34 Comments

1. Promoguy:

I propose a drinking game centered around the Yes on Prop remarks. That would actually make me watch the show. Anyone in.

Feb 21, 2009 - 10:08 am 2. Minerva:

Hollywood, as it fell in behind President-for-Life FDR, will fall in behind King Hussein and next year be making propaganda for profit.

Feb 21, 2009 - 11:27 am 3. Zhombre:

Frankly I could not care less if Kate gets the nod or if the Academy awards a posthumous Oscar to poor drug-addled Heath or decides to honor Josh Brolin for his parentage and his portrayals of W and the Repressed Milk Killer. To borrow a phrase from Jack the Joker, this town needs an enema.

Feb 21, 2009 - 12:34 pm 4. Tortillapete:

Oscar who?

Feb 21, 2009 - 1:06 pm 5. theodorerud:

All prizes eventually degrade to booby prizes.

Feb 21, 2009 - 1:17 pm 6. Dusty:

Don’t care at all. Won’t watch. I’d explain but someone might think I did and might.

I’ll admit Zombre almost had me asking who Kate is, but that was a pique of my idle curiosity.

Feb 21, 2009 - 1:27 pm 7. Sgt. Mom:

Short answer – no, no and no.
Slightly longer answer – we don’t, it doesn’t, and probably no one besides industry insiders.

Feb 21, 2009 - 1:28 pm 8. Barbara Skolaut:

Does anybody watch the who?

I don’t think I know anyone at all who’s named Oscar, and can’t think why I would watch him if I did.

Feb 21, 2009 - 1:34 pm 9. Suzy:

I have no idea who is nominated and until I read this, didn’t even know the Oscars were coming up. When did they announce the nominees?

Feb 21, 2009 - 1:34 pm 10. ChuckB:

Haven’t watched is since the early 60’s. But my wife and daughter watch it together to see what the women are wearing.

Feb 21, 2009 - 1:55 pm 11. Eric R.:

Sure, lots of people care about the Oscars — in Gaza, Tehran, Havana, Pyongyang, Riyadh and among the bureaucrats of the UN and the EU.

But among those of us who are not morally depraved savages, no we don’t care.

Feb 21, 2009 - 1:58 pm 12. Donna V.:

Nah, I’m not going to watch. And it’s been years since I heard people talking much about the Oscars the next day at work. When they have, the talk was about the dresses, not the movies.

In addition to the dreary political speechifying, I think Hollywood cheapened the product by coming up with a slew of award shows. The Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys, the Tonys, the People’s Choice Awards, the Golden Globes – I know I’m missing some, but they’ve all run together in my mind. Awards shows are really not that entertaining, except for the people being honored. Just because Oscar night is more important than Christmas, Hannukah, Easter, and the Fourth of July rolled into one in lala land, they assume the rest of the world shares their obsession.

Feb 21, 2009 - 2:09 pm 13. Grzegorz:

My wife and I are really interested in the shorts, both the animated and the live-action categories. Some really clever people produce some very interesting clips. Very highly recommended, comrades!

Feb 21, 2009 - 2:22 pm 14. Mike_K:

I think there is more interest in these lists of greatest movies, greatest conservative movies, greatest stars, etc. This is because the great days of movie making are largely over, at least for Hollywood. I saw Slum Dog and Gran Torino. That was it for me this year.

Feb 21, 2009 - 2:23 pm 15. Da Coyote:

Have not watched for decades. Further, have seen few – if any – of the winning movies. The best scripts (and acting) appear to have been defaulted to Pixar. There’s more talent there than in the rest of Hollywood.

Feb 21, 2009 - 2:45 pm 16. LawhawkSF:

The last time I watched the Oscar show, I was in a bar and Cary Grant was getting some sort of lifetime achievement award (I think. My memory’s a little hazy). The second-rate hosts with first-rate politically correct credentials are among many reasons for not watching. But I do find them useful in one way. I look for the list of movies that weren’t even nominated, for anything, and I go to see those. Haven’t seen an anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-suburb, anti-family, anti-heterosexual or anti-western civilization movie in years.

Feb 21, 2009 - 2:48 pm 17. LawhawkSF:

PS: Any bets on who will be the first celebutard to show up with a Prop 8 ribbon on?

Feb 21, 2009 - 2:50 pm 18. toad:

Well, like a lot of people I’ve got better things to do than watch people who make movies for the overseas market suck up. They may get a big old popcorn surprise if the melt down of the overseas economies reduces that market by over half. They’ll end up packaging glassware with DVDs to move them. I get a bigger kick out of “House” and “Life” than I do the current movies.

Feb 21, 2009 - 3:09 pm 19. David Govett:

What now passes for movies is of no interest to me. There’s no business like no business.

Feb 21, 2009 - 3:36 pm 20. NS:

LawhawkSF:,
ummm… that would be George “Hollywood is the greatest moral authority on Earth” Clooney…. the other day i watched a South Park episode titled “Smug Alert” – it mocked Clooney for his holier than thou speech he gave at the Oscars 3 years back… laugh out loud funny stuff!

Feb 21, 2009 - 3:58 pm 21. wildman:

I do not care what the overpaid idiots in hollywood have to say. I would rather have a root canal without anesthesia than watch those idiots backslapping each other.

Feb 21, 2009 - 4:23 pm 22. Dusty:

Grzegorz: I’ll catch them on you-tube. Thanks.

