Getafilm Gallimaufry: Best Picture Nonsense, Clouzot, Crazy Heart, Muriel, & More

[Note: This series includes scattered thoughts on various movie-related topics. I was looking for a word that started with the letter "g" that means collection or assortment, but lest you think I'm some elitist wordsmith, know that I'd never heard of "gallimaufry" and I don't even know how to say it, but it was the only other option the thesaurus provided aside from "goulash" (too foody) and "garbage" (no).]

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The Best Picture Nominees

I scoffed at the decision to expand the Best Picture field six months ago, and I'm scoffing at it again now. To summarize: because The Dark Knight was not nominated for Best Picture last year and the Oscar telecast was again watched by a fraction of the population, the decision was made by AMPAS and the show's producers to nominate ten films instead of five, making the ceremony more appealing to Joe and Jane Public, who see 3-5 movies year, at least one of which is directed by Michael Bay and at least 2-4 of which star Brendan Fraser, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Lopez, or Sandra Bullock.

And so in a year where so much went wrong at the movie theater (in my opinion, of course, and for the first time I didn't even bother with predicting the nominations), we have five stereotypical Best Picture nominees (Avatar, The Hurt Locker, A Serious Man, Up in the Air, and Inglourious Basterds), three passable Best Picture nominees (Up, An Education, Precious), and two tacked-on popular hits (District 9, The Blind Side; that The Hangover was somehow not nominated for Best Picture surprised me more than anything else in the nomination announcements). I'm not saying the wrong films were nominated - that's a given every year. I'm just saying that the expanded field only made room for more wrongly chosen films.

Of course the irony is that the inclusion of Avatar alone would have been enough to get people to watch the telecast, so the expanded field turned out to be completely unnecessary. Worse, the first-ever Pixar film to be nominated for Best Picture is arguably not even one of the best Pixar films. There was a case to be made for WALL-E last year, but not so with Up this year. Besides, it will win Best Animated Feature without any problem - wouldn't that have been "enough" without what is now a somewhat meaningless Best Picture nomination?

On the Horizon: Beyond the Chair

Like most active bloggers, I get a steady stream of emails requesting me to post particular movie news, review particular films, or link to particular websites or blogs. Some of them I follow up on, most of them I do not, either out of lack of time or lack of interest. I was ready to delete an email I received from one Dusty Duprel this week before I realized it wasn't spam and I took a closer look at what he was asking me to do: 

My name is Dusty Duprel, and what I am doing is explained in the letter attached.  As you will soon read, a close friend of mine has a lot depending on spreading this letter. What's not written are the details of how rapidly his health is fading. The reason for leaving out the heart breaking details is that we don't want pity, only to celebrate what he has accomplished. I am writing you in hopes that you will post this on your website or blog for him. 

I read Dusty's letter and was touched both by how genuinely it was written and how strange it was that I, a complete stranger, could in some way help him achieve his goal. Such are the wonders of technology in the 21st century. Of course, this isn't actually about Dusty or blogging, which is why I'm just going to copy the letter directly here for you to read: