KingVoyeur
03-06-2006, 01:31 PM
From IMDB.com, the reactions by many critics to the Academy's choice, and not a lot are positive...
'Brokeback' Broken by 'Crash'
In a decision that elicited considerable surprise but little praise, Oscar voters on Sunday selected Lionsgate's Crash as the best picture of 2005, passing over the favorite, Brokeback Mountain. David M. Halbfinger and David Carr commented in the New York Times that the movie academy "turned its back" on an "unflinching gay love story" and awarded the Oscar to "a moody kaleidoscope of racial confrontation in Los Angeles in which every character is at once sympathetic and repulsive." Tom Shales in the Washington Post wrote that the decision will no doubt produce arguments over "whether the Best Picture Oscar to Crash was really for the film's merit or just a cop-out by the Motion Picture Academy so it wouldn't have to give the prize to Brokeback Mountain." The Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr called the decision "one of the most stunning upsets in Oscar history." His colleague, Wesley Morris, wrote: "The memo from Hollywood seems clear enough. Better to reward the movie about people who clean our closets than the one about the men who live in them." And in a blistering commentary, Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan excoriated the motion picture industry for its choice, claiming that despite the box office success and favorable publicity Brokeback had achieved (he did not mention the numerous awards from critics' organizations) "you could not take the pulse of the industry without realizing that this film made a number of people distinctly uncomfortable. ... In the privacy of the voting booth, as many political candidates who've led in polls only to lose elections have found out, people are free to act out the unspoken fears and unconscious prejudices that they would never breathe to another soul, or, likely, acknowledge to themselves. And at least this year, that acting out doomed Brokeback Mountain." Finally, Turan concluded that Hollywood "likes to pat itself on the back for the good it does in the world, but as Sunday night's ceremony proved, it is easier to congratulate yourself for a job well done in the past than to actually do that job in the present." The reaction was similar from overseas critics. On the Indian website Rediff.com, Aseem Chhabria wrote: "We will never know how many more Academy voters picked Crash over Brokeback. But this much is clear: While Crash is a fine and important film, in choosing Crash over Brokeback, the Academy members showed their conservative, safe and non-controversial side."
'Brokeback' Broken by 'Crash'
In a decision that elicited considerable surprise but little praise, Oscar voters on Sunday selected Lionsgate's Crash as the best picture of 2005, passing over the favorite, Brokeback Mountain. David M. Halbfinger and David Carr commented in the New York Times that the movie academy "turned its back" on an "unflinching gay love story" and awarded the Oscar to "a moody kaleidoscope of racial confrontation in Los Angeles in which every character is at once sympathetic and repulsive." Tom Shales in the Washington Post wrote that the decision will no doubt produce arguments over "whether the Best Picture Oscar to Crash was really for the film's merit or just a cop-out by the Motion Picture Academy so it wouldn't have to give the prize to Brokeback Mountain." The Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr called the decision "one of the most stunning upsets in Oscar history." His colleague, Wesley Morris, wrote: "The memo from Hollywood seems clear enough. Better to reward the movie about people who clean our closets than the one about the men who live in them." And in a blistering commentary, Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan excoriated the motion picture industry for its choice, claiming that despite the box office success and favorable publicity Brokeback had achieved (he did not mention the numerous awards from critics' organizations) "you could not take the pulse of the industry without realizing that this film made a number of people distinctly uncomfortable. ... In the privacy of the voting booth, as many political candidates who've led in polls only to lose elections have found out, people are free to act out the unspoken fears and unconscious prejudices that they would never breathe to another soul, or, likely, acknowledge to themselves. And at least this year, that acting out doomed Brokeback Mountain." Finally, Turan concluded that Hollywood "likes to pat itself on the back for the good it does in the world, but as Sunday night's ceremony proved, it is easier to congratulate yourself for a job well done in the past than to actually do that job in the present." The reaction was similar from overseas critics. On the Indian website Rediff.com, Aseem Chhabria wrote: "We will never know how many more Academy voters picked Crash over Brokeback. But this much is clear: While Crash is a fine and important film, in choosing Crash over Brokeback, the Academy members showed their conservative, safe and non-controversial side."