2006 Academy Awards Best Picture: CRASH!

[Sava]

No. I like colors, I like sound, and I like a nice clear picture.

"Society" doesn't dictate my tastes. Sorry to disappoint you.

If it were only that simple.

[Dis]

Originally posted by monolith94

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/crash/

With a 77% approval rating, there was certainly a great deal of critical dissent, including most of the critics that I've come to respect the most. And I'm highly insulted by your comment that it's only now trendy to bash Crash - I've been hating on the film ever since I saw it last year, a hatred which only deepens every time I think back to those horrible hours I wasted on it.

why is it so bad?

[JohnT]

Well, I loved Brokeback Mountain. Thought it was a great movie, everything the execrable Rent wanted to be but wasn't.

"Jack, I swear..."

Possibly the finest single closing line I've heard on the big screen, one that ranks up there in all of filmdom. Those three words summed up the entire movie, which was nothing but an exercise in concision and subtlety. A great, great film - I saw it twice.

However, if you don't like love stories, don't bother.

I was very disappointed when it didn't win (unlike most of y'all, I also enjoy the Academy Awards), though I liked Crash and was thinking that it was going to win - after all, there's not a single African American who is going to vote for the gay white cowboy movie over the racism movie starring Terrance Howard and Ludicris. Couple that with the growing power of AA's in Hollywood the past five years and, well, it's not surprising that BM lost.

[MrFun]

JohnT

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Originally posted by JohnT
Well, I loved Brokeback Mountain. Thought it was a great movie, everything the execrable Rent wanted to be but wasn't.

"Jack, I swear..."

Possibly the finest single closing line I've heard on the big screen, one that ranks up there in all of filmdom. Those three words summed up the entire movie, which was nothing but an exercise in concision and subtlety. A great, great film - I saw it twice.

However, if you don't like love stories, don't bother.

I was very disappointed when it didn't win (unlike most of y'all, I also enjoy the Academy Awards), though I liked Crash and was thinking that it was going to win - after all, there's not a single African American who is going to vote for the gay white cowboy movie over the racism movie starring Terrance Howard and Ludicris. Couple that with the growing power of AA's in Hollywood the past five years and, well, it's not surprising that BM lost.

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by monolith94
There's nothing inherently wrong with silent and black and white films. Society tells you that this is how films ought to be and you quietly conform to it. It's sad, really. And utterly predictable.

That's among the stupidest things I've ever read on this board.

[KrazyHorse]

Update: Crash still sucks

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by JohnT

I was very disappointed when it didn't win (unlike most of y'all, I also enjoy the Academy Awards), though I liked Crash and was thinking that it was going to win - after all, there's not a single African American who is going to vote for the gay white cowboy movie over the racism movie starring Terrance Howard and Ludicris. Couple that with the growing power of AA's in Hollywood the past five years and, well, it's not surprising that BM lost.

So you're saying that African Americans have more pull in Hollywood that gays and lesbians?

Hollywood, Florida, maybe, but otherwise that's a pretty wacky theory.

[JohnT]

Look at Academy Award voting trends over the past 5 years. There's obviously a sea-change going on in Hollywood - prior to 1985, an African American couldn't buy an acting nomination, prior to 2000, they couldn't buy a win. Since then we've had African American winner after winner, even to the point where a rap song won an Oscar.

Not that whacky of a theory, sorry.

[monolith94]

Originally posted by Sava



No. I like colors, I like sound, and I like a nice clear picture.

"Society" doesn't dictate my tastes. Sorry to disappoint you.

If it were only that simple.

And I like black and white films, and I like silent films (even though very few films are truly 'silent') and it's perfectly possible to have a nice clear picture in old films. Just check out the dvd release of the passion of joan of arc for proof of that. Often, old films have a crisper photographic quality than modern films that I see in modern productions. Especially in terms of the close-up. These are my tastes, and you go out of your way to define artistic decisions which allow for these peices of art as pretentious. Why can't you just accept these anachronisms as valid forms of art? Just because something is an anachronism doesn't make it pretentious.

