Oscar Mania: Is Hollywood “The Master” of its Own Domain?

Ah, the Oscars — Hollywood’s annual self-congratulatory extravaganza.  Although I love movies far too much to simply dismiss the Oscars, this year I’m more skeptical of the Academy’s motivations than ever.  As always, this charade is all about  money.  The golden statue  too often fails to be bestowed upon the year’s “best” achievements, but rather the achievements that promote and expand the profitability of the Hollywood Industrial Complex.

Fortunately, the viewing public is not as naive as it once was.  There’s a reason so many Oscar prediction articles this time of the year are broken up by what “should win” and what “will win”.  We know that there are other factors in play and we accept that these films are not judged in an artistic vacuum, purely on the merits of their creative, artistic, and cinematographic endeavors.

I’ve been happy to overlook the shortcomings of the Academy Awards for years.  But this placative approach came to a screeching halt when Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master was left out of the Best Picture nominees list, with only nine out of a maximum of ten films being nominated.  This was a blatant and purposeful snub.

The Best Picture list is crowded, but they could have fit in one more

I have a close friend living in L.A. who has helped clue me in as to just how much the Academy Awards depend on the phony politics of the Hollywood elite.  For films to garner Oscar “momentum” studios have to campaign and promote the films they think have the best chance of winning.  Meanwhile, producers, directors, executives, and actors orchestrate heavy doses of well-rehearsed schmoozing.  They buy billboards, send out DVDs, and host galas for members of the Academy to come eat, drink, and be merry in an effort to sway their votes.

I’m upset by this because I believe that The Master was one of the best films of the year, if not the best — and the main reason it wasn’t even nominated for best film, director, or original screenplay, is because P.T. Anderson notoriously doesn’t give a rat’s ass about throwing parties to support his films or dropping off DVDs at the doorstep of every member of the Academy.  He just doesn’t bother, which, it appears, pisses everyone off.  It’s not outrageous to suggest that the Academy is intimated by, even fearful of, P.T’s talent — we’re talking about a guy who wrote and directed Boogie Nights at 27.

P.T. needs more golden statues for me to accept the legitimacy of the Academy (more silver bears are also welcome)

Now I’ll certainly concede that The Master is not easy to watch.  It can be frustratingly opaque and uncomfortably challenging.  It’s also beautiful and scintillating and wholly original.  It ignites, then escapes.  It is a film unlike any we’ve seen before.  It asks more questions than it answers. It forces its viewers to examine themselves in a way that movies rarely do.  It is an experience that transcends the cinema, leaving you befuddled over the mercurial possibilities of the future of filmic art.

The Academy purports to be the great guardians of cinema.  The Oscars take place once a year, and with the whole world watching, they serve to remind us just how important films are in all of our lives — just how magical the movie-going experience can be.  Movies, they practically shout, represent more than a popcorn fest over jousting robots.  At their finest, they reflects who we are and where we’ve been, as well as where we’re going.

The Academy has deemed this obsessive ego-stroking as a necessary part of the show, however, it’s starting to ring hollow.  After Argo wins best picture, that will be two meta-movies (movies that self-reflexively examine film or the filmmaking process) in a row that have taken home the grand prize, with The Artist and its affectionate celebration of film winning best picture last year.  At some point Hollywood needs to put its golden statues where its mouth is.  They cannot continue to celebrate the importance of film while snubbing perhaps their greatest auteur.  It’s counter-intuitive and conservative and, over time, may prove to be unsustainable.  If audiences continue to demand more from their films, I pray that Anderson’s next project, Inherent Vice, carries with it the opportunity to shake up the status quo.

As for the films that have been nominated for best picture, let me cut to the chase.  It’s going to come down to Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, or Lincoln.  I loved Django Unchained and Silver Linings Playbook but they are unlikely to contend with the aforementioned heavy weights.  I think you can eliminate Lincoln because with all the set pieces and monologues, it could have been done as a play.  Those voters who put film (not theater) on a pedestal won’t vote for Lincoln, in part, because of this.  I do think Spielberg will get Best Director and obviously my boy Daniel Day-Lewis is taking home Best Actor yet again.

