ attitudes, is what the Oscars should be about. Because the entire movie business, a sump of sleaze and exploitation, is morally good if it stays ‘in step’ with the loony-left control-freakery of our cultural commissars.

    The most problematic thing about Green Book is that it’s a sloppy remake of Driving Miss Daisy which, as rich sources for plagiarism go, wasn’t exactly Battleship Potemkin. I should have understood the dramatic equation behind Green Book — Americans are troubled by the racist past, Americans believe in happy endings, Hollywood is the answer — and laid a bet on its victory. Those who don’t like what they saw last night should, as large numbers of more sensible viewers already have, turn off the Oscars.

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/sep/11/green-book-review-charming-deep-south-road-trip-is-worth-taking

    Benjamin Lee
    Tue 11 Sep 2018
    Strong performances from Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali highlight a broadly entertaining crowd-pleaser about racial division in the 1960s

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/feb/25/green-books-victory-undoes-the-conspicuous-diversity-of-this-years-oscars

    catherineshoard
    Mon 25 Feb 2019
    At last, light at the end of the tunnel.

    And then Green Book took best picture. Yes, there were clues this twist was coming: Mahershala Ali winning best supporting actor despite Richard E Grant’s best efforts to woo voters. (though Ali had been the front-runner for yonks, so it was not a surprise, as such.) The Oscar for best original screenplay you could theorise was a sop to those fond of the film.

    But to award a movie whose take on race relations seems more suited to its 60s setting than 2019 was an extraordinary final-reel slap in the face from this hitherto impeccable ceremony. More than that, it undid all the efforts that had come before.

    Small wonder Spike Lee exited the auditorium as soon as the announcement came through, explaining later: “I was courtside in the Garden. The ref made a bad call.”

    Green Book is often touted as the story of a white and a black man becoming friends despite their disparate experiences. But the worldview of its forever sympathetic protagonist (his son co-wrote the script) begins with him so racist he bins in disgust two glasses that a couple of African-American plumbers have recently drunk from. The “character arc” of Tony Vallelonga – AKA Tony Lip – is that of the classic white saviour: he helps his stuffed-shirt pianist employer DC Shirley avoid a beating before explaining to Shirley that he, Vallelonga, is “blacker” than Shirley because he likes Little Richard and Aretha Franklin.

    This is not a different viewpoint: this is entrenched. The film’s bias is fundamental and it feels like a period piece in its psychology as well as its vintage cars.

    Notice that the second reviewer exhibits traits frequently noticed about the Wokescolds (love that phrase by Rod Dreher):
    (1) no sense of humor (the exchange about “being more black” was (I suspect, not having seen it) pointed at the black pianist’s repertoire, not his race);
    (2) no generosity of spirit (Ali only won Best Supporting Actor (the white guy was the Star — which Mortenson ** is ** (sorry, but this is Hollywood after all)), but he did WIN);
    (3) no belief in redemption and change of character (the bigot ended up helping — supposedly liking — the person (or at least victim group(s)) he had started out hating).

    That ought to be enough parentheses to keep the order of operations clear.

  16. ..but wait, there’s more!

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/dec/03/peter-farrelly-green-book-mahershala-ali-viggo-mortensen

    Steve Rose
    Mon 3 Dec 2018

    Stop us if you have heard this one before: “One of them is black; one’s white. How are they going to get along when they’re thrown together by fate?” To be fair, new movie Green Book is based on the true story of a road trip through the early-60s deep south, taken by a refined African-American pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and his Italian-American bouncer-turned-chauffeur (Viggo Mortensen). Although the film’s message is ultimately uplifting, its execution has drawn criticism. Shirley’s niece, Carole Shirley Kimble, has disowned the project as “a depiction of a white man’s version of a black man’s life”.

    This is so often the operating principle of the biracial buddy movie: the two sides overcome their prejudices and recognise each other’s humanity, and the audience can go home temporarily satisfied that racism has been fixed. Or at least that we’re a bit less racist than we used to be.

    Excuse me, but isn’t that kind of the definition of “fixing racism”??

  17. https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/oscars-2019-lacked-luster-stars-who-cares/

    Kyle Smith

    B-listers abounded at an almost completely glamour-free awards ceremony
    Where was Brad Pitt? Where was Tom Cruise? Where was Will Smith? Where was Jennifer Lawrence? Where was Ryan Gosling? Where were George, Denzel, Reese, Leonardo, and Sandra? Where was the glamour? Where was the magic?
    ..
    If the Oscars forsake glamour and magic — if they lose interest in that mystical quality that movie stars have but mere actors do not —
    they risk becoming the Independent Spirit Awards. Which are broadcast to an audience of tens on IFC.

