Incendiary Advice

As much as I love surprises...color me sucker-punched that Crash won Best Picture. I actually threw up in my mouth a bit before Haggis got onstage to accept the award.

Look, I'm all about message movies. Really. But Crash was more like an afterschool special message movie: heavy-handed, contrived, rather artless.

And while I have my (fairly well-documented on here) issues with Brokeback Mountain, it truly was the most artistic and seminal film of 2005. And for the Academy to give the film all those others leading up to the end, only to pull the rug out from under everything...it felt deliberately cruel. Not just to fans of Brokeback, but fans of great film in general.

Good Night and Good Luck, Capote...Munich? These weren't better films than Crash?

It feels wrong, somehow. Not to say the Academy never gets it wrong (Goodfellas losing to Dances With Freaking Wolves, Ralph Fiennes amazing turn in Schindler's List negated by Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive...a whole host of others going back as far as (if not farther) the Clark Gable snub in Gone With the Wind). Just to say that it feels cowardly, somehow. Like they wanted to honor an "issue" film but weren't ready for one dealing frankly with homosexuality. And I say this as a straight woman.

I won't presume to understand what they were thinking. Just that I'm disappointed, knowing what homophobic haters across America are now thinking.

As good as it was to see Philip Seymour Hoffman get his well-deserved Best Actor award, and hear his shout-out to his mother for being a single mom, I think I may be able to quit the Academy Awards, now.