We say Bullshit!
Otherwise, everything else was great. It seemed like they spread the wealth around pretty well, which is good since there were so many deserving films.
Good Night and Good Luch got screwed, which is too bad, it was a great movie. Stewart got a good crack in about how responsible journalism made it a period piece.
Paradise Now didn't win best foreign film which makes Debbie Schlussel happy, which is bad. Considering some groups launched an aggressive campaign against the movie to have it removed from consideration, and a general American malaise (sometimes rising to animosity) towards the Palestinians its not too surprising. Another thing I found interesting was the Academy's decision to go with Palestinian territories instead of their previous provenance of Palestine, something Debbie Schlussel freaked out about during the Golden Globes, and apparantly so did a lot of other people for them to have changed it. Ironically they are the same people that freak out when Arab countries refuse to recognize Israel.
Tsotsi is supposed to be excellent and Gavin Hood's acceptance speech was great. I haven't seen Tsotsi yet so I can't really say for sure, but a movie about a street thug's redemption doesn't seem as socially or politically impactful as Paradise Now. In a awards ceremony that celebrated social justice it would have been nice to see some attention brought upon the Palestinian situation.
At the end of the day it was probably the best and most socially relevant Oscars I can remember. Clooney summed it all up (or previewed it, since his was the first speech) pretty well :
I would say that, you know, we are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while. I think it's probably a good thing. We're the ones who talk about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn't really popular.
It's pretty sad that you have to be "out of touch" to care about deadly diseases and racial equality, but that is our society today. Good thing there are people like Clooney to tell those who are apparantly "in touch" that they are assholes.
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