This entry was originally published at Hope For Film
The opening number felt so inappropriate that I first hoped that the show would keep up a feel of a high school spoof of the Spirit Awards. Shouldn’t such a celebration of art & entertainment aim to contextualize all that is great about this Dream Factory? Okay, if they can’t figure out how to do that, I would be fine with several hours of pure crass classless puns like the song & dance intro promised too, but no. We get 4 hours of dullness instead. The fun of the show becomes critiquing all the mistakes.
I will leave the minute by minute critique to others, but there should be a semiotics class in all that went down when Kathryn Bigelow won Best Director. First Barbara Striesand hogged the spotlight by not announcing Bigelow’s name and instead taking it for herself by mentioning again that history had been made. And then the show’s directors had the gaul to play “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar” in the background?! I guess they wanted to show they had balls. Bigelow so deserved her win, the directors knew she would win, and they come up with something “cute” and antiquated to comment on it? As my friend Dan pointed out, why didn’t they just play “Thank Heaven For Little Girls”? I may be an old white straight guy, but the show gave my group a bad name.
Most of all it –and I don’t think it was because I had a series of 5 second neck-snapping naps — it felt like a nightmare. 2010 will be remembered for the year that the indie film infrastructure truly collapsed, yet –yet again – Indies took every possible award they were viable for. The lack of a support structure or viable financial model for the majority of these films will be what prevents subsequent sweeps in the years ahead. Since the Indie way produces superior creative work, you’d think Hwood would make it a priority to find a way to keep Iwood alive. Whether it would be fair acquisition fees, accounting that would encourage sustainable equity investment, producer overhead deals, or just trust in their collaborators it would be nice if something was left of the old ways to give hope for Iwood’s future. Yet instead of the show encouraging such behavior, I can’t help but the real power must resign themselves to the fact that if they want Studios to win Oscars again, they have to kill off Indies completely. I think I heard the hammer hitting the nail of Indie’s coffin last night. Here’s hoping I am not buried in it…
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