And then there were two.  If Zero Dark Thirty wins, we might call Kathryn Bigelow the New Englad Patriots of cinema.  She’d be in the midst of a dynasty after taking home two best picture awards in the span of three years.  The perplexing wrench in all of this is that Zero Dark Thirty is clearly a better, more important film than The Hurt Locker.  I suspect that the liberal Academy will not like the idea of torture still existing under the Obama Administration thrown in their face. The United States committed grave human rights violations during the eight, terrible years of the Bush Administration and Zero Dark Thirty importantly but uncomfortably reminds us that those practices have not magically disappeared under Obama.

I do think that Jessica Chastain will take home the Best Actress award.  While I love Jennifer Lawrence and Emmanuelle Riva is my dark horse, Chastain is a young, relatively unknown actress.  It’s in Hollywood’s interest to give her this award, announcing her as yet another up-and-coming A-list actress that people will want to pay to see for years to come.  I also think that Zero Dark Thirty will win best editing, as the amount of cuts in a movie that long must have been a tireless effort, yet one that was done so well that those 2 hours and 40 minutes seem to fly by.

Argo will win because it presents the great double whammy:  a tense political thriller period piece that touches on still-sensitive international relations AND a Hollywood satire that reflexively shows love for the very industry we’re all gathered here to applaud.   While I do think Argo was fantastically well done, it’s still a safe choice.  Over time, I can only hope that we collectively demand more from Hollywood.  If film is to continue to grow as one of the great art forms in modern society, Hollywood will need to expand their willingness to embrace innovation and stick to the values they purport to represent.  They also have to start caring a little bit less about money, which unfortunately tempers my expectations quite a bit.  For now, I’ll bide my time until Inherent Vice, due out sometime in 2014.

Hot Links

Check out these links where you’ll find more words, like the ones you’re reading right now, that have spewed from my brain and onto the internet.

One is a contribution to my favorite Philadelphia Eagles blogs, Bleeding Green Nation, in the form of a roundtable discussion predicting roster moves the Eagles may or may not make during the 2013 NFL offseason.  It’s already received over 180 comments.  Add some of your own:

http://www.bleedinggreennation.com/2013/2/12/3975040/round-table-discussion-cap-casualties-and-the-23-million-carryover

The other is cornball writing at its finest.  A plug, if you will.  The staff at Active Physical Therapy in Midtown, Manhattan really helped me rehab and recover from my ACL reconstructive surgery this past August.  This is my return favor:

http://www.activecarephysicaltherapy.com/nyc-sports-medicine-success-stories.html

 

 

100% Efficiency: The Future of LBJ?

LeBron James is just killing it.  As the unauthorized biographer of LeBron’s ongoing meta-narrative, I feel compelled to write a few words about what he’s done the past six games, as well as what we can expect from him, as a result of this streak, over the next few years.  Let’s start with the simple proclamation that James is the hands-down MVP of the league this year.  Give credit to my friend, Zach Wasser, for predicting a transformational year out of Carmelo Anthony, but an apples-to-apples comparison of stats quickly puts to rest any questions as to LeBron’s superiority.

LeBron usually shoots around 48% from the field.  This year he’s at 57%.  He usually hits about 33% of his three-pointers.  This year he’s making them at a 42% clip.  He’s averaging a career-low in turnovers and a career-best in rebounds.  Right now, Kang is the closest thing we’ve ever seen to the perfect NBA player.

Now, let’s imagine his game continues to advance.  It’s not hard to envision, given the way he’s progressed over his career.  How close can he realistically get to 100% efficiency?  Can he put up a 30/10/10 triple double, going 12 for 12 from the floor, on a regular, nightly basis?  As crazy as this sounds, LeBron has been pretty darn close to doing this over the past 6 games already.  He just turned 28 and is only now reaching the thick of his prime.

