France Wins the Oscars.

Yeah, pretty much all of them.

Back in mid-January I wrote a post about "The Revenant" - the big film at the 2016 which can be read here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/oscars-massive-spoiler.html

I agonised for days over whether to post that or not because it really reveals the main theme of the Oscars thus risking ruining the whole thing.

The Big Short: At the time I said that the fact The Revenant has a Mexican director - Alejandro G Inarritu - meant that it and the French TV show "Les Revenants (The Returned)" that it references where much talked about in South America during 2015. This was true. However it was not the whole truth.

As with the rest of that glut of Zombie TV shows and movies that appeared around 2012 Les Revenants uses the Zombies as a metaphor for all the lives ruined by the 2008 financial crash. Essentially you have lots of people aimlessly wandering around stripped of all the hopes, dreams and plans for the future that make them human.

Prior to the 2008 financial crash the big challenge for second tier developed nations like Brazil was attracting outside investment. That is why Brazil was awarded the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. The idea being that the boost in profile and the infrastructure spending those competitions triggered would attract much needed investment to Brazil.

However then the 2008 crash happened. Investors fled first tier developed nations such as the US and the EU with their 0% interest rates and flooded into second tier developing nations like Brazil. Suddenly attracting far more outside investment than they could ever need these economies quickly overheated leading to high inflation and stagnant growth.

So essentially many nations like Brazil are now experiencing a financial meltdown of their own making shows like Les Revenants suddenly very attractive to Brazilian audiences.

The Big Short is of course all about the 2008 financial crash. I think one of the main causes of that crash was that the financial instruments were far too complicated for even the people using them to understand. During to the 2014 World Cup I seem to remember trying to explain how Brazil's economic troubles weren't FIFA's fault. However it quickly got so complicated that I simply gave up.

In The Big Short if they reach a point where they have to explain one of these complex financial instruments or economic principles they cutaway to a comedic sequence where it is explained slowly and clearly. The most talked about of these cutaways features Australian actress Margo Robbie playing herself nude in a bubble bath drinking champagne.

That's obviously a very inventive and memorable way to explain what is otherwise a seriously dry and boring topic.

The Martian: As I've already mentioned The Revenant tells the story of a fur trapper - Hugh Glass - who is left for dead in the wilderness of the 19th century American mid-west. He then has to survive the awesome power of nature to fight his way back to a triumphant return to civilisation. This is a metaphor for the journey of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that culminated in the COP21 Summit in Paris, France at the end of 2015.

The Martian tells the story of an astronaut played by Matt Damon who is left for dead on a mission to Mars. He then has to survive for two years on this hostile planet that has been stripped of its life supporting atmosphere - such as the Greenhouse Gas layer - before his crewmates rescue him and he makes a triumphant return to civilisation.

As such it is the exact same story as The Revenant only told in a different way. The Oscars is of course a celebration of stories and the different ways of telling them.

The big joke is that The Revenant is largely seen as a star vehicle to allow Leonardo DiCaprio to win the Best Actor award. This is both to reflect his important role within the actual UNFCCC process and to make up for the Best Actor Oscar he didn't win for the 2006 movie "The Departed."

In The Departed DiCaprio plays a police officer who is sent undercover in the Boston Irish mafia in a story that is based on the exploits of Whitey Bulger. Matt Damon stars in the same movie playing a member of the Irish mafia who is sent undercover in the Boston (technically Massachusetts State) police department.

So the joke is; "DiCaprio and Damon are both COPS!!!!"

Spotlight: This is the telling of the true story of how the investigative department of the Boston Globe newspaper known as "Spotlight" uncovered the widespread sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church. 

Their 2002 expose triggered a scandal that impacted the Catholic Church globally. In turn it triggered a similar scandal involving the Protestant Church of England and continues to cause scandal about sexual abuse at the highest levels of the British Establishment.

