I hope you don't consider me boorish if I direct you to the movies section of the MSN website, which I've started contributing to. My first piece, a little 2010 preview, is here. Coming soon, my Oscar predictions. I know, because my record in that department has been just unimpeachable over the years. Well. At least they'll be funny, I hope…
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If the Oscar nominees are anywhere near as lame as the Golden Globe winners (Christoph Waltz, excluded), then I might not be watching for the first time in years. I’ll still check out your predictions, though.
On another note, I’m not trying to get you to break any New Year’s resolutions, but did you see Ben Shapiro’s post at Big Hollywood? I stumbled upon it through The House Next Door. Shapiro lists his 10 most overrated directors of all time and says he’s had a difficult time getting through most of their films. That list would include Hitchcock (who was #1), Scorsese, Lean, Aronofsky, Tarantino and Lynch. I’ve tried to reason that this was written as some sort of satire, but apparently not.
Is it just me, or is Oscar forecasting becoming less and less challenging with each year? Maybe the ‘net has just made the pastime more…unavoidable. Or maybe I’ve become cynical in my view that the period extending from mid-May of one year (Cannes) and Feb/March (Oscars) of the following year is really just a “year of becoming entrenched in our different views of canon-worthy films of the year.” The public debate, in the name of convenience, is ultimately reduced to two or three films. This year it’s AVATAR and THE HURT LOCKER. Last year it was SLUMDOG, BUTTON, and THE DARK KNIGHT. Year before that, Coens v. PT Anderson. And so on… Not to disparage these films (I liked Fincher and PTA a great deal), but…a year represented by 2-3? Or a generous 10? Hmmm.
I hope you don’t consider *me* boorish by plugging my ongoing Unexamined Essentials project (click my name), which – among other things – attempts to restore the oxygen to the dialogue regarding the must-see films of a given year. (Even if someone tells me a film is half-great and half-bad, it means more to me than reading yet another review of AVATAR.) Call it an attempt at fighting back against the essentializing/reducing function of the conventional film debate. Instead of pushing for a small group of winners – already a losing game – I hope to inspire people to consider more choices. More choices than they can manage, really. Not convenient at all. Just the opposite!
Thanks for the soapbox, Glenn, I’ll return it now!
How does it feel to follow Christgau to MSN? Judging by their smarts in hiring you two, whomever recruits writers for the site should be put in charge of the whole company. Good luck, I’m heading there now.