Two Elephants not in the Room

Speaking of elephants in the room or in this case not in the room brings me to last night's academy awards.

The whole show was shaded by the absence of Luhrman and Cameron from best directors. Here's some background on the event. Way back in 1927 (an excellent year for Babe by the way) the tyrannical LB Mayer was concerned that the movies were considered low brow entertainmnet so he got his buddys together and decided that they needed to give awards to one another to class up the situation and they needed a name for the gathering which sounded intellectual or at least educated so they came up with the term academy and to class it up even more throw in Arts and Science. You Cinematic Lit veterans may recall that 1927 was the year of the first Sound movie and the famous opening line "Wait a minute...wait a minute...you ain't heard nothing yet. It took a couple of years for the Academy to formalize its awards banquet. Without a doubt The Jazz singer was a complete breakthrough in films...yet it didn't win the award for best picture at that first awards show year...probably because it was in a class of its own so they messed around with its eligibilty requirements as the nominees for the first awards had to be for films that were completed after July 1, 1927.  The Jazz Singer was released earlier that year so fuggedaboudid.

I feel the same way about Avatar Way of Water. It's all by itself and its incomparability to other films might be a reason why it got such little recognition at the "awards' which are in the end a marketing tool and as LB Mayer himself once observed, " agreat way to manage Actors and actresses by hanging medals on them." Avatar doesn't need any marketing as it has already broke the bank. Everything, Everywhere was great and it deserved recognition particularly for editing because the whole thing seemed like one continual edit after another sewn together to resemble a story. However, it missed one important element of editing. It was too long. Avatar was long as well but I didn't look at my watch where as in Everything, Everywhere I kept wondering where the heck is this going and how much longer will it take to get there. Some might call it a Frankenstein job stitching of dispirate/desperate action scenes together towards the production of an incomprehenible jumble of pretension posing as profundity.  Just sayn' what others "might" be sayn.

Like The Jazz Singer, Avatar belongs in a class of its own.

So does Everything, Everywhere but not in the same category as Avatar.

Elvis was electrifying. Luhrman somehow caught the buzz that was Elvis when the King was shaking up the world and he used his full palette of directorial excellence to realize that culture shattering mania

Furthermore, it's intersting to note the folks who do not show up for the awards including past Oscar winners. past Oscar winners are typically invited to attend the Academy Awards ceremony. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognizes and honors the achievements of past winners, and many of them are invited to attend the ceremony each year as guests or presenters.

You would think they would show up just out of repect for their business.

Here's a few that didn't have the time

Brad Pitt

Meryl Streep

Martin Scorsese

Al Pacino

Sally Fields

Jane Fonda (who should be there every year)

Leonardo DiCaprio

Rita Marino

Robert Downey

Clint Eastwood

Tom Cruise

I understand why Cameron didn't show up.

The list goes on and on and on.