So in many ways I think this is simply a story that deserves to be told and the real people involved deserve the global recognition that an Oscars nomination brings.However the story is set in Boston which obviously references The Departed. Also the Catholic Church really does not come off as the good guy of the piece.

While I don't want to spoil Les Revenants for people who have not seen it the show's main premise is resurrection from the dead. Therefore it doesn't take a genius to work out that Christianity is referenced and with the show being set in a French Alpine town that tends to mean a reference to Catholicism. 

With Les Revenants being a gay-friendly show you could almost get the impression that the Catholic Church is being mocked for its stance on homosexuality. However it is definitely one of those shows where you see what you want to see.

Although I don't think anyone quite remembers how the feud started traditionally Jews and Catholics really don't get on. It was probably something to do with King Herod the Great - King of the Jews responding to the news that Jesus Christ had been born by ordering all children in the kingdom to be murdered in the Biblical "Massacre of the Innocents." However Catholic Pope Pius XI (aka; "The Nazi Pope") decision to ally the Church with Adolf Hitler facilitating the Nazi Holocaust is unlikely to have helped.

Marty Baron - the Boston Globe editor who ordered the Spotlight team to investigate the Catholic Church was and still is Jewish. Therefore it would be easier to portray the investigation as a Jewish conspiracy against the Catholic Church. This provides a metaphor for whether Les Revenants treatment of Christianity is a gay conspiracy against the Catholic Church. Jewishness being used as a metaphor for homosexuality is likely to melt a few heads in Israel.

The historical tension between Jews and Catholics is also referenced in the Egyptian movie "Ave Maria" which features in the Best Action Short category. Here life in a Catholic Nunnery in Palestine is disturbed by a group of Jewish settlers whose car has broken down. However once the comedy makes the joke that the Jews aren't allowed to use the telephone on the Sabbath while the Nuns have taken a vow of silence there isn't time to say much else in the 15 minute runtime.

What is interesting about Spotlight though is that this Jews and Catholics theme is all sub-text.

The Baron character is played by Liev Schriber who is reasonably well known and whose name hints at Jewish heritage. However I was impressed by his performance as an Irishman in 2011's "Goon" which could well have been a re-telling of the story of the Golem from Jewish mythology.

Early on in Spotlight there is a throwaway bit of dialogue where it's acknowledged that Baron is Jewish and much later on there is a similarly throwaway anti-Semitic comment directed at him by one of the Church officials. However beyond that no reference is made to it at all. So if you want to pick up on that theme you really have to do much of the work yourself.

That is very much the spirit of Spotlight which doesn't have any big stunt sequence where the Church sends assassins to kill the journalists. There's no big confrontation between one of the journalists - Sacha Pfeiffer - and her deeply Catholic grandmother. There's no big dramatic courtroom scene where the victims confront the Church officials.

Instead there's just lots of people quietly sitting at their desks poring over interviews with sources, running down leads and checking facts. Obviously to make that watchable over the course of a two hour movie the director and all the actors need to be extremely good at what they do.

As such Spotlight really represents the antithesis of The Revenant and The Martian. While those movies celebrate the flashy glory of DiCaprio posing for photographers at COP21 Spotlight is a celebration of all those people who spent COP21 and the years that preceded it quietly pouring over the text of any agreement line-by-line, word-by-word.

Brooklyn: This tells the story of a young Irish woman played by Saroise (prn: "Sorcha" apparently) Ronan who migrates to New York City in the 1950's. There she falls in love with an Italian American man before being forced to return to Ireland where she is forced to choose between her new found Italian love and her Irish childhood sweetheart.

Not only don't Jews and Catholics traditionally not get on Italian Catholics and Irish Catholics don't even get on that well either. Therefore there are still some who view the casting of the Italian DiCaprio as an Irishman in The Departed as sacrilege.

Brooklyn rather neatly then plays about with the rivalry between The Returned and The Martian. It is also apparently a beautifully shot movie whose use of colour and vintage costumes and set designs really help to convey the romance and nostalgia of the era amid themes of migration.

