One Oscar voter is getting candid about the Academy Awards nominees, and even attacked Ava Duvernay‘s Best Picture hopeful, Selma, in an anonymous report for The Hollywood Reporter.
The anonymous, female voter ripped apart the film about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march to gain voting rights for Black Americans that started in Selma, Ala. She said that while it was “well-crafted,” it was no Deliverance. If Selma was good, she explains, then the Academy would have no problem voting for the movie. She also had a strong reaction to the film’s cast members wearing “I Can’t Breathe” shirts to the premiere, even though it had nothing to do with the actual film. At this point, she’s just getting her personal gripes off her chest.
From The Hollywood Reporter:
First, let me say that I’m tired of all of this talk about “snubs” — I thought for every one of [the snubs] there was a justifiable reason. What no one wants to say out loud is that Selma is a well-crafted movie, but there’s no art to it. If the movie had been directed by a 60-year-old white male, I don’t think that people would have been carrying on about it to the level that they were. And as far as the accusations about the Academy being racist? Yes, most members are white males, but they are not the cast of Deliverance — they had to get into the Academy to begin with, so they’re not cretinous, snaggletoothed hillbillies. When a movie about black people is good, members vote for it. But if the movie isn’t that good, am I supposed to vote for it just because it has black people in it? I’ve got to tell you, having the cast show up in T-shirts saying “I can’t breathe” [at their New York premiere] — I thought that stuff was offensive. Did they want to be known for making the best movie of the year or for stirring up shit?
American Sniper is the winner of the year, whether or not it gets a single statuette, because for all of us in the movie industry — I don’t care what your politics are — it is literally the answer to a prayer for a midrange budget movie directed by an 84-year-old guy [Clint Eastwood] to do this kind of business. It shows that a movie can galvanize America and shows that people will go if you put something out that they want to see. With regard to what it did or didn’t leave out, it’s a movie, not a documentary. I enjoyed it, I thought it was well done, and I can separate out the politics from the filmmaking.
While everyone is entitled to their opinion, it’s pretty loaded to say that no one would care about the movie if it was directed by a white male. It’s a story of civil rights, and the fact that this anonymous voter doesn’t see its importance or realize that we haven’t progressed as far as we thought from 1965, is laughable and frustrating. Although this is just one person’s opinion, it’s no wonder the Oscars are “so white,” if one voter in the Academy thinks this way.
But Selma wasn’t the only one who caught the proverbial hands from this voter. The equal-opportunity critic called another Best Picture nominee, Inherent Vice, a “terrible, incoherent movie.” So there’s that.
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Anonymous Oscar Ballot Proves The Oscars Are Stupid was originally published on theurbandaily.com
