The Oscars!

On Sunday night (24/2/13) the 85th Academy Awards or 'Oscars' were held in Los Angeles, USA.

On a very dispersed evening both "Argo" and "Life of Pi" were the top winners both receiving three Oscars each. Argo received; Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing. Life of Pi received best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Original Score. Therefore in this dead heat Life of Pi was probably the Artistic victor. However I'm declaring Argo to be the evening's true winner.

Set against the backdrop of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran Argo highlights the way that US intelligence exerts influence over the US entertainment industry to put together fake products in order for US intelligence to carry out various nefarious activities.

In this case it was simply setting up a fake film production in order to get a CIA team into Iran to successfully rescue 44 US diplomatic staff who were seeking shelter in the Canadian Embassy after the US Embassy had been over-run by protesters.

Obviously this might have an impact on how you view other US films you may have seen and most certainly has an impact on Chris Brown's recent Contra Mundum Tour and Rihanna's upcoming Diamonds Tour.

Therefore like most people I am stunned that Argo managed to do so well. Although I'm sure there as many explanations as there are members of the Academy I think the five most likely explanations are;

1. It's actually quite a good film.

2. The Academy failed to pick up on the Chris Brown reference and instead chose to focus on Argo's director Ben Affleck. Due to his appearance in the 1994 film "Chasing Amy" Ben Affleck will always be my answer to the question; "Who would play you in a movie of your life?" The least scary explanation for this is that someone in British intelligence used that film as a blueprint to plan out my life for me some 10 years before it happened. Therefore the Academy realised they'd made a massive mistake in not nominating Affleck in the Best Director category and just threw loads of other awards at the film to make up for it.

3. The Academy fully understood the link with Chris Brown so gave Argo lots of awards as a way to show it's full support for him.

4. The Academy was fully aware of the role the Chris Brown/Rihanna situation has had in putting extreme pressure on the entire US entertainment industry so gave Argo lots of awards as a way to pat the project on it's head and send it on it's way.

5. The US Federal Government used the pressure exerted by Chris Brown/Rihanna along with California's deficit busting tax hikes to completely hijack the results of the Awards in order to use them in support of new Secretary of State John Kerry's maiden ten day tour of Europe and Gulf States taking in a (now confirmed) meeting with the opposition Syrian National Council.

So apart from a Best Actor award for British actor Daniel Day-Lewis "Lincoln" was fully snubbed in order to make that US politics was not mentioned in any way.

Then before the formal ceremony had begun there was a tie in the Best Sound Editing category between "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Skyfall."

While it's far from a documentary Zero Dark Thirty of course tells the story of how the CIA tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden while Skyfall once again tells the story of Britain's MI6 super-spy James Bond.

This was supposed to highlight the unbreakable bond between the CIA and MI6 although of course for about five years MI6 did sort of forget to tell the CIA where Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan. Instead they decided to mock the CIA by putting coded references to it on the news. The tie also set the tone for the evening's final result.

Then Jennifer Lawrence tripped over collecting her award for Best Actress for "Silver Linings Playbook." The big controversy about the Silver Linings Playbook is that it features music by 1970's British pop star Gary Glitter (aka Paul Gadd).

Since being revealed to be a prolific and habitual paedophile in 1997 Glitter's music and videos have been blacklisted in the UK. We even once made an hour long TV show about how much fun it would be to shoot him. However his inclusion on the sound track for Silver Linings Playbook has so far helped Glitter earn around USD500,000.

Therefore if I was being harsh I would say that Silver Linings Playbook is nothing more then a fund-raising exercise for paedophiles. However I genuinely cannot endorse anybody paying money to see that film.

This of course leads into a big discussion about Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions which is a hugely hot topic in Israeli/Palestinian life/peace negotiations. This was actually referenced heavily in the Soda Stream Superbowl advert but I fear I'm drifting away there. Neither the pro-Palestinian "5 Broken Cameras" or the pro-Israeli "The Gatekeepers" succeeded in the Best Documentary Feature category but that really does count as going off on a tangent.

Anyway the point is I don't think anybody is in any doubt about how embarrassed Jennifer Lawrence is to be associated with a film featuring Gary Glitter on the soundtrack.

Then we got into the sorry parade of awards for Life Pi. This horrific waste of time and energy tells the story of a young Indian boy who along with his family and their circus animals set out on a long voyage to the USA in search of a better life. Then the ship sinks and the boy is left trapped on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. The book was said to be un-filmable and was most certainly unreadable. However much like Oprah it's all so beautiful I'm sure you'll find some lesson in it to help you with a problem your facing in your own life.

The important thing to remember about Life of Pi though is that it's director (the best apparently) Ang Lee is Taiwanese. Although very much part of China Taiwan is fully autonomous and considers itself much closer to the US. During the Oscars ceremony Taiwan re-appointed it's central banker in a move that will cause all sorts of ructions between China, Japan and South Korea in light of the recent G20 Finance Ministers Summit in Russia. Also during the ceremony South Korea swore in it's first female President in a move Raul Castro tried to muscle in on because well Cuba just feels left out these days.

Along with all the issues about Chris Brown, Rihanna and I the prominence given to Argo also raised the issue of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran particularly the taking of 54 US diplomatic staff hostage for 444 which contributed to Jimmy Carter's defeat to Ronald Regan in the 1980 Presidential election. Despite having taken place 34 years ago this incident still seems to be central to US policy within the middle east particularly within it's negotiations with Iran regarding it's nuclear program and it's negotiations with the Gulf nations over Syria. Some might say it is causing US policy to run contrary to US interests in the region.


Personally I thought the decision to have the Best Film award presented by the First Lady of the US, Michelle Obama via video link from the White House contrasted the predominately Jewish Film Academy and the (officially secular) but predominately Protestant US Federal Government. However I think the real reason was to put pressure on the Chinese over their censorship of foreign films in the worlds second largest market. Sadly the point I think the US was trying to make is that China should learn to be more subtle about the way it goes about it rather then do-away with state control.

The question of whether the ballots cast in any way correspond with the declared result will of course be relevant first in Kenya (4/3/13) and then in Zimbabwe (tentatively 16/3/13)


Oh and of course there were some genuine winners like Anne Hathaway (Best Supporting Actress for Les Miserables), Christoph Waltz (Best Supporting Actor for Django Unchained) and Quentin Tarantino (Best Original Screenplay for Django Unchained) but where's the fun in talking about them.


21:40 on 25/2/13.

Edited at around 22:00 on 25/2/13 because while I think my analysis of a ceremony I didn't bother watch was excellent my spelling punctuation and grammar is - as always - appalling.  Hopefully it's at least vaguely readable now.

Edited again at around 22:40 on 25/2/13 to add the bit about Argo and the Iranian hostage crisis. Really I should write these things out properly rather then just trying to wing it when I'm a bit stoned.