The Movie Empress

Rush Is Dead

I was going to do a post about the massive disparity between critical and audience response to Pirates of the Caribbean:  Dead Man's Chest, and about how I really liked the movie, and appreciated the darker undertones required by any bridge episode in a trilogy, as well as the humorous bones thrown to the loyal fans, but all of this has pretty much been done to death, and I'm not feeling all that analytical when it's 103 degrees in the Armpit.  There's a good article in the New York Times about why critics are such wankers, so you can go read their take on that issue if you're feeling so inclined. 

Instead, I'm going to remark on a common complaint that I heard after viewing Dead Man's Chest, namely (spoiler alert) that Captain Barbossa was dead, so how the hell did he come back to life in this episode, and, to make a long, whiny, diatribe short, how that didn't make any sense at all and we expect a little continuity out of our summer blockbusters. 

To which I say, gently and kindly...

You're okay with a band of half-man/half-sea creatures sailing around underneath the ocean on a cursed ship, a man's still-beating heart kept in a box on an island without any obvious impediment to his health, a mythological octopus, a thoroughly liberated woman cruising the Caribbean unmolested by the kindly pirates whom she has befriended, Johnny Depp's miraculous waterproof eyeliner, and an undead monkey, but the resurrection of a once-cursed, apple-loving pirate captain strains the very limits of your credulity?

And critics say the public is too forgiving of Hollywood.

Are we having crow? Delicious!

The Movie Empress is a magnanimous dictator, if not entirely benevolent.  Thus, upon closer inspection she has decided to withdraw the fatwa she issued against "The Carpetbagger."  It seems, in her haste to devour the glut of available bloggery following Oscar night, she misread his statement and thus overlooked a sarcasm perhaps even mightier than her own. 

Had she paid closer attention, she would have noticed that he mentioned mainstream media bloggers specifically, and thus was taking a poke at his own hot air.  The Movie Empress is sorry, and vows to read more carefully in the future.

Annie Proulx, however?  Still a gifted, copiously-awarded bitch.

A spoonful of sugar...

Before I bid fond adieu to awards season and express my rarified opinion on all other things movie-related, I'd like to take this opportunity to post about bitterness.  I take as my inspiration two posts from two other blogs, each in rather august publications. 

Item the first, this entry from Steve Pond's Oscar Beat in the L.A. Times.  I've enjoyed Mr. Pond's coverage of the season, but I'm afraid I can't quite agree with him that Annie Proulx's reaction to the Oscars is merely "delightfully vicious" and "an artful evisceration."  Instead, I think it might be one of the saddest, most vituperative, and inadvertently revealing essays I've ever read.  I'll summarize it here.  "Brokeback Mountain was the most brilliant, artistically innovative and cinematically brave movie ever made.  Everyone associated with it was owed the kind of praise normally reserved for those who halt global wars, save entire species from extinction, or cure deadly plagues.  Because this vision was not upheld by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, they are all stupid floozy white trash with no taste who can rot in effervescent, intellectually lightweight hell." 

Let me just put it this way.  If, by some miracle, I ever won a Pulitzer Prize, I'd like to think I wouldn't be so prone to throwing public temper tantrums about how anyone who didn't appreciate my work in all its incantations was an uncultured boob.

Item the second, this installment by "The Carpetbagger" (aka David Carr) in the New York Times.  In previous entries, Mr. Carr revealed that he is the first blogger for his publication, and that his previous assignments had to do with government, courts, etc.  Apparently he didn't make any extra money for this assignment, and it was kind of unfamiliar territory, and he had to fly around a lot.  It was probably very stressful.  But since, kicky nickname aside, he's still a reporter for the paper of record with a built-in readership and an opportunity to witness glamorous doings first hand AND (not least of all) quite a decent writer, I don't really think there's much excuse for item seven on his hate list, "Oscar bloggers." 

To wit:  "They're nitwits who write about a "race" that has no data, no polling and very little in the way of revelatory moments apart from the opening of envelopes packed by mute accountants.  As a group, they are forced to feed a perpetual-motion machine with all sorts of rants, non-sequitur links, and theories built out of chicken wire, gum, and duct tape.  The Bagger has no idea how they, especially the MSM bloggers who serve as fig leaves for digital movie ads, live with themselves."

Thanks to Mr. Carr, I have seen the error of my ways.  It is only okay blog about the Oscars if you do so for the New York Times and are a "serious journalist," preferably with a background in government and police corruption.  I'm going to find it very difficult indeed to live with myself, but damn it, I've just gotta try.