Posted on 02/28/2011 7:41:48 AM PST by SeekAndFind
One of the wire services reported that the Oscars show Sunday night was aiming to be younger and hipper. The producers succeeded - which was what made the Oscars stink. Actually, "younger and hipper" has been arresting the Oscars for more than a few years - just as it's been retarding American popular culture since the 1960s.
Watching last night's Oscars, one is reminded a bit of Anthony Burgess' classical novel, A Clockwork Orange. It begs the question: "Where have all the adults gone?"
Viewers were treated to a long train of twenty-something and thirty-something actors and actresses making sophomoric jokes, using some profanity, and - predictably - making political points to pander to liberal causes or unions, which seemed to be last night's cause célèbre.Sex was also standard fare, which one would expect adolescents to want. That none of these young and hip performers snapped gum on stage was a little surprising.
Once upon a time, Hollywood was populated by actors and actresses of stature. Men like Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart, John Wayne, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen. Women like Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Bette Davis, Claudette Colbert, and Faye Dunaway.
Don't know who these performers are? Checkout Turner Classic Movies. It's a good place to start. Take a look at Hollywood before Zeke and Luther came to town and took over things.
Viewers did get to see 94-year-old Kirk Douglas ogle Anne Hathaway for yucks. So much for having a Hollywood legend treated with respect. But, then, aren't leering old men cool?
Will adults ever take back American popular culture? Good question. Don't know. At least "The King's Speech" won for Best Picture, along with three other Oscars. So, maybe, there's hope after all. Maybe there are adults crying to be freed from Hollywood's adolescent prison.
Grownups taking back American culture - high and low - would be a very healthy thing for the nation.
Mrs. LC and I watched the “Pre-Game”... the red carpet show on the E network. I really liked what Christian Bale said during his interview. He puts his all into a role, because the fans “Spend their money and they deserve a great performance”. He won for his role in “The Fighter”. Well deserved, I think.
I find more entertainment on Youtube than I do in most movies...for free. Then there’s online gaming, music, news, etc. So many things that can occupy my time that Hollywood doesn’t get a dime of. I hardly go to the theater anymore, won’t hardly spend more than two bucks for a rental.
It’s only going to get worse as lowered barriers to entry mean creative people can make creative entertainment and the bandwith to show it, circumventing theater and DVD. The old Hollywood paradigm of past years has completely fallen apart. It used to be driven almost totally by star power, now it’s more CGI and action driven, and even that is hit and miss. I don’t see that reversing any time soon.
Not saying Hollywood won’t survive, but it’s going to have to compete now, and it will lose market share.
As I said, it is hardly a direct connection to the film or to the implied intent of merging porn into the mainstream cinema. I pointed it out because some in the media have written about the use of the set for both the King's Speech and the adult film, Snookered. Other films have used this set, but for whatever reason these two films seem to have gathered the most attention.
This article is making a rather generalized assumption that “classic” old actors are better or somehow more “moral” than today’s actors. The truth is that, actors, generally speaking, have always tended to lack any sort of moral compass. There are always exceptions and my hat is off to those men who served our country during wartime.
To be honest I don't think she was all that bad. I've certainly sat through worse - Stewart, Letterman, Alec Baldwin, that God-awful Whoopie Goldberg. My wife watches it; I tend to tune it out except when there are movies I care about up for awards. I wanted to see "The King's Speech" run the table, but Bales beat out Rush.
Drudge had a link to an article with a picture the host and hostess cross dressing.
the picture looked pathetic.
When the best hollyweird can offer is “dances with smurfs” it is any wonder people are fleeing to the internet and games?
The only thing proping hollyweird is archaic distribution rights laws.
Also, if you’ve seen ‘Boogie Nights’ you’d know that it does not glamorize the porn industry at all. It shows the consequences of that lifestyle. It’s one of my favorite films of the 1990s.
Filmography
Kirk Douglas
The Big Trees (1952)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
Out of the Past (1947)
Mourning Becomes Electra (1947)
I Walk Alone (1948)
The Walls of Jericho (1948)
My Dear Secretary (1949)
A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
Champion (1949)
Young Man with a Horn (1950)
The Glass Menagerie (1950)
Along the Great Divide (1951)
Ace in the Hole (1951)
Detective Story (1951)
The Big Trees (1952)
The Big Sky (1952)
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
The Story of Three Loves (1953)
The Juggler (1953)
Act of Love (1953)
The Jack Benny Program (television, 1954)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
The Racers (1955)
Ulisse (U.S. title: Ulysses, 1955)
Man Without a Star (1955)
The Indian Fighter (1955)
Lust for Life (1956)
Top Secret Affair (1957)
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)
Paths of Glory (1957)
The Vikings (1958)
Last Train from Gun Hill (1959)
The Devil’s Disciple (1959)
Strangers When We Meet (1960)
Spartacus (1960)
Town Without Pity (1961)
The Last Sunset (1961)
Lonely Are the Brave (1962)
Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)
The Hook (1963)
The List of Adrian Messenger (1963)
For Love or Money (1963)
Seven Days in May (1964)
In Harm’s Way (1965)
The Heroes of Telemark (1965)
Cast a Giant Shadow (1966)
Is Paris Burning? (1966)
