| So, it’s March again. Time for the Oscars. That annual wankfest in which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards vaguely dildo-esque statuettes to those performers and performances it deems to have reached some ill-defined height of excellence over the past 12 months. Mind you, even the Academy has long since given up the habit of identifying "winners" and "losers" – how could anyone employed in such an exalted industry ever be a "loser"? – instead preferring the bland salutation, "And the Oscar goes to…."
I must admit it’s been awhile since I’ve actually sat down and watched more than a few minutes of any Oscar night. Even before Billy Crystal emptied the whole event of any gravitas it might once have possessed, I’d lost interest in the prospect of a bunch of has-been actors and assorted movie moguls – sorry, the Academy – bestowing their blessing on the next generation of contenders. But if I’m really honest, my indifference to – OK, disdain for – the Oscars is itself a reflection of a deeper disaffection on my part.
The truth is, I’ve come to hate movies. Or to be more precise, I’ve come to hate the shite that the major studios – notably, but not exclusively, in Hollywood – have grown accustomed to foisting on the public. The Oscars simply compound my sense of distaste. After all, it’s one thing to actually watch something as grating and fatuous as 1994’s Forrest Gump, but to see Tom Hanks walk away with a prize that didn’t have the words "Most Annoying Performance" etched on it is beyond belief.
These thoughts came into focus a couple of weeks ago when I idly spent three hours watching a TV rerun of Die Another Day, 2002’s offering from the enduring James Bond franchise. All the hallmark, er, hallmarks were there: the dramatic opening, Q’s clever gadgets (ooh, an invisible car), Bond’s endless ability to take a licking (in this case, a damn good one) and keep on kicking, his ability to effortlessly get women into bed and then equally effortlessly pleasure them, the oh-so witty one-liners and double entendres, and the inevitable car chase. It was all as if nothing in the real world had changed in the past 40 years, except for the fact that at least Shirley Bassey had the decency not to demand a cameo appearance in Diamonds Are Forever, unlike Madonna, who turned in her usual wooden performance.
OK, OK…. I know the arguments. James Bond isn’t meant to be much (?) more than harmless entertainment. That’s why it’s called a franchise. After all, you don’t go to Wendy’s in awe of what they might come up with each time. Fair enough. But did Die Another Day have to be this bad? It’s as if the studio went out of its way to evacuate the film of any possible merit. Was there no one involved in the production – I mean absolutely no one – who couldn’t at some point have piped up and said, "Excuse me, but I think this might be shit"? Die another day? If only….
Then there’s the argument that I shouldn’t expect "real" films from the Hollywood machine in the first place. That’s why God invented Europe, after all. If it’s narrative subtlety, complex motivation and stylish cinematography that I’m after, then I shouldn’t be at Wendy's in the first place. Can’t argue with that. But the point remains that, like some drunken limbo dancer, Hollywood insists on lowering the bar of expectations year by year and yet still fails to reach even that declining level of achievement.
I also appreciate the ultimate reply to such petty whining – that no one’s forcing me to watch it if I don’t want to. That’s true. And so I stopped watching. Some years ago, I simply ceased going to movie theatres to see new releases. I did see Lord of the Rings when it came out – 2001, I think – but since then my only lapse has been Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 a couple of years ago.
Still, my free-market efforts to influence Hollywood – stop watching the crap they make, and they’ll stop making it – have sadly failed. For one thing, my embargo was less a response to the movies themselves than it was a reaction to the entire movie-going experience. At some point, it seemed, movie theatres had morphed into a bastard hybrid of games arcade and fast-food outlet. I could, through effort of will, almost successfully ignore the former, but the kerosene stench of stuff loosely (and probably illegally) described as "popcorn" and served in vats big enough to lose a baby elephant in was simply too pungent to deny.
More to the point, perhaps, was that I found myself among a pitiful minority of conscientious objectors. Box office numbers continued to rise with alarming regularity, despite our absence. While it might not quite count as the fifth horseman of the apocalypse, the ability of Hollywood to produce not only American Pie and Meet the Parents but sequels to both must surely be a worrying sign to anyone who thinks the bottom of the barrel is yet in sight.
So, when the Oscars hit the small screen this Sunday, I won’t be among the 40 million or so viewers who tune in for the show. Comedian Jon Stewart will be there, I understand, to lend the whole gala an acceptable amount of disrespectability. Yet when all the jokes have been told, envelopes opened, speeches made and statues handed out, the fact remains that the biggest loser of the evening will probably be anyone who hopes for anything better from Hollywood over the next year. |
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