The Great Golden Dildo
Second only, perhaps, to Super Bowl Sunday, Oscar night is the time when virtually all America and much of the bamboozled rest of the world huddle about their plasma screens to watch the anointing of the year’s “Best Movie” and “Best Actor”, etc.; such anointing will automatically vault, if not already there (most of them are), their winners into millionairehood (how petty in these days of the myriad billionaires of Wall Street and CEOdom). While the Arabic world roils in a rolling revolution, we concern ourselves with rolling out the red carpet for more important things (the front page of the New York Times):
In keeping with America’s underlying philosophy, during this ceremony commerce is passed off as “art” and naturally all applaud in the communal delusion that it is so. It is somewhat akin to the old Politburo of the defunct USSR except the money is far larger and the glamor is more evident; however the fraud is equal.
Still, the message that the year sent about quality and originality is real enough that studios are tweaking their operating strategies. Sony Pictures Entertainment, the studio behind “The Social Network,” is trying to bet more heavily on new directors with quirkier sensibilities. To reboot its “Spider-Man” franchise, for instance, Sony hired Marc Webb, whose only previous film was the indie comedy “(500) Days of Summer.” The studio has also entrusted a big-screen remake of “21 Jump Street” to Phil Lord and Chris Miller, a pair whose only previous film was the animated “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.”
“We think the future is about filmmakers with original voices,” said Amy Pascal, Sony’s co-chairwoman. “Original is good, and good is commercial.”
Thus speak the marketing wizards of Hollywood, ever ready to shuffle the 3 card Monte before your incredulous eyes, slipping $10, or whatever your local Bijou charges these days, from your pocket to offer you some star-studded flying photons for 90 minutes or so. When you wish upon a star, matters not just who you are….
From interview with Pirates director Gore Verbinski about his new animated film Rango
Q. Instead of recording your voice actors individually in a studio, you produced their dialogue by having them act out their scenes together. Why did you go that route?
A. I guess fear, really. Fear of a microphone and a cold environment and nobody’s reacting to anybody. We didn’t want a performance that was too clean. If people are running, I want to hear them out of breath in the next line when they stop and talk.
Q. What was that like for the actors?
A. You show up in dress clothes, there are some props. There’s no lighting, there’s no dolly. You’re doing 10 pages a day. I think that’s very frustrating for actors who are used to doing movies where you do one line, you go back to your trailer for two hours, you come back out and you do another line. At first it’s a shock, and then it’s incredibly liberating.
Ah yes, liberating, just as in the mid-east turmoil, except in Hollywood the deaths are usually fake, as are the morals.
One does not “make love” with a dildo; one gets artificially fucked.
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