I do hope Oscar advertisers understand my meaning.

Feb 21, 2009 - 4:32 pm 23. Jerry:

Its between a dead junkie and the gay mayor of a flaming West Coast city, right? Wow man, tough call!

Feb 21, 2009 - 4:36 pm 24. MikeG:

I’d ask the date and time the Oscars are on t.v., but I just don’t care.

Feb 21, 2009 - 5:28 pm 25. Stephen:

I think there is more interest in these lists of greatest movies, greatest conservative movies, greatest stars, etc. This is because the great days of movie making are largely over, at least for Hollywood. I saw Slum Dog and Gran Torino. That was it for me this year.

I disagree. When you can, on the one hand, cherry-pick a list of great movies that people remember from a decade (or several decades), and compare it to a single current year where all the bombs are fresh in our minds, of course the past is going to look better. Why not pick ONE year at random from the “golden age” of movies, look at both the good and the bad movies of that year, and compare it to a recent year? I think the comparisons will be much more favorable. In 2029, the dregs of this past year will be forgotten, and we’ll be wondering why they don’t make movies like that anymore. I haven’t even seen Slum Dog and Gran Torino, so I don’t know how they’ll hold up over time. But I think any year that gave us Wall-E and The Dark Knight is a bad year to be proclaiming the death of Hollywood.

Feb 21, 2009 - 5:47 pm 26. Stephen:

Two other comments:

First, I don’t know what Roger or Lionel said. And as long as their opinion is on PJTV, I’ll never know. I’m at work, and can’t watch video. It’d be nice if I could take a couple of minutes and READ their opinion, but I can’t (and really, don’t WANT TO) watch a video clip. If I wanted to watch TV, I’d go home and watch TV.

Second, yes, people still watch and still care. Fewer and fewer, though. Specifically, I can’t imagine too many men watching it if not forced to by a woman. The glitz of Hollywood still holds an appeal, and as others have mentioned, the fashion provides for another point of discussion. Neither of these hold much appeal for men. A lot of otherwise casual viewers, male and female, won’t bother to tune in when they’re guaranteed to be lectured at and talked down to. And there’s no rooting interest for people to tune in to see if *MY* movie wins, when the Academy continually nominates movies nobody watches. America went ape-s**t over The Dark Knight, yet it only has one nomination in a category a non-cinephile could name (and had its co-star not died of an accidental drug overdose, it might not even have that). Instead, we’re expected to tune in to see whether Hollywood regards as the best movie of the year one of the following: Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, or Slumdog Millionaire. Were it not for Oscar coverage, I wouldn’t have even HEARD of three of those movies; why should I care which one wins? So yes, people will still watch, but the numbers will be down again, and will continue to go down. Not because Hollywood movies are particularly bad (they aren’t), but because the nominees are.

Feb 21, 2009 - 6:05 pm 27. Asleep at the Wheel:

ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz . . . Uh?

Oscars? Oh. Wake me again when they’re over.

What they’re over already? For good?

Say, now that is good. Good riddance, too.

AATW

Feb 21, 2009 - 6:19 pm 28. UnmooredLefty:

Let’s see, movies I mostly didn’t want to see. (I liked Dark Knight and would have gone to see Gran Torino except for some back problems.) People almost all of whom I wouldn’t want to spend five minutes with gassing on about movies mostly designed to irritate hell out of people like me. Why in the world would I want to spend even 10 seconds watching that?

Perhaps if ‘Hollywood’ ever pulls its head out of its *ss and tries to make movies ordinary people could enjoy I’ll reconsider. However, I doubt I’ll live long enough for that.

Feb 21, 2009 - 6:44 pm 29. ShyAsrai:

it may be just ignorance on my part, but are there ANY other industries that awards itself as much as the entertainment industry?

who can keep track, or wants to keep track, of all the award shows?

Feb 21, 2009 - 8:30 pm 30. poul:

not only nobody gives a flying heck about oscars, nobody wants to watch a stupid video on internets. haven’t you guys heard of HTML?

what’s next, you’ll post a shaky video of a hand written poster describing latest news? or silent film of heralds singing the news, with ornate subtitles declaring what is being said? with “yakkity-yak” playing in the background?

get on with the times. video news and talking heads are dead.

Feb 22, 2009 - 12:39 am 31. Doug:

In the old days, we would have seen some of the movies. Now, we wait for the DVD. Since we have seen virtually none of the nominated movies, we don’t much care who wins. How can you get excited about a movie when you only know the title, if that?

Feb 22, 2009 - 7:03 am 32. RJ:

I think the fact that Gran Torino was completely shut out of nominations killed off the last vestige of interest I may have had in these awards.

Feb 22, 2009 - 3:03 pm 33. zefal:

Don’t listen to poul.I like Poliwood. So keep them coming.

Feb 22, 2009 - 9:39 pm 34. California Dreamer:

Unfortunately, Roger and Lionel were mistaken about Mr. Spicoli who ended up blathering on about how righteous he is in real life and in his latest blah-blah movie. The best part was he blathered on about our great new president without noting that it was BO’s candidacy that brought out the incremental voters that caused Prop. 8 to pass big time–and he was too Spicoli-like to realize it. I would have to guess another couple million people wrote-off the event after tonight. I had a tough time hearing all of it because luckily the group I watched it with talked over most of it–except for Sophia Loren of course!

Feb 23, 2009 - 1:29 am

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