IDIOT! Give me your money for this Crap!

So the Oscars were on last night. I didn’t really watch anything beyond Jon Stewart’s opening monologue, but I was in the other room and could hear a lot of it while Mrs. X watched it. However, she turned the TV off at 10 so I can’t say anything beyond that. In general of what I overheard, I was reminded of the scene from The Breakfast Club where Anthony Michael Hall’s character is spilling out about being unpopular and Molly Ringwald’s character says its because that they all look up to the popular kids (which include her and Emilio Estevez). Hollywood spend a good portion of last night slapping themselves on the back and chastising the public about not going to see the movies they make and slurping them for being on the cutting edge of culture.

There have been decidedly mixed reviews for Jon Stewart’s performance as host. I liked it, but it was easy to tell that the audience didn’t. Actors want to be lauded, not made fun of. Except that that’s what Jon Stewart does. But then again, with the trouble Hollywood has had in the past in getting people to host the show, its not surprising that they turned to Stewart. Maybe they thought it would make them hip or something.

No matter what you thought of Stewart’s performance, it was easily overshadowed by the almost palpable anger/irritation displayed by the Hollywood elite towards the unwashed masses for not recognizing them as the vanguard of culture and for giving them lots of money to see movies in a theater. There were at least two very snide comments about how nothing compares to seeing a movie in the theater and how we shouldn’t be buying DVDs because it doesn’t compare to a real movie experience. Actually, the last two movies I saw in the theater were Goblet of Fire and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. At Goblet of Fire, I nearly passed out from heat stroke, the theater was so packed and overheated and Mrs. X was almost reduced to tears she was in so much pain from sitting in the seats and being crowded by so many people. At Narnia, the aspect ratio of the movie was off so that any character’s head that was near the top of the screen was cut off at the nose. Neither of these is what I would call a truly enjoyable experience. Certainly not one that encourages me to go out and spend $9 on a random movie that may or not interest me.

The other thing that got me was the endless montages of how great Hollywood is. I made the snide remark to Mrs. X that if Hollywood could actually make a move as good as Ben Hur again, maybe people would actually go see them and they wouldn’t have to spend all this time and money yelling at people to remember how good they were and to try and get them to see a bunch of bad movies now.

One can only hope that the laws of capitalism eventually sink in to the Hollywood types and that if they make a good product, people will actually take part of that product. If not, the Oscars are only going to get worse in they’re living in the past and anger towards the masses.