The Way West (1967)
The War Wagon (1967)
Once Upon a Wheel (documentary, 1968)
A Lovely Way to Die (1968)
The Brotherhood (1968)
The Arrangement (1969)
There Was a Crooked Man... (1970)
To Catch a Spy (1971)
The Light at the Edge of the World (1971)
A Gunfight (1971)
A Man to Respect (1972)
The Master Touch (1972)
Scalawag (1973)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1973)
Posse (1975) Also director
Once Is Not Enough (1975)
Holocaust 2000 (1977)
The Fury (1978)
The Villain (1979)
Saturn 3 (1980)
Home Movies (1980)
The Final Countdown (1980)
The Man from Snowy River (1982)
Remembrance of Love (1982)
Eddie Macon’s Run (1983)
Draw! (1984)
Amos (1985)
Tough Guys (1986)
Queenie (television, 1987)
Inherit the Wind (1988)
Oscar (1991)
Veraz (1991)
The Secret (television, 1992)
A Century of Cinema (documentary, 1994)
Greedy (1994)
Diamonds (1999)
It Runs in the Family (2003)
Illusion (2004)
Filmography
Kirk Douglas
The Big Trees (1952)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
Out of the Past (1947)
Mourning Becomes Electra (1947)
I Walk Alone (1948)
The Walls of Jericho (1948)
My Dear Secretary (1949)
A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
Champion (1949)
Young Man with a Horn (1950)
The Glass Menagerie (1950)
Along the Great Divide (1951)
Ace in the Hole (1951)
Detective Story (1951)
The Big Trees (1952)
The Big Sky (1952)
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
The Story of Three Loves (1953)
The Juggler (1953)
Act of Love (1953)
The Jack Benny Program (television, 1954)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
The Racers (1955)
Ulisse (U.S. title: Ulysses, 1955)
Man Without a Star (1955)
The Indian Fighter (1955)
Lust for Life (1956)
Top Secret Affair (1957)
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)
Paths of Glory (1957)
The Vikings (1958)
Last Train from Gun Hill (1959)
The Devil’s Disciple (1959)
Strangers When We Meet (1960)
Spartacus (1960)
Town Without Pity (1961)
The Last Sunset (1961)
Lonely Are the Brave (1962)
Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)
The Hook (1963)
The List of Adrian Messenger (1963)
For Love or Money (1963)
Seven Days in May (1964)
In Harm’s Way (1965)
The Heroes of Telemark (1965)
Cast a Giant Shadow (1966)
Is Paris Burning? (1966)
The Way West (1967)
The War Wagon (1967)
Once Upon a Wheel (documentary, 1968)
A Lovely Way to Die (1968)
The Brotherhood (1968)
The Arrangement (1969)
There Was a Crooked Man... (1970)
To Catch a Spy (1971)
The Light at the Edge of the World (1971)
A Gunfight (1971)
A Man to Respect (1972)
The Master Touch (1972)
Scalawag (1973)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1973)
Posse (1975) Also director
Once Is Not Enough (1975)
Holocaust 2000 (1977)
The Fury (1978)
The Villain (1979)
Saturn 3 (1980)
Home Movies (1980)
The Final Countdown (1980)
The Man from Snowy River (1982)
Remembrance of Love (1982)
Eddie Macon’s Run (1983)
Draw! (1984)
Amos (1985)
Tough Guys (1986)
Queenie (television, 1987)
Inherit the Wind (1988)
Oscar (1991)
Veraz (1991)
The Secret (television, 1992)
A Century of Cinema (documentary, 1994)
Greedy (1994)
Diamonds (1999)
It Runs in the Family (2003)
Illusion (2004)
Hollywood has become a caricature of itself. I don’t believe anyone there has had an original thought in 20 years and I rarely go to see a film in a theater anymore. The kids go so they can hang out with each other and the movies are being made for kids.
I saw the same or similar list on wikipedia. Of those, I’ve seen the two I mentioned earlier.
anne hathaway, from the stills on the news, should never have been allowed anywhere near the kodak center.
No mention was made of glamorizing the porn industry. I noted that porn has merged with mainstream cinema (and I’ll add mainstream entertainment) with films like Boogie Nights. I’ve seen the movie and thought it wasn’t bad. On the matter of porn merging with mainstream entertainment, I recall seeing Mark Wahlberg on various shows talking about his experience with the film- I forget but it was either Oprah or Dave that asked if the appendage was really his.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned in the whole Charlie Sheen thing is the kid on the show. What kind of influence will this have on him? If I were his parents, would not allow my kid to be anywhere near someone like Sheen, let alone allowing him to be on a set of a TV show all day long with the likes of Sheen (and one that has nothing but raunchy jokes). I guess the money is too good.
Along those lines, in 2009 a movie came out, based on a comic book, the title of which was referred to by one of the stars as "Kick Butt". The star in question was 12-years-old. She played a character who was 11. The language in the movie was truly the worst I've heard in a movie (maybe I'm sheltered). But a 12-year-old actress using the c-word? And the other c-word? And the f-word? In between slashing a few dozen bad guys to death with various knives? With glee and abandon?
The entertainment business is trying to normalize a lot of stuff which is not normal. Society pays a price for that sort of thing.
To Hollywood, being an adult is boring. Adults are mean, calculating and party of the “system” that stiffles them. Film makers and screenwriters today are not taking Louie B. Mayer’s advice. He said, “if you want to send a message, use Western Union”. He was right.
Then define “merge” It’s a film about the porn industry. Do films about Nazis mean that Nazism has merged with mainstream entertainment? I think the Net and certain cable reality shows have done more than anything else to push porn into the mainstream.
Or, "If I wanted to be preached at for two hours, that's what church is for."
Don't even rent or buy videos anymore. If they come out on dtv, I sometimes watch them... Usually 9 days consecutively as that is how they program.
My favorite show is ‘How it's Made”.
Glad I’ve been away from mainstream entertainment for 35 years or so.
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