[U]ntil the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers settled their differences, it didn't matter how many times the Oscar folks assured everyone they had plans to meet any contingency. It didn't matter how many billboards went up along the freeways promoting Oscar as "The One. The Only." It didn't matter that streets around the Kodak Theatre were still scheduled to be closed the week leading up to today's ceremony.
What mattered was that the writers were on strike, which meant they wouldn't be around to craft all the show's witty banter.
In other words: The biggest winners this year were the writers, who were nearly shown up as superfluous. Without that tedious "witty" "banter," we would have had the most watchable Oscar night in years. Except, of course, for the songs and montages.
As for the awards themselves...I have a toddler, which means I don't usually see movies until they come out on DVD. So I haven't actually watched any of this year's Best Picture nominees. But I'll give a tentative cheer for the fact that the Academy chose to honor the film that seems most likely to be good.
It's a shame. There's a lot of wonderful music writing online, but there is a particular pleasure in perusing a magazine that covers a wide breadth of topics that somehow, in the editors' hands, all feel like they're part of a whole. Every issue I read both taught me new things and deepened my appreciation for the things I already knew. The No Depression website will continue -- appropriately, since the magazine itself emerged from a discussion group on AOL -- but it looks like the site won't include nearly as much content as the journal that birthed it.
I wrote around a half-dozen articles for ND over the last 10 years, mostly record reviews. It didn't pay very well, but that wasn't the point -- I wrote for it because I liked to see my writing there. (Well, that and the free subscription.) Any magazine whose definition of country music was eclectic enough to let me expound on the Kinks, the Pogues, and the 1970s Florida funk scene is fine by me. I miss it already.
electing the first black president would ultimately do more to pry away black and other minority voters from a decadent American liberalism, than would anything else....One could no longer make the argument that America is racist, or unfair. Not when a black man has risen to the highest office in the land.
I've heard this argument from many people -- sometimes even from libertarians, who you wouldn't expect to be so government-centric. While I'm not sure what it means to say that America (all of it? some of it?) "is" racist, the presence of a black man in the Oval Office would hardly mean that no American blacks face institutional barriers, any more than the presence of black officers on a police force means that blacks don't face racially driven police harrassment. Yes, a President Obama would be a symbol of progress in race relations. But it is an open question whether he would reverse the policies that helped produce the racial isolation of working-class blacks, the disproportionate number of blacks in prison, or the sorry state of the urban schools that so many blacks attend. It is even conceivable -- not necessarily likely, but conceivable -- that Obama, like many black mayors, would actually make life worse for African Americans.
For the record, I think Obama is the most palatable (or the least unpalatable) of the four frontrunners, mostly because of his stance on Iraq. I do not believe his election would usher in a new age where racism and unfairness have been banished, and where whites can confidently pat themselves on the back without worrying that some black man will interrupt with a complaint.
SELF-PROMOTION: First Principles has just published my article on the crunchy-conservative phenomenon. It's billed as a review of Rod Dreher's Crunchy Cons, but it's more of a historical essay than a book review.
Also, my Reason article on Mitt Romney and Mormonism is now online.
When the Motion Picture Academy looked back at 1927, it gave away not one but two Best Picture awards. "Best Production" went to Wings, a dull drama about World War I. The prize for "Artistic Quality of Production" went to a much better movie, F.W. Murnau's Sunrise. It, unlike Wings, is on my list -- but not at the top:
1. The General Directed by Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman Written by Keaton, Bruckman, Al Boasberg, and Charles Smith
Forget D.W. Griffith. This is the great American Civil War movie.
2. Berlin: Symphony of a Great City Directed by Walter Ruttmann Written by Ruttmann, Karl Freund, and Carl Mayer
A brilliant snapshot of a day in the life of a city.
3. Metropolis Directed by Fritz Lang Written by Lang and Thea von Harbou, from a novel by von Harbou
Trivia: In 1984 this dystopian science-fiction story was rereleased with a "modern" soundtrack, featuring Pat Benatar, Billy Squier, and the king of Eurodisco, Giorgio Moroder. Only advanced students of late 20th century kitsch should watch that version, unless you're willing to risk permanent brain injury.
4. Napoleon Written and directed by Abel Gance
Featuring the best snowball fight in movie history.
5. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans Directed by F.W. Murnau Written by Carl Mayer, Katherine Hilliker, and H.H. Caldwell, from a novella by Hermann Sudermann
This was a strong year for good movies with ridiculous subtitles.
6. The End of St. Petersburg Directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin with Mikhail Doller Written by Nathan Zarkhi
Before Stalin came along, the young Soviet Union produced some of the most dynamic and inventive films in the world. Unfortunately, they were usually yoked to simple-minded propaganda, but the best efforts -- like this one -- managed to be great despite that.
7. A Wild Roomer Directed by Charley Bowers and Harold L. Muller Written by Bowers, Muller, and Ted Sears
These days nearly everyone agrees that Buster Keaton was better than Charlie Chaplin. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Charley Bowers, the wildest and most surrealist of the silent-era clowns, was better than Chaplin too.
8. The Kid Brother Directed by Ted Wilde with J.A. Howe, Harold Lloyd, and Lewis Milestone Written by Howard Green, John Grey, and Lex Neal, from a story by Wilde, Neal, and Tom Crizer
Harold Lloyd was also better than Chaplin.
9. The Unknown Directed by Tod Browning Written by Waldemar Young and Joseph Farnham, from a story by Browning
"Hands! Men's hands! How I hate them!"
10. The Lodger: A Tale of the London Fog Directed by Alfred Hitchcock Written by Eliot Stannard, from a novel and play by Marie Belloc Lowndes