I can’t say whether LeBron will ever figure out a way to shoot 100% from the field.  He would need to do a lot of dunking, which I am in favor of.  But the possibility of him reaching this unthinkable plateau, needs to at least be discussed in light of the past week and a half.  Just when we thought we’d seen his best, LeBron continues to prove we’re all witnesses to something greater, something unknown still, and something NBA fans will be sharing with their grandchildren decades from now.

The Future Scientists of the Internet

Predicting how the Internet will shape our lives in twenty years is a fascinating exercise.  With smart phones increasingly becoming an extension of one’s body and mind, I can’t help but wonder where we plan to collectively draw the line.  The risk of misinterpreting the role of the internet in our lives as we move forward in the 21st century is a great one.  It’s also something that we tend to shy away from discussing in public.

Call me crazy, but I think we’ll figure it out.  In twenty years, Google might own our beaches and Amazon might order me groceries while I sleep, but the internet’s greatest claims — to educate, unite, and entertain the masses, and to shoulder the burdens of economic innovation, will remain.  For a sociologist like me, there is also the temptation to look towards a more advanced internet as one of the greatest tools for understanding and categorizing society.  From this view, the internet might be able to play a pivotal role in identifying and even diagnosing some of society’s greatest problems.

Imagine if we figure out a way to truly categorize the internet.  Yes, that was the basis of Google’s revolutionary search engine, but it is also the first mass-aggregator of it’s kind.  The web is made up of a series of mathematical equations that I won’t even purport to understand.  There are people out there, however — scientists of the internet — whom I trust to guide us in the right direction.

Why am I so optimistic?  In short, because these people are predominantly my peers.  As a young professional in my mid-twenties, my generation was the first and only generation to grow up with the internet.  Slowly creeping its way into our lives as teenagers, we are the only group of young people to have a familial relationship with websites and AIM.  We also have the context and historical perspective to remember a world without such technology, giving us a unique vantage point and higher stake in the direction it’s going.  Like a big brother to answer all of our annoying “why? why?” questions or a non-judgmental wing-man to help us chat with the cutie from 8th grade English after school, the internet introduced itself to us an unprecedented social crutch.  Now that it has helped us write college essays and find a job, the internet seems more like an aging parent, who we must nurture in its old age.

Seeing a 9-year-old with an iPhone can be a disturbing experience.  There may even be feelings of generational resentment against those who’ve grown up with these technologies as a given.  Overall, the sense of responsibility and entitlement we feel toward the internet may just be the motivating factor that encourages the future technocrats of America to ensure the internet continues to help us, as a society, rather than do us harm.

Are there also risks of losing?  Certainly, money will always threaten these dreams of mine.  The internet could shackle us to a capitalistic adherence to authority and routine if we allow certain people in power to craft it’s landscape.  A few very big, very important battles are likely to be fought over ownership of the internet in the next two decades.  I don’t know who will start this war or how it will be fought, but I don’t doubt the power of those who bring the most cash to the table.  We just have to hope that the internet can stand for something more than profitability.

In my ideal world, we would have the internet categorized to a tee.  If everything that goes onto the internet could somehow be instantly and specifically categorized, the ability to learn about each other, to identify the human experience within the context of modern society, will be one of the most important social tools of all time.  Having the anecdotal, statistical, or demographic research to back these findings would be a sociologist’s dream.  The ability to use the internet in this way does, however, pose one of the greatest threats the “ruling” class has ever seen.

In twenty or thirty years, though, it will be people from my generation who hold powerful positions as CEOs of companies and Presidents of tech start-ups.  These peers of mine, I truly believe, have a heightened sensitivity to the problems of inequality and (in)justice in today’s society.  I believe that they know how much work we still have to do and are inspired in this way to maintain the freedom and accessibility of the web.  It is my hope that they will use their unique positions as sons and daughters of the internet and as innovators of our technological world not just to make money, but to shape the web into a tool for the greater good of humanity.  The risk of doing otherwise would be far too much to bare.

