Last Night's Viewing Pleasure

[poliphilo]

I never watch the Oscars. They're on at some ridiculous hour and I'm not that interested anyway. I don't watch the Baftas either. My intolerably stuck-up opinion is that the wrong people almost always win and the only judgement that counts is the judgement of history. 

Did Hitchcock ever win Best Film or Best Director? Did Welles?  Did Wilder?  I rest my case.

I think Helen Mirren got hers not because she gave the best performance but because she was playing the Queen and we all instinctively genuflect and Scorsese got his not because The Departed is a good film but because everyone was feeling sorry for him. And so it goes. I haven't seen any of the movies that were in competition so I don't know who should have won but I suspect Clint,  Del Toro and Peter O'Toole were all robbed.

My TV viewing pleasure last night was provided by Most Haunted Live. The team had spent the whole weekend in an insanely spooky, gothic pile in  Transylvania- hoping to interface with the ghost of Vlad Dracula-  and last night's session was far and away the best. Vlad himself never showed (and I don't think I'd have believed it if he had) but we were introduced to plenty of spooks- archers, guards, torturers, torture victims- who'd known him well. In the final hour the team descended into a seething well of souls under the hall of judgement and Yvette Fielding struggled to keep things tight while Karl Beatty went funny (he often does) and started mumbling in Hungarian and David Wells became pale and interesting and one of the cameraman was dragged backwards down a slope by a gauntleted hand and an invisible something pelted them with all with bones.  The three hour session ended on a cliffhanger with everyone still stuck in this psychic hell-hole.   

Oscars-schmoscars, is what I say.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Hitch had a lot of class.

I'm glad Alan Arkin is getting some recognition at last. It's been a long time coming.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember that.

Hitch's final years were sad. He still had ideas for movies and the studios sort of humoured him and let him develop them but his body just wasn't up to going on set.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Hitch was one of the people who invented cinema. Those pioneering days will never return. It's all been done before.

I think the 70s was the last great decade.

I try to keep up with contemporary cinema, but there's very little happening that I like. I think Guillermo del Toro is a great director and so is Ang Lee and that's about it.

As for stars- well, no- there's no-one around today who holds a candle to the old time greats.

there's no-one around today who holds a candle to the old time greats.

[baritonejeff.livejournal.com]

I somewhat agree, but let's be fair. Today, given the fast-food nature of media and entertainment, there exists no way for anyone to be able to develop and sustain that type of persona. We still have, and will always have, very great actors, but that "Hollywood" mystique is long gone, and irretrievable.

Re: there's no-one around today who holds a candle to the old time greats.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's true. The old time stars were created and nurtured by the Studio System- which no longer exists. The industry in which Tom Hanks works is very different from the industry which employed James Stewart.

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

Listening to people gush about the Oscars ("Did you SEE what she was wearing?!? Oh God, how could they give the Oscar to HIM???) I feel as though I've got firsthand experience what it must be like when people who have no use for sports have to sit through a morning of ESPN highlights with me.

If I had ESPN, that is.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

ESPN- you're going to have to explain that to me.

Apart from guessing that the "S" stands for Sports
or Sporting, I'm floored.

P.S. Does the "N" stand for Network?

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

Entertainment and Sports Programming Network. You'd be hard pressed to find an American male who doesn't at least know what it is, it's become so ingrained in our culture.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I guess the British equivalent would be Sky Sports.

Which is owned by Rupert Murdoch- Boo, hiss!

[momof2girls.livejournal.com]

I never watch the Oscars either, just because I'm not all that into movies and haven't seen any of the movies that have been nominated. So why bother?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, quite.

I'm crazy for old movies, but I know I'll only want to see one or two of this year's Oscar contenders.