I had the TV on without sound last night and I looked up just as the announcement was about to be made for the best picture. Two dinosaurs were in charge, Warren Beatty held the envelope and Faye Dunaway (Bonnie and Clyde) was at his shoulder. He opened the envelop and looked at it befuddled, then handed it to Dunaway. She looked right at the teleprompter without having even glanced at the card and announced La La Land. The crowd cheered, and actors were running to the stage. The usual mayhem followed. All seemed normal except for one thing, the real winner was Moonlight. A Producer on stage took the card from Beatty and showed it to the camera it clearly said in very large letters “Moonlight.” Even a very sight impaired person could have read it.
What happened? I think Beatty and Dunaway were in cahoots in an effort to steal the best picture award. Except Beaty couldn’t bring himself to do it, so he handed the job off to Dunaway who declared the winner she wanted rather than to read the card.
If I were the the true winners from Moonlight, I’d be filing a huge lawsuit today to sue Dunaway and Beatty for a trillion dollars. They succeeded in stealing a million dollar moment from the people who were rightly selected as the best. It is interesting to hear all the lame excuses the Oscar company is spinning about how it happened. Each of them is a lie.
Here they are heralding the best of the best of their industry, and it turns into a fake news event, that’s Hollywood.
I could be wrong on this. Knowing the morality of Hollywood it could be that La La Land was the real winner, and the Producer stole it from them by slipping a false Moonlight card into Beatty’s hand.
Today, Peg and I watched a very powerful film “12 Years A Slave.” We now understand why it received the Best Picture Award. The reason it is so good is because it is a true story, and is the personal account of a man who experienced slavery in the good old USA. We weren’t shocked by the content, nor the cruelty because both of us watched movies like “Roots,” and “Amistad.” We also paid attention in school when studying history. I admit, however, that the cruelty aspect in 12 Years is much more graphic and convincing than that in Roots.
Last week we saw “Son of God” and the cruelty shown to Jesus was similar if not more so. One difference is that Jesus experienced one scourging in his life, slave-owners whipped their property often. There is no doubt in my mind that slavery is evil. It is finally illegal to own slaves in any country of the world, yet there are purportedly twenty-nine million slaves in existence worldwide today.
What made this film more interesting is that main character Solomon Northrup was born a free man in Saratoga, New York. That made him a citizen of the USA. He didn’t get captured by mercenary traders in a foreign country and shipped across an ocean to a strange new land and sold. Kidnappers took Solomon and sold him into slavery in Washington D.C. He learned quickly not to ever mention his background to anyone for fear of a brutal beating.
Most white slave owners were evil. There is no better way to describe them, they acted like the devil. Even those who were compassionate were evil because they believed that owning human beings as property was their legal right. Many saw slaves as animals not humans. I salute the millions of slaves who have endured the loss of liberty and cruel treatment they received. This is the point where I will infuriate all blacks living in America. I’m not buying into the storyline that I should feel sorry for every living American black because his great, great, great, grandfather uncle aunt, etc. was a slave. The slaves were the ones who paid the price, not you. You are free since 1865 and since 1970’s the US government has spent trillions to end poverty and for discrimination you have suffered under whitey. If you divide the money spent by every black in America since the Emancipation Proclamation you would all be very wealthy.
What have you done to make your slave ancestors proud? What is their legacy? How do you honor the cruelty and indignity they suffered? Is it they who have made you more dependent on Uncle Sam? Did Solomon Northrup and his friends organize you into gangs? Did he also corrupt your morals to commit genocide on your own progeny? What have you done for yourselves to convince us to drop the need to discriminate against you? Forgive me, but I do discriminate against gang-thugs, and people who play the welfare system to the max. I welcome my neighbors, and friends who share in the goodness of America.
It pleases me if Hollywood made this film to entertain. It pleases me if they made it to educate us about the life of an extraordinary man. If they made it to send a message that you are a victim of a government gone wild, it is okay. If Hollywood produced this story to eradicate world slavery through awareness, I am pleased.
The problem is that I don’t think Hollywood made the film for those reasons. I think they made it because they are pushing the political agenda of equal outcomes for all policy of communism, and I am not buying it.
Instead of Hollywood producers, directors, actors, and American Blacks converting America into a socialist state, where everyone belongs to the government, they should focus their efforts on freeing the twenty-nine million slaves in the world who still endure the cruelty, hardship, and loss of liberty.
Yesterday, it occurred to me as I wrote a scathing movie review that I had not commented on some of the good ones we saw. Today, I will make an effort to make amends and write about an outstanding film which is highly under rated.
About two months ago, Peggy and I saw “Silver Linings Playbook.” This film is the opposite of “Tyler Perry’s Temptation, Confessions of a Marriage Counselor.” Maybe I liked Silver Linings because I know people who suffer from bi-polar disease and saw the disease portrayed accurately in the character Pat, played by Bradley Cooper (nominated for best actor).
Silver Linings touches on a disease which many people have a hard time understanding. How can someone so gentle and kind turn into a bitching monster within so short a time? The disease is more common than we would like to believe, but it is real and the people affected by it suffer in silence. The person affected does not realize what is happening to them nor do they believe they are acting any different.
I particularly enjoyed the scene where Pat who lives in the attic bedroom of his parent’s home stays up late to read Hemingway’s “Farewell to Arms,” a book his ex-wife has accused him of not being intellectually capable of understanding. Pat reads the book hoping he can impress her into believing he has changed and he is desperately seeking her affection. He comes to the end and shouts “what the f___” and violently tosses the book through a closed window to the front lawn. He then proceeds to barge into his parent’s bedroom at four a.m. to talk about how stupid Hemingway’s ending is.
The characters in this movie are very believable, the story is real, The actors are outstanding. I can’t understand why Hollywood didn’t recognize Silver Linings as the best of the year, it is certainly a better film than Argo, but that will be another review. At least Jennifer Lawrence of Hunger Games gave a Best Actress performance as the troubled young woman opposite Cooper’s bi-polar character. I thought Cooper should also have received the Oscar for his performance.
If you haven’t seen this movie, see it, this one is worth the money.
Five Hearts ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
If I knew how to make stars I would, but really, hearts are better than stars for this film.
