Daily Archives: February 22, 2008

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oscar’s worst oversights (best pictures)

Some memorable snubs among the nominated (dating back to 1970):

*”Network”; “Taxi Driver”; “All the President’s Men,” 1976. “Rocky” won. Quoting John McEnroe, “You cannot be serious!”

*”Being There,” 1979. Bending my own rules, since it wasn’t even nominated. “All That Jazz” was. “Apocalypse Now” was more deserving than the victor, “Kramer vs. Kramer” (although it, too, was a quality flick).

*”Raging Bull”; “The Elephant Man,” 1980. Brutal eloquence lost to suburban white angst (“Ordinary People”).

*”Raiders of the Lost Ark,” 1981. Not a deep field, but “Chariots of Fire” was the movie they showed us at church lock-ins.

*”The Verdict,” 1982. Classic (Sidney) Lumet lost to a bloated historical epic (“Gandhi”).

*”Hannah and Her Sisters,” 1986. Oliver Stone. Vietnam. Oscar.

*”Broadcast News,” 1987. When’s the last time a big studio made a movie about professional ethics? It lost to another bloated historical epic (“The Last Emperor”).

*Most anything else released in 1988. The winner, “Rain Man,” sucked Xenu’s balls.

*”Goodfellas,” 1990. One of two inexcusable snubs — “Dances With Wolves” won instead.

*”Pulp Fiction,” 1994. No way “Forrest Gump” was going to lose, but Tarantino — annoying though he is — shouldn’t have been denied.

*”Fargo,” 1996. The other inexcusable snub — “The English Patient” took home the gold. Quite possibly the worst Best Picture winner of them all.

*”L.A. Confidential,” 1997. It holds up well, much better than “Titanic.”

*”Saving Private Ryan,” 1998. Shakespeare would’ve been bored by “Shakespeare in Love.” I know I was.

*”The Insider,” 1999. I’m not an Alan Ball fan; “Six Feet Under” was too mopey for my tastes, and “American Beauty” was way too manipulative.

*Most anything else released in 2002. I saw only 30 minutes of “Chicago,” that year’s winner. I left early, bored and annoyed. Worse than “The English Patient.”

*”Lost in Translation,” 2003. “Lord of the Rings,” blah blah blah.

*”Little Miss Sunshine,” 2006. Felt like something made in the 1970s — quite a compliment. “The Departed” was not Scorsese’s best. Reminiscent of Paul Newman winning his first Oscar for “The Color of Money.”

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on mccain and hypocrisy (including my own)

I’m not as fair-minded as I claim to be (hold for laughter). If you changed the name in the controversial Times piece from McCain to Clinton, I’d have written volumes today blasting his/her/their duplicity.

I like McCain. I don’t like the Clintons. I trust the former (as much as I can trust a politician). I never have trusted the latter.

So, any story that accuses McCain of such rank hypocrisy is going to require more proof and less innuendo. Now it appears the innuendo was misrepresented, according to the alleged smoking gun (who is not at all disgruntled):

I just got off the phone with John Weaver, the former top McCain campaign official who is now an informal adviser to the campaign. I asked him about his 1999 meeting on the campaign’s behalf with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. He said he “had no reason to think” that McCain might have been having an affair with Iseman, but he was concerned about word he had heard suggesting that Iseman was telling associates she had connections with McCain. “This was a woman who was saying that she had special influence with John’s committee staff and with him,” Weaver told me. “I didn’t believe that was the case.”

Weaver was telling Iseman to stop spreading what he believed was misinformation. He still doesn’t believe her claims of special access. He’s not John Dean.

Meanwhile, clients of Iseman’s firm have donated very little money to McCain’s campaigns. Since 2000, they’ve contributed $85,000 to the former commerce committee chairman. That’s peanuts. If there’s a quid pro quo going on, then McCain comes cheap.

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the mccain kerfuffle

TNR has an excellent piece about the story behind the McCain story.

Beyond its revelations, however, what’s most remarkable about the article is that it appeared in the paper at all: The new information it reveals focuses on the private matters of the candidate, and relies entirely on the anecdotal evidence of McCain’s former staffers to justify the piece–both personal and anecdotal elements unusual in the Gray Lady. The story is filled with awkward journalistic moves–the piece contains a collection of decade-old stories about McCain and Iseman appearing at functions together and concerns voiced by McCain’s aides that the Senator shouldn’t be seen in public with Iseman–and departs from the Times’ usual authoritative voice. At one point, the piece suggestively states: “In 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, ‘Why is she always around?’” In the absence of concrete, printable proof that McCain and Iseman were an item, the piece delicately steps around purported romance and instead reports on the debate within the McCain campaign about the alleged affair.