Topic for Jan. 23 (Thur)

[Alexandria]

Movie critic: Oscars leave me cold

By Molly Haskell

Oscar replicas are lined up in a Hollywood, California, souvenir shop.

I am a movie critic. But because I am not employed by a newspaper, or a television station, Web magazine, ad agency or any institution that contributes to or profits from the media carnival that has become the Academy Awards.

The Oscars leave me colder than an arctic vortex.

Like Christmas and the presidential campaign, the Oscar race -- a misnomer, suggesting speed -- goes on too damn long. This is true even in a year when the nominees are more exciting than usual, perhaps even justifying the oft-made claim that the Academy has become younger and less stodgy.

The Academy has never been a barometer of quality, in fact it has a fairly dismal record when it comes to truly great or slightly difficult films. It's tended to favor the inspirational over the fatalistic; high-minded drama over comedy and noir; British over American .

Brains that should be doing better things are busy handicapping and making lists. Like the presidential primaries, the forecasts are wrong as often as not, but nobody's ever held accountable. 

Now that the Golden Globes have become the rehearsal dinner to the Oscar ceremony and fashion gets more coverage than international and domestic news combined, we watch as an armada of reporters is deployed to relay the buzz, and stories spill over into every section except sports.

The irony is that as fewer people are going to movies, the annual spectacle that is the Oscars is taking up greater and greater space in the public arena. 

Television grasping for viewers to lure advertisers, newspapers bumping up movie ads, the actors withering from overexposure and the films themselves all but anti-climactic in the final hour: How can even the best keep the sparkle of surprise? 

But in the meantime, I'll fight my uphill battle to ignore Oscar stories.

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1. Do you think the korean film awards is in the same condition ?

2. What do you think that the korean film awards such as Blue               dragon award, Daejong film award are pretty fair ?

3. Do you think the independent films are quite important and               essential although they are not so much qualified sometimes ?

[sonam]

Alex, why didn't you join us this morning? Does your computer still cause trouble?

[Alexandria]

Yeah~ Internet is no problem though, Skype's still in a trouble.
I'll try joining tomorrow with iPad anyhow. Surely see you tomorrow !