Colour filmmaking has been around since, and this might shock you, the mid 1920s. There are color silent films. There are black and white sound films. There can be an almost unlimited variety of types of films - why do we as a society place arbitrary boundaries on what films should be?

I'll take my Metropolis, Passion of Joan of Arc and Napoleon over Crash, Munich, etc. any day of the week.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by JohnT
Look at Academy Award voting trends over the past 5 years. There's obviously a sea-change going on in Hollywood - prior to 1985, an African American couldn't buy an acting nomination, prior to 2000, they couldn't buy a win. Since then we've had African American winner after winner, even to the point where a rap song won an Oscar.

Not that whacky of a theory, sorry.

Puh-leeze. We're talking four acting awards, total, since the year 2000 -- and two of those were for Denzel Washingtion and Morgan Freeman, who have gigantic crossover appeal. No directing awards, and, I'm pretty sure, no producing awards or writing awards. This is the new African American clout? Sorry, but that's just silly.

The far likelier explanation is that (my sig notwithstanding) George Clooney is wrong: Hollywood is never ahead of the curve on social issues (as has already been pointed out all over the 'net in response to Clooney's self-cogratulatory comments at the Oscars, Hollywood didn't release a movie about AIDS until 1990, and then it was a minor independent film). The Academy was faced with two films spouting liberal pieties this year, and chose the one with that (1) contained more popular, time-tested, uncontroversial liberal pieties, and (2) spent more time angsting about contemprary life in Los Angeles. The choice of Crash, in that context, was totally unsurprising, but it's got squat to do with the power of actual African Americans in Hollywood.

[Dr Strangelove]

Frankly I loved Crash and think that it hands down deserved the award. I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain yet though.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


Puh-leeze. We're talking four acting awards, total, since the year 2000 -- and two of those were for Denzel Washingtion and Morgan Freeman, who have gigantic crossover appeal. No directing awards, and, I'm pretty sure, no producing awards or writing awards. This is the new African American clout? Sorry, but that's just silly.

The far likelier explanation is that (my sig notwithstanding) George Clooney is wrong: Hollywood is never ahead of the curve on social issues (as has already been pointed out all over the 'net in response to Clooney's self-cogratulatory comments at the Oscars, Hollywood didn't release a movie about AIDS until 1990, and then it was a minor independent film). The Academy was faced with two films spouting liberal pieties this year, and chose the one with that (1) contained more popular, time-tested, uncontroversial liberal pieties, and (2) spent more time angsting about contemprary life in Los Angeles. The choice of Crash, in that context, was totally unsurprising, but it's got squat to do with the power of actual African Americans in Hollywood.

Fah!

Actually... I think we're both right. While there is a largely-white power structure still extant in Hollywood, an increasingly large part of the artistic community is African American*, and both camps would tend to favor Crash over BBM... but not for the same reason.

*talk about acting awards all you want, I'm talking about a class of artists that include Halle Berry, Will Smith, Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Samuel L Jackson, Queen Latifah, Ving Rhames, Denzel Washington, Martin Lawrence, Don Cheadle, Angela Basset, Jamie Foxx, Laurence Fishburne, Terrence Howard, Jada Pinkett Smith, Ice Cube, and a host of character and "Oh, I know that guy" actors. Never has Hollywood had such a wealth of African-American talent, and when they vote, they'll vote on issues that touch them.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Frankly I loved Crash and think that it hands down deserved the award.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by JohnT
Look at Academy Award voting trends over the past 5 years. There's obviously a sea-change going on in Hollywood - prior to 1985, an African American couldn't buy an acting nomination, prior to 2000, they couldn't buy a win. Since then we've had African American winner after winner, even to the point where a rap song won an Oscar.

Not that whacky of a theory, sorry.

Some of those Oscars were deserved, most were at least arguable. And then there was Halle Berry, who is more white than black genetically and was raised by a white woman, and who gave the most annoying speech of them all. But she is hot as hell I grant you.