    Silver-screen transcendence is what the Oscars are supposed to be selling. The awards are secondary. The Oscars seem to have reached a generational frontier. Will we ever see Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Al Pacino, or Clint Eastwood at the ceremony again? Maybe not. But even the actors who rose up to take their places — Robert Downey Jr., Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks — were not in evidence last night. And the actors coming to take their places — Margot Robbie, Emma Watson, Tiffany Haddish, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Channing Tatum — weren’t there either.

    the evening was a procession of one nondescript winner after another solemnly informing us that the award marked an important milestone for this or that marginalized group. The only appropriate response was a three-hour shrug.

    We don’t have the illusion of knowing Regina King or Rami Malek the way we think we have come to know Leonardo DiCaprio or Julia Roberts from 20 years of getting wrapped up in their movies. The vast majority of the audience doesn’t have any emotional reaction to King or Colman or Malek or Ali whatsoever. If we don’t have any connection with the personalities on stage, we might as well be watching a zoning-board meeting. A particularly embarrassing zoning-board meeting in which the speakers keep inexplicably bursting into tears.

  18. Ok, the elites and their running dogs imagine utopia if only we deplorables commit suicide. Dream on. We know how to survive in SHTF situations, and have the means and ammo to protect us when/if they flee their rat and cockroach infested metropolitan zones. Bring it on. Yes, I do see, saw if 4 decades ago. No surprises in casa parker.

  19. Many here are, I would guess, in metro areas, or close to one. What do you do if TSHTF? Svivel up and die ot become members of a murderous mob? Closest mob to me is 125 miles to the west, 300 miles to the north, 200 miles to the south, and 250 miles to the east. Feel safe.

  20. The most problematic thing about Green Book is that it’s a sloppy remake of Driving Miss Daisy which, as rich sources for plagiarism go, wasn’t exactly Battleship Potemkin.

    It’s a sloppy remake only in the addled head of your critic. Driving Miss Daisy is pure fiction but incorporates plot and characterization around a common sort of patron-client relation of that era. Green Book is a biopic and is constructed around two people in an eccentric sort of contractual relation.

    I should have understood the dramatic equation behind Green Book — Americans are troubled by the racist past, Americans believe in happy endings,

    The British intelligentsia and its dependents and hangers-on understand nothing of this country or of anything else outside their rancid little social circles and should have their insteps stomped on until their clothes fall off.

  21. Would Freddie Mercury ever have fallen off the stage the way Rami Malek did? I don’t know – maybe as the result of some sort of excessive substance indulgence but Freddie had a graceful athleticism that Malek lacks.

  22. Now comes more very dangerous lunacy in the form of AOC’s “Green New Deal” (GND), another deceptive scheme by the Left to seize complete control over everything and over us, and all we own, on the pretext of an “existential” Climate Change Emergency–say they, we’re all gonna die in 12 years if we don’t do what AOC and her “Marching Moron” followers demand–a demand that all of the “celebrities” who attended the Oscar would, no doubt, whole-heartedly support.

    The Obama Administration saw interest rates, thanks to the FED, artificially kept at essentially zero for many years, a doubling of the national debt, and a corresponding many fold increase in the amount of currency in circulation; none of these things good for the economic health of our nation.

    Now comes AOC’s “Green New Deal,” and the unknown number of many trillions of dollars that would be needed to implement it.

    How to pay for this gigantic, all encompassing project—the biggest in U.S.History, why, just “print money.”

    See how some guest writers at the Huffington Post propose to pay for the Green New Deal

    “As a monopoly supplier of U.S. currency with full financial sovereignty, the federal government is not like a household or even a business. When Congress authorizes spending, it sets off a sequence of actions. Federal agencies, such as the Department of Defense or Department of Energy, enter into contracts and begin spending. As the checks go out, the government’s bank ? the Federal Reserve ? clears the payments by crediting the seller’s bank account with digital dollars. In other words, Congress can pass any budget it chooses, and our government already pays for everything by creating new money.