A New Era of Football in Philadelphia

The Eagles have flown high for the majority of the last decade and a half.  This past year, though, they barely took off.  Now they face the the challenge of beginning a new era.  But what went wrong?  It depends who you ask, as I’m sure every Eagles fan can come up with at least a few goats they’d like to scape.  LeSean McCoy said it was a lack of heart, Howie Roseman said it was a lack of chemistry.  Some blame Andy Red while others still curse the ghost of Donovan McNabb.  For a more fleshed out answer, we need to look at the context of the situation, as well as its history, while taking into consideration both the on-field aspects related to coaching, playmaking, and scheming as well as the mental, emotional, and psychological aspects of team cohesion, passion, and pride.

One thing that’s very hard to overcome in the NFL is a slew of injuries to the same position.  The top teams have good depth, but it’s hard to have an insurance plan for every starter.  The fact is, the Eagles lost four out of their five starting offensive linemen in 2012.  This was the same group of starters who, just last season, ranked 2nd overall in the NFL in terms of run/pass blocking and penalties.  The O-Line was was the most dominant unit on that team and the primary reason the Eagles finished with a top five offense in 2011.  They also finished, as you might recall, with an 8-8 record, setting up Jeffrey Lurie’s now infamous ultimatum that 2012 would be a make-or-break season for our dearly departed Andy Reid.

The inability to adequately replenish the offensive line, I believe, was the hammer in the coffin that led to Andy Reid’s firing and the eventual dismissal of our once beloved scrambling (for his life) quarterback, Mr. Michael Vick.  Of course, the problems extend much deeper and much further back, but let’s start from a purely football perspective before getting into all of the metaphysical reasons the Eagles now have Chip Kelly as their head coach.

Imagine if Chip Kelly figures out how to fully utilize this guy

If I can take a moment to pull a Mitt Romney, I think the trickle down effect helps to explain why the offensive line turned the team against itself, became soft, and sometimes even appeared to give up.

When you have a terrible, porous offensive line, your quarterback, wide receivers, running backs, and tight ends will suffer.  They’ll suffer so much that it doesn’t matter who they are, how fast or tough or smart they are.  A back can’t run without blocks and a quarterback can’t pass without protection.  When the offensive line allows constant pressure, the quarterback takes sacks, hits, and hurries.  More importantly, a weak O-Line is the best recipe for turnovers.   Fumbles and sacks, interceptions from rushed throws, strips in the pocket — all of these have become a recurring nightmare for Eagles fans, who have seen the Eagles turnover differential since the start of the 2011 season plummet to -38.  Yes, MINUS 38.  The next worst team in that timeframe, Kansas City, isn’t even in the same ballpark at -26.  Conversely, the best team since 2011 has been the Patriots, who have a +42 differential.  In other words, over the last 32 regular season games, the Patriots have had 80 more turnovers go in their favor than the Eagles — or 2.5 possessions per game.

Clearly, turnovers have been the achilles heal of this team the past two seasons, yet they only account for damage done on one side of the ball.  Or do they?  Turnovers, one of the truest marks of incompetence in the NFL, don’t exist in a vacuum.  They give the ball over to the opposing team’s offense (that is, if their defense didn’t already score off the turnover) and they almost always put the defense coming onto the field in a tough spot.  If the D doesn’t have a short field to deal with, they still have to stop an offense now surging with momentum.  This incompetence of the offense or special teams inevitably trickles down to the D who has frequently (again let me reiterate the -38) had to pick up the offense/ST slack.  The D comes onto the field on a negative note, perhaps angry or frustrated with the offense, and they begin to lose that sense of accountability to one another –they are no longer a cohesive unit, a unified team.

