that's a tomato... no wait, that's a fetus.

[intertribal]

Title from the ever brilliant KSK.  Talk about my only light in dark times.

From the NYTimes (Oscar-Nominated Films Deliver Triumphant Tales for Dark Days): "And the best-film nominees this year — give or take “The Reader,” which has the Holocaust as a central concern — reflect an appetite on the part of the Academy, and by proxy, the public, for a nice, big chunk of uplift...  Consumers who are motivated by the laurels heaped on these films to plunk down increasingly scarce disposable income will leave the movie house with the message that circumstance is just that, and no match for the indomitability of human will. The films are built on individual successes — kids from the slums who better themselves, a television celebrity who finds his inner newsman, a newborn who overcomes old age and the midlife closeted man who steps into the light — that accrue to the greater good. That message, that darkness can be overcome by individuals working for the common good, is not so distant from the current collective impulse."

Why did How Green Is My Valley beat out the "vastly superior" Citizen Kane for Best Picture in 1941?  Why, could it be because How Green Is My Valley had a more uplifting message about family togetherness?

I assign the entire Oscar committee to watch Hot Fuzz, and meanwhile I guess I'm rooting for The Reader, even though I've never seen it.  Ha ha ha.

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Apparently Osama bin Laden is against our dearest held values and way of life because he is the Puritan bigot. This is what I learned in Political Philosophy today. We had to read Schmitt. That probably seems way off topic, but it was my immediate reaction to hearing about "the current collective impulse."

That and it reminded me of what DFW said about entertainment in modern America. "And it is this, I think, that makes Kafka's wit inaccessible to children whom our culture has trained to see jokes as entertainment and entertainment as reassurance."