Posted By Charley Brady on Mar 10, 2014 | 2 comments

Pizza Porn with Oscar

Yes, I know I’m a moaning bastard of a human being with very few good qualities, but I hate the Oscars and that’s all there is to it.   There’s something about the whole freak show that makes me want to eat my own vomit.  Maybe it’s all the self-congratulatory, glad-handing back-slapping that goes on; maybe it’s the way the nominees grind their teeth and pretend to smile when their name isn’t the one that’s called out; maybe it’s the phony, cringe-inducing, teeth-curling embarrassment of the whiny, ‘thank-you-world’ bilge that they come out with when they win, I don’t know. I just know that I hate every second of this arrant nonsense.

Yes, I’m supposed to be a movie fan—hell, not supposed to be; I’ve been obsessed with films since I could see— and for some bizarre reason people seem to think that should make me a fan of this sickening fake-love-fest.  For the last time, THE OSCARS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH FILM!  Yes, I’m shouting!  And yes, I know that without them and the shed load of loot that is made from them, we probably wouldn’t be able to see half the stuff on the silver screen that we do.  Like that would be a bad thing.  Look, this isn’t an attempt at a rational discussion, it’s just me bitching and letting off steam.  It’s for the same reason that you scream blue bloody murder about politicians sometimes:  it saves you from looking after a great big shagger of an ulcer for the rest of your miserable days.

Yes, I know that I don’t have to watch the show if I don’t want to.  I get it; but let me explain something to you…

Every year I do a pretty good job of avoiding them.  Of course, it’s almost impossible to avoid them completely if you have a passing interest in the cinema, but it can be done.  This year I thought I had got away with it.  However, I had forgotten that I would, as normal, be attending The Monday Club at the Olde Brewery, Oranmore.

The very cream of Oranmore’s intellectual society are given to meeting there each week in order to discuss and– if possible– to help alleviate the problems of this benighted world of ours.

Well, not really.  As a general rule it’s basically a gang of piss heads spouting some half-baked ideas that have been fermented in a keg of beer and are being evaluated through the prism of a whisky glass.  Anyone can join in, of course; but there tends to be a hard core of Johnny English, Lori the Snooze, Mad Mike (currently on suspension by Chairman Brendan the Bopper for acting like a twat) and Your Humble Narrator.

And the Award for Best Goes To…

I think that I was weaving around a bit, trying to hold forth on what those damned Russians were up to in the Ukraine when the Highlights came on the TV in the corner.  And yes, you know which Highlights.  It was Oscar time.

I froze in mid-slur:  what the fuck was Bono doing there?  This was the Oscars, wasn’t it? Christ, I wasn’t having an acid flashback again, was I? Is there nowhere that is safe from that smarmy, strutting little popinjay?  Turned out he was up for some award for something I had never heard of:  there is simply no escape from that guy.  None.  And did you see those elevator shoes?  If he had come out in stilts he couldn’t have made it more obvious that he’s an annoying little short-arse.  Nice shirt he had on, mind you.

OK, that’s the fashion section of this piece over.

The next shots kind of cheered me up and made me smile.  They showed the crowd of psychotics who wait in a mob for hours on end in order to catch a glimpse of some ‘celebrity’ ignoring them as they go waltzing Matilda up the red carpet.  And it was pouring from the heavens!  I mean, it was lashing them out of it.  I was so happy.

Particularly satisfying was the look of misery on the faces of those without umbrellas.  Come on, if you are moronic enough to stand in line all day in order to catch a glimpse of some overpaid prat crossing your line of vision in two seconds flat, you deserve every drenching you get and more.

Then we got the winners themselves.  No great surprises there.  Of course Gravity was going to do a sweep because everybody said it was just brilliant.  It doesn’t matter that it was the snooze fest that made last year’s Lincoln look like exciting, edge-of-the-seat entertainment.  If the People Who Matter tell you it’s good, then obviously your critical faculties are atrophied if you think otherwise.  So you had better agree.

It’s pretty much an open secret now that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (and how precious does that title the thespians plaster on themselves sound?) is infested with members who don’t actually watch the films.  And even if they did deign to come down from their ivory towers to grace the local Omniplex with their wonderfulness, I could just imagine them, falling asleep ten minutes into Gravity.  An hour later and they would start awake, mumbling “Where the fuck did George Clooney get to?” Then, after they had rubbed Mr. Sandman’s sleep grit from their eyes, they would decide that they had better not tell anyone what had happened, just vote for the damned thing.

And they would be blissfully unaware that the rest of the cinema had been asleep also.

We knew that 12 Years a Slave would be a shoe-in for something major and of course it got director Steve McQueen a Best Film gong.  I guess the Academy hadn’t seen Mud or Europa Report, two great movies in 2013.  I’d like to have seen them in there somewhere.  I’d also love to have seen Colin Farrell take a Best Supporting award for his role in the unexpectedly moving Saving Mr.  Banks.

Actually, whilst it wouldn’t set the world on fire, 12 Years wasn’t as awful as Gravity or Lincoln.  But even if it had been the worst film ever made it would still have won something because of the subject matter.  White Liberal Middle Class Americans would have been scared out of their namby-pamby wits to have been seen as anything but Politically Correct.  Or as host Ellen DeGeneres hinted in her opening remarks, seen as racist. That’s the way these twats think.

The puke-inducing Academy did give me one surprise.  I thought that the latest controversy over Woody Allen would have seen Cate Blanchett wave goodbye to Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in the excellent Blue Jasmine, but damned if she didn’t get it anyway. I guess she’s in with the cool crowd.

Awards for Dallas Buyer’s Club I can’t comment on as I haven’t seen it yet.  Damn that day job!

The awful Captain Phillips and the vastly overrated American Hustle failed to do too much, and no arguments there.  Likewise I agreed with awarding Best Foreign Film to the wonderful The Great Beauty.  Justice was done, for once.

Finally, a couple of things:  first, that selfie.  Isn’t the whole hideous concept of sticking a camera in your own face just so utterly moronic and brain-dead that it is a perfect symbol for the shallow, self-obsessed idiots that social networking has turned us into.

Secondly, that lame bullshit with the pizza delivery boy. Am I the only one that found it skin-crawlingly condescending?  “Hey, look at us out there in TV Land; we’re just regular Joe’s like you.  Only, you know, with much more money, glamour and drugs, suckers!”

Anyway, it wasn’t even that well staged. I mean, come on. I’ve seen enough pizzas being delivered to know that it never goes like that.  Where were the two naked hotties who had ordered it, only to be just coming out of the communal shower as the pizza guy arrived?  Where was the smoking blonde who had ordered the one with ‘extra sausage’?

Typical Hollywood:  lying to us again.

You can read my reviews of Gravity and 12 Years a Slave on this website; The Great Beauty and Saving Mr. Banks will be posted soon.