In this way, I believe the turnovers, mostly as a result of a terrible offensive line in 2012 and a series of critical mental/fundamental mistakes in 2011 “trickled down” throughout the team, eventually turning the players and fans against the basic philosophies of Andy Reid, Juan Castillo, Jim Washburn, and Todd Bowles.  Three of those four gentlemen have already been canned and I’m guessing Chip will want to hire his own defensive coordinator to replace Bowles.

I’d be remiss not to mention that the defense is also very much responsible for this team’s implosion.  They have had more blown coverages and botched plays in the past two seasons than I can remember throughout the entire Andy Reid/Jim Johnson era.  When Jim Johnson passed away after the 2008 season, so too went the Eagles chances of ever again competing for a Super Bowl under Reid.  Johnson had his players disciplined mentally and physically and had the knowledge and schemes to always keep opposing offenses off balance.  He will go down as one of the all-time great defensive coordinators and his presence, may he rest in peace, is simply irreplaceable — the defense never recovered nor adapted a new identity under McDermott, Castillo, or Bowles.  In retrospect, the passing of Johnson all but ended the Andy Reid era–we just didn’t know it yet.

I firmly believe that you win games at the NFL level by being the best team.  Winning has a lot less to do with a franchise QB or stud head coach or star playmakers than it does with turning 11 cogs into one well-oiled, furious machine.  The abilities and fundamentals of all players at the NFL level is extraordinarily high.  Still, the difference between the abilities of teams to win and between players to compete is remarkably small.  The parity that exists in this league is delightfully apparent.  On any given Sunday, the Bills could make a run at the Pats or the Rams could upset the Niners, or the goddamn Redskins can win the NFC East.  It’s no surprise, with 11 guys on each side of the field at all times, that the team who plays more as “one” will win.

To do this, you need a core of leaders on and off the field and you need a GM who can build a roster around guys who would die for the city they play for.  Brian Dawkins epitomized that role in Philly for years.  Now, LeSean McCoy, Trent Cole, and even newcomer Demeco Ryans come to mind.  Roseman has already stated that he is ready to get back to the philosophies that made the Eagles so formidable circa 2004, like building through the draft and making hard decisions with players who have outperformed their contracts.

Now that we have Chip Kelly, a fresh mind and one that is hungry to compete at the NFL level, I have confidence that the team can enter into a new era of success.  I hope that we can build a run-first offense around Nick Foles, who has fantastic intangibles and appears to be about as tough a competitor as there is in the NFL.  If we can get the ball into the hands of our speedy wide receivers and let Shady carry the load, I have confidence in Kelly’s ability to let Foles lead this offense.  It also helps that Kelly reportedly just absolutely hates turnovers.  That’s always good. On defense, we simply need to find our heart and our identity.  The players need to look toward the leaders on D to bring out that passion and they need to be accountable to each other through the good times and especially the bad.  Putting that #4 overall pick to use on the defensive side wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

This is unchartered territory for many of us, as I was barely 11-years-old when Andy Reid was originally hired.  I must say, as fun and tantalizing a ride as it’s been, I’m ready for something new–I just hope the players and coaches are as eager as the fans to bring home the bacon.  As always, the Lombardi Trophy is the only dish that can satisfy this city’s enormous appetite for winning.

Making Time to Make Decisions

Among my New Year’s resolutions, of which there are many, is the singular vow to write more.  So here I am, trying to overcome the obstacles of fatigue, uncertainty, perfectionism, or whatever fill-in excuse happens to fit best.

Among my other resolutions, is to be more assertive with regards to pursuing and achieving the things that I want.  What a marvelous irony it is that we all must balance our own needs against those of our friends, families, coworkers, and loved ones.  Taking too much or not giving enough; the delicate equilibrium of our social and professional lives can weigh heavy on one’s mind.  With even the smallest of decisions, like which pair of shoes to wear to see Django Unchained, I’ve found myself second-guessing.  Should it be the new running shoes I got that still give me a blister on the heel?  $115 fucking dollars and they’re still giving me blisters?  Gotta break those fuckers in.  What if they rub me raw during the movie and that’s all I can think about the whole time and the movie is ruined forever?  You can only watch a Tarantino film for the first time ONCE. [30 seconds of tying and untying shoes]. 