The Hateful Eight: Rather like The Revenant this is a snowbound western set in American mid-west the 19th century. However unlike The Revenant it has nothing to do with COP21 or the UNFCCC.

Instead it is focused entirely on the issue of race in America and that great white flight in which white Americans fled to the mid-west and Pacific north-west to escape the freed slaves.

As you would expect from a Tarantino movie the way that this is handled is not in any way subtle. One of the lead characters - Major Marquis Warren - played by Samuel L Jackson is a former officer in the Union Army turned bounty hunter. He carries with him a letter of commendation from the Republican President Abraham Lincoln which he claims helps him get the respect of white people. Later on in the movie he comes into confrontation with the Sanford Smithers character - played by Bruce Dern - who was a General in the defeated Democrat backed Confederate Army.

The contrast between The Revenant and The Hateful Eight though does raise questions about US President Barack Obama's commitment to the COP21. 

In preparation for the summit Leonardo DiCaprio, Pharrell Williams and others wanted to stage a series of worldwide concerts to raise awareness. However despite his oft-repeated claims of leadership Obama and the Democrats snubbed this effort in favour of the racist Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign. That campaign was actually used during COP21 to highlight how utterly gormless Obama is and how he cannot be trusted.

The Hateful Eight also makes a contribution to the contrast between the dramatic and gimmicky special effects in The Revenant and The Martian and quiet perseverance of Spotlight.

Movies are traditionally shot on 35mm film. However for The Hateful Eight Tarantino resurrected a technique where 70mm film is used to give a dramatic widescreen effect. This caused many distributors and movie theatres to turn around and say; "Yeah, we're not going to buy 70mm projectors just so you can show off."

By all accounts The Hateful Eight is a rather trashy movie that lots of excessive, gory violence and seems to revel in foul and abusive language. Particularly the use of the term "Nigger" by white characters to abuse black characters.

However this trashiness seems purely intentional because the director - Quintin Tarantino - is well known to be a big fan of a sub-genre of movie making known as "Grindhouse." In 2007 Tarantino even made a film called "Grindhouse."

This sub-genre has its roots in the 1950's and early 1960's when the convention was that movies were shown as double features with a "B-movie" being shown before the main movie. Filmmakers quickly realised that these B-movies could be used to push the boundaries of what was considered acceptable in terms to the portrayal of sex, violence and ethnic minorities on screen. After all provided you didn't push things too far anyone who was offended is likely to have forgotten about it by the end of the main feature.

In the late 1960's and early 1970's this type of low-budget, boundary pushing movie began to emerge as a sub-genre in its own right. Although there was often a lot of cross-over movies that pushed the boundaries of sex were known as "Sexploitation" while those that pushed the boundaries of violence were known as "Grindhouse" and those that pushed the boundaries of race were known as "Blacksploitation." Taratino's 1997 "Jackie Brown" was a big homage to the Blacksploitation movies.

Following last year's "Oscars So White" protests that have continued into this year it seems important to make the point that the Academy is hardly the California chapter of the Aryan Brotherhood. Or the Anaheim branch of the KKK. In fact often described as a Jewish conspiracy almost since its formation the US movie industry has worked hard to advance a liberal agenda including racial equality.

Take for example the often talked about "The Wizard of Oz" from 1939. Although this is frequently considered to be an iconic gay rights movie a large part of the narrative is the protagonists fear of the Spooks that live in the forest. At the time "Spook" was a commonly used term of abuse for black people. Following a sequence where the Tin Man appears to be lynched from a tree the protagonists learn that there's really no need to be afraid of the Spooks.

The inclusion of The Hateful Eight also helps put the perceived snubbing of Idris Elba in perspective. After all probably the most famous Blacksploitation movie is "Shaft" - the 1971 original not the 2000 remake starring Samuel L Jackson. Every time I read a review of Elba's detective show "Luther" it automatically starts the theme song from Shaft playing in my head.

12:10 on 29/2/16 (UK date).