    This is precisely how we paid for the first New Deal. The government didn’t go out and collect money ? by taxing and borrowing ? because the economy had collapsed and no one had any money (except the oligarchs). The government hired millions of people across various New Deal programs and paid them with a massive infusion of new spending that Congress authorized in the budget. FDR didn’t need to “find the money,” he needed to find the votes. We can do the same for a Green New Deal.”**

    ** See https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-green-new-deal-cost_us_5c0042b2e4b027f1097bda5b

    Economic illiteracy and ignorance at it’s very dangerous best.

  23. I view the GND as just the latest iteration of Leftist schemes to use a supposed “Existential Threat”–which, since it is an an Emergency, demands that all normal investigation, consideration, and debate over this issue be foregone because, its an “EXISTENTIAL EMERGENCY”–one designed to panic/force people into giving those on the Left–politicians, “environmental/climate advocates,” supposed “experts,” the UN–control and direction over every aspect of our government, economy, and our personal decisions and wealth–in AOC’s words a total, WWII type mobilization of our population–to deal with this potentially civilization ending, EXISTENTIAL CRISIS.

    This, of course, after the Left’s prior calls for such draconian steps to battle their every more obviously fraudulent “Global Warming” collapsed, and it was re-framed and renamed as “Climate Change.”

    This is a full court press by the Left, illustrated by the recent confrontation in Senator Feinstein’s office between some heavily indoctrinated children–demanding that Feinstein commit to voting the GND, and Feinstein refusing to bow to their will.

    See https://www.facebook.com/BayAreaSunrise/videos/2101109139978731/

  24. The only Oscar nominee I watched was “Black Panther”, and that was only because the local library had it available on DVD. It was absurd that such an average superhero movie, with no attempt at plausibility (primitive lifestyle to mag-lev trains with nothing in-between, all thanks to vibranium) was actually nominated. Other movies released in 2018 that I watched were “The Meg” and “Skyscraper”, action films designed for appeal to the Asian market, and “Colette” (a period film with Keira Knightley), and all those were a triple-feature due to a long plane trip.

    But the one most important point I took away from this year’s Awards was just how different things are going to be in the near future. The movies are a reflection of culture and society, and this country will very soon have a non-white majority. That will end up shaping the culture in very different ways from how it was just a few decades ago. All movies released in the future will be designed to show that white people know their place. Just ask Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino (director of “Django Unchained”), among others.

  25. Yankee –

    “All movies released in the future will be designed to show that white people know their place.”

    Unfortunately, this seems to be an accurate statement. As a movie lover, it has already relegated me to watching mostly horror movies and a few action films, genres which still have *some* immunity to the SJW virus. It’s now a not uncommon experience for me to come to iTunes on Tuesday to check the new releases and not want to watch any of them. Unheard of for me.

    I love movies almost more than books, so it is particularly painful watching movies go to the Stalinist wasteland.

    Apart from the racial/tribal/social justice obsessions, I have noticed something else in recent years that is hard to put into words. Even films that don’t have anything to do with race or politics, art films or mainstream, films that aim to be profound and carry some meaning, some weight – heft, you know? – come off as full of pretense and ultimately empty.

    A couple of horror movies that received a lot of praise last year are in this vein – It Comes At Night and The Witch. It’s as though they’re aiming at the wrong target, making things deep that aren’t terribly deep while missing the potential for what’s there that really is deep. I chalk this up to a dearth of learning. Most of these auteurs (so-called) haven’t read enough, thought enough, suffered enough, or been humble enough to develop an aesthetic sense for the deeper frequencies of life.

    It’s a common trend in movies like this to not have endings. The writers basically write themselves into a corner, very clearly not being confident or certain of what exactly they’re trying to say, which leads them to abruptly amputate their conclusions as a cheap way to drive their non-points home. It’s the art house equivalent of a jump scare or a fart joke, except worse because it comes pre-justified with an “It’s supposed to make you think, dummy” rationalization.

    Paradoxically, then, the most profound films I see these days are non-profound films, movies that are just content to be what they are 100%, to commit and go all the way. It’s almost got to the point where it’s artistically brave to simply try to make the best horror or action movie you can, whereas middlebrow stabs at depth no longer seem interestingly ambitious, but rather vapid and pretentious, mere declarations of aristocratic class affiliation. “Aristocratic,” which today means (aside from leftist politics) a cultivated posture of thoughtfulness, good taste, learning, and intelligence without earning the real things. The current aristocracy is a clique that has agreed to pretend they’re all Deep Thinkers by signaling with buzz words, phrases, and ideological declarations, so as to fend off the brutality of what it actually takes to become a Deep Thinker.

    That attitude has infested movies as well, and once you become aware of it you can’t shut it off.

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