The internal decisions, the ones that affect only yourself, those can be more easily solved.  More sleep, better diet and solid doses of exercise, I’ve found, help guide me through the neuroses and paranoia of daily life.  Staying busy, thinking positively, and when all else fails, reminding myself to just make a decision and stick with it (“go with your gut” they say) has helped.  I’m less inside my own head than I was before and have been able to avoid those double or triple layers of consciousness by simply willing it away with rationality and optimism.  Ideally, this has made me a better person, or at least more at peace with myself.

The decisions that have direct effect on others, however, those are a different beast.  Is there a way to make a decision that maximizes the interests of all people involved, including yourself?  If so, how much time and energy can realistically go into this process? If there has to be an unequal distribution of gain, as so often seems to be the case, how does one determine the allocation?  These are the types of variables that can drive a well-meaning young man mad.  Laced within these decisions for all of us is a thought process underpinned by motivations associated with our social makeup and economic vantage point.  One’s emotional and psychological disposition is also an important player.  I became well-acquainted with the factors that affect individual and group (mass) decision-making in college.  As a sociology major, I learned about the interconnected nature of social factors such as race, income, community, gender and sexuality, education and upbringing.  The fact that I’m now having trouble in my own life trying to make decisions based on the most common good, makes all too much sense.  Social factors and personal preferences are endless and the quest to satisfy everyone leads inevitably to disappointment.

Some scientists have argued that humans, despite the complex and interconnected world we currently live in, cannot make a decision that is not at least in some ways self-serving.  For years I identified the mark of a truly good person as the ability to put someone else’s needs before your own.  I was mystified by the way certain figures in college could navigate every social group with ease, simply by paying attention to and investing themselves in those people’s interests.  Only now am I starting to understand that there is no benchmark for goodness, but rather that to live well and to do good is to strike a balance between your own needs and the needs of others.  Forsaking my own needs–an act I thought embodied the essence of goodness–was in fact a strangled, self-serving validation of my own capacity to care for others.

Everything in moderation my folks used to say.  It’s not just a good parenting technique, it’s withstood the test of time and turned out to be a solid personal motto.  It seems to me that we are presented with opportunities to do right by ourselves and to do right by others on a daily basis.  Taking the time to remember to do both, in my opinion, is the mark of a truly good person.  Using positive, rational thoughts to avoid suffocating under a blanket of indecision, I’ve also found, is a fine way to keep your head clear.  Then, when it comes time to make a decision that affects someone else, you’ll be confident in your ability to do the right thing.

LeBron and the 2012 Finals Part III: Mission Complete

Dear LeBron,

Enjoy the off-season, my man–you’ve earned it.  You might just have to write a book about what it feels like to experience the most massive stress release in the history of sports.  This summer, you’ll be a new man.  Spend some extra time with your kids, let them where your ring.  It really was about damn time.  I’m happy for you. Nine years of expectation lifted off your shoulders.  Jumping around on the sideline last night, you looked like an exuberant young boy on a playground.  It was nice to see you finally let it all hang out.  There will still be haters, but now you can flash them the bling.  There will still be obstacles, but at this point, what haven’t you already overcome?  Enjoy the respite while you can, but get ready to come back just as strong and determined as you were this year.  Can’t get complacent, can’t ever forget what 2011 felt like.  There will be plenty of people who want to write about what it finally all means, but not me, not now.  I’m gonna rest like you and survey the landscape of reactions, at least, before I try to consecrate your victory.  

One last thing…a quick favor, if I may ask.  Drop a line to your boy Steve Nash and see how he’s feeling about next year?  

Thanks holmes.