Oscar likes hookers: numbers don't lie.
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Observations by and for the vaguely disenchanted; information, essential and otherwise, for the day ahead.
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Knee Deep in the Hoopla
The Trump/Musk firehose of folly continues, and it’s impossible to review all but the most egregious outrages here. The Associated Press, NBC, Aljazeera, and The Guardian are my masochistic picks for keeping up to date. That said, you’re on your own- today, we’re looking at the Oscars.
The romantic comedy-drama Anora won five Oscars, including Best Picture. Mikey Madison won Best Actress for her depiction of a sex worker.
Her win extended the Academy’s somewhat curious propensity to bestow Oscars to those who play women of ill repute.
In the 97 years spanning the award ceremony’s existence, 14 women have won Oscars for portraying prostitutes: Helen Hayes, Donna Reed, Susan Hayward, Lila Kedrova, Shirley Jones, Shelley Winters, Jo Van Fleet, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Mira Sorvino, Kim Basinger, Charlize Theron, Ann Hathaway, and, as of last night, Ms. Madison.
Comedian Bill Maher observed on his show last Friday, “More prostitutes have gone home with Oscars than Charlie Sheen.”
Indeed, 14 is a substantial undercount. That figure doesn’t include the seven Oscar-nominated ladies who played sex workers over the years, but didn’t win: Julia Roberts, Elizabeth Shue, Audrey Hepburn, Julie Christie, Jodie Foster, and Madeline Kahn.
It should be noted that Jon Voight, who played male prostitute Joe Buck in the 1969 X-rated Midnight Cowboy, received a best actor nomination. Alas, he lost to John Wayne in True Grit. (Voight is not included in the sex workers tally to avoid any potential DEI entanglements.)
Perhaps the Academy should adopt Maher’s suggestion for a new acting category: Best Actress NOT Playing a Hooker.Complete coverage of the Oscars, as well as a list of all the winners, can be found at the Associated Press’ Academy Awards hub.
The secret of Conan O’Brien’s success hosting the Oscars? Just being Conan O’Brien. It also helped that the few political statements made were brief, polite, and anodyne.
Despite the improvements, the show still has some structural problems that are not easy to overcome.
In 2009, the Academy increased the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten. The move was intended to expand interest in the awards show by recognizing movies that were often nominated in other Oscar technical categories (e.g., visual effects, makeup, etc.) but didn’t make the Best Picture race.
A good idea, but the Academy has always made the mistake of filling those additional five slots with movies that, well, relatively few people saw.
Of the ten Best Picture nominees, only Dune: Part Two and Wicked can be considered hits. Best Picture winner Anora ranked eighth at the box office in this list. The good news for independent studio Neon- the film is probably already profitable, since its domestic box office of $15 million is more than twice its $6 million negative cost, the traditional estimate for a movie’s break-even point.
Conan’s parody ad for “CinemaStreams” - a building designed for showing movies on a big screen composed of 800 smartphones fused together- wryly hinted at the ongoing problem of getting people back into movie theaters in large numbers.
In some respects, the problem the industry is now facing is similar to those encountered in the 1950s, when television emptied theater seats for the convenience of home. The studios countered by developing new technologies: widescreen processes like Cinerama, Cinemascope, Todd-AO, and Panavision; and advances in sound quality, such as six-channel high fidelity magnetic soundtracks. More importantly, the studios made “major motion pictures” or, as they say today, high end content. Those blockbuster films couldn’t be given theatrical presentations on the small monochrome tv screens in the average living room, so families jumped in their cars and headed for the local movie house.
Today, in the 2020s? The issue isn’t presentation technology. Everyone has wide-screen, high-definition color screens and many have near-professional multi-channel sound systems.
No, the problem is repetitive content and dulled consumer taste. Computer generated images don’t impress like they did a decade ago. And there are only so many times an IP (intellectual property) can be rebooted or a franchise extended with ever-diluted sequels.
Paradoxically, people have become so accustomed to seeing that type of over-produced content, they’ll just stay at home and wait for the film to show up on a digital streaming service or a premium cable channel. Like a narcotic, the audience has built up a tolerance to the material, but is still addicted. And the increasingly short period between theatrical release and digital streaming makes the pain of withdrawal tolerable.“The reputation of a lifetime may be determined by the conduct of one hour.”
-Japanese Proverb
That one hour will probably be remembered as the disastrous White House press conference last Friday, when it became clear that the executive branch of the United States had indeed gone batshit crazy and that the White House was in reality Kremlin West.
The press conference itself is too painful to watch. I instead recommend this Saturday Night Live parody that precisely captures the tone and outcome of the event. Instead of the United States leading the effort to ensure the sovereignty and democratic structure of Ukraine, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer rallied his European counterparts Sunday to shore up their borders and throw their full weight behind Ukraine as he announced outlines of a plan to end Russia’s war.
Shirt of the day (click on image)
KGB Quote of the Day:
“I cannot change the laws of physics.”
-James Doohan (as Montgomery "Scotty " Scott in Star Trek) (Wikipedia link)
(More James Doohan quotes from the KGB Quotations Database)
Among other things, today is- in no particular order of importance-
What If Cats And Dogs Had Opposable Thumbs Day
KGB REPORT STUFF! (Click on link) On This Day:
1845 – Florida was admitted as the 27th U.S. state
1873 – Censorship in the United States: The U.S. Congress enacted the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any "obscene literature and articles of immoral use" through the mail.
1875 – Bizet's opera Carmen was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.
1891 – Shoshone National Forest was established as the first national forest in the US and world.
1923 – US magazine Time published its first issue.
1938 – Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia.
1969 – Apollo program: NASA launched Apollo 9 to test the lunar module.
1980 – The USS Nautilus was decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register.
1985 – "Moonlighting" with Cybill Shepard & Bruce Willis premiered on ABC.
1991 – An amateur video captured the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers. (Graphic video)
2005 – Steve Fossett became the first person to fly an airplane non-stop around the world solo without refueling.
Quotes by or about persons born on this date (Click on link after name for quotes):
1583 – Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, English-Welsh soldier, historian, and diplomat (d. 1648)
1756 – William Godwin, English journalist and author (d. 1836)
1845 – Georg Cantor, Russian-German mathematician and philosopher (d. 1918)
1847 – Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-American engineer and academic, invented the telephone (d. 1922)
1920 – James Doohan, Canadian-American actor and soldier (d. 2005) (Video: Neil Armstrong speaks at Jimmy Doohan’s retirement dinner. “From one old engineer to another… thanks, Scotty.)
1926 – James Merrill, American poet and playwright (d. 1995)
1959 – Ira Glass, American radio host and producer
Other birthdays:
1831 – George Pullman, American engineer and businessman, founded the Pullman Company (d. 1897)
1882 – Charles Ponzi, Italian businessman, namesake of the Ponzi scheme (d. 1949)
1902 – Ruby Dandridge, African-American film and radio actress (d. 1987)
1911 – Jean Harlow, American actress (d. 1937) (Video)
1913 – Harold J. Stone, American character actor (d. 2005)
1933 – Lee Radziwill, American socialite, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (d. 2019)
1949 – Ron Chernow, American historian, journalist, and author
1950 – Tim Kazurinsky, American actor and screenwriter
1962 – Jackie Joyner-Kersee, American heptathlete and long jumper
1962 – Herschel Walker, American football player, mixed martial artist, and activist
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