This week, our favorite marginally-employed, down-on-his-luck freelance journalist Ringo Khan returns to work (a term we use loosely) to tell us what he thought of the recent Academy Awards and the Oscar controversy over a lack of racial diversity.
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Money was tight and I was down to cruising Aldi’s parking lot in search of stray shopping carts I could turn in for the 25-cent deposit when I heard an NPR report (the tape deck in the Fiero is on the fritz and the broken antenna limits my range) on the upcoming Oscars and a controversy over a lack of diversity among nominees. I was struck with an idea for a salable freelance piece.
I was out of minutes on my cell phone, as I had to downgrade from an unlimited plan when the price of both tuna fish and Tuna Helper went up 10 percent each in what I can only imagine was some sort of price fixing scam, and was thus faced with a decision whether to spend the only two quarters I’d retrieved from abandoned carts on a phone call to headquarters (yes, they still have payphones and yes they’ve gone up to 50 cents a call!).
"Excuse me, ma’am,“ I said to a blue-haired lady in her early nineties who had just gotten out of a stylish Kia sedan. "My car won’t start, and my cell phone battery has died. I was wondering if I could borrow yours to call a friend?“
She looked at me with apprehension and then glanced at my less-than-roadworthy looking vehicle, which seemed to quell any suspicion I might be scamming her. From her rather large purse, she pulled out a giant Samsung that was considerably more sophisticated than my flip phone. After suffering the embarrassment of needing her to show me how to use the thing, I called TBT Associate Editor Jackson Falconer to pitch the story. Stepping away as I turned my back to the old lady so that she wouldn’t realize I was not calling a tow truck, I got him on the line and made my case.
"Jackson, listen, I was wondering, would the Times be interested in my upcoming coverage of the 88th Academy Awards presentation. I have several outlets interested already, but I wanted to give my old friends first dibs.“
"You’re going out to Hollywood for the Oscars, Ringo?“ he asked, clearly impressed with the misunderstanding. "How did you score credentials?“
"Uh, um, no É not exactly,“ I said. "I’ll be covering them from a rather exclusive local party (thrown by my roommate's girlfriend) that will include several local film luminaries (her annoying best friend who once managed a local Blockbuster Video and Star Wars fanboy Bright Mike).“
"Oh,“ he said. "What’s the angle?“
"I’m sure that you’re aware of the controversy over a lack of diversity among nominees,“ I said with confidence. "As a minority, I could obviously give my insight from a unique perspective.“
"A minority?“
What?
"Khan??? I’m Pakistani on my father’s side, you bigot.“
"Oh, of course, I’m sorry,“ he said in an uncomfortable voice that suggested I had him on the ropes. "I’m half Australian on my father’s side, you know. People never consider that because, well, you know É“
"Aussies aren’t people of color?“ I said, cutting him short. "You don’t have to face the daily challenges of belonging to a race that is often discriminated against? You don’t share the last name of a famous Pakistani scientist who sold nuclear technology to North Korea (no relation)? You’re so white you look like you're Scandinavian on all sides? I’ve got contacts at the ACLU, man. Push too hard on this and I’ll have them file a lawsuit faster than you can say Ralf Brookes!“
"Ralf who?“
"Good god, man, he’s your attorney! You must know these things. Clearly, I’m the only person on staff suited for this assignment. Why would you discriminate against me?“
"Well, with all due respect, I mean you’re not exactly on staff, Ringo, and it’s not an assignment É you’re pitching it to me,“ he said, though his voice sounded nervous. In my experience, Aussies are not a particularly-litigious lot. "But still, I get your point. I’ve got room for a piece next weekend, so while it won’t be next day coverage É“
"Better still,“ I chimed in, seeking to seize the moment. "We’ll wait until the noise in the old echo chamber dies down. I’ll take it, and we can even do my standard rate. Goodbye,“ I said quickly, as I desperately tried to figure out how to end the call on a phone that didn’t flip shut before he could change his mind.
When I turned around, the old lady was right behind me, hands on her waist, clearly aware that I’d been dishonest with my intentions.
"Sorry, I’m out of work,“ I said pitifully, jumping in the Fiero and praying it actually would start so I could get out of there quickly.
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"No, I’m not being quiet,“ my roommate's girlfriend said rudely. "If you were covering this thing, you’d be out there on the other side of that velvet rope taking pictures of Leo. So as long as you're here, at my party, you be quiet, and stop eating all of the spinach dip! Save some for the rest of us.“
"First of all, I’d be spending all of my film on Jennifer Lawrence (who looked ravishing, if unrecognizable). Plus, I brought the rice crispy treats,“ I said defensively, pointing to a suspect looking glass pan full of what were not instantly recognizable as their intended delicacy.
"No one uses film anymore, imbecile. Besides, those things look gross,“ she said. "You used too much marshmallow (as if that's possible). And who brings rice crispy treats as a Ôcovered dish.’ What are we, five?“
"Asks the woman drinking the cake flavored wine,“ I said sharply in my defense. "It’s a dish. It’s covered with tin foil and once the post-wine munchies kick in, you’ll be thanking me!“
#JenniferLawrenceSoSoWhite
And so went the environment for the rest of the night. Nonetheless, I was determined not to let it spoil my piece and managed to block out her, the annoying roommate, Charlie B. and his pathetic cowering to his significant other, as well as Bright Mike’s insistence on rooting loudly for the also-ran categories that the new Star Wars film happened to be nominated for.
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Host Chris Rock was hilarious and had almost no choice but to go for the jugular on the race issue right from his opening remarks. The Academy was self aware enough to play along, spoofing itself with shorts like Tracy Morgan’s uproariously funny The Danish Girl parody and others that lampooned the sad fact that the Oscars are largely the domain of white, mainstream actors and filmmakers.
Even in the movies that centered around black characters, like talented, young African American director Ryan Coogler’s masterful reboot of the Rocky franchise, Creed, it seemed to taunt black actors by nominating only white characters from the film, in this case Sylvester Stallone for best supporting actor. Worse yet, Straight Outta Compton, the biopic of Ô90s rap band NWA, was nominated only for best screenplay–the only thing the movie, aside from Paul Giamatti’s supporting role, that was done by white people!
I won’t argue the merit of the calls for protest, but I think the biggest story this year is how bad some of the movies that did get attention were and how good some of them that were largely or completely ignored happened to be. I thought Spotlight, which got an unexpected statue for Best Picture, was an excellent film, my profession notwithstanding, and deserved the award. I’m also a big fan of Leonardo DiCaprio and was happy to see him finally get the nod in his sixth nomination.
That being said, the best film I saw in 2015 was Nigerian-American director Rick Famuyiwa's Dope, a sleeper hit that centers on a nerdy brainiac’s adventures while trying to survive his life in the dangerous Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, while getting into Harvard. The main character, played to the nines by newcomer Shameik Moore, happens to be black. Yet the complete slight from the academy was not only egregious, but not even among those mentioned in the media whirlwind leading up to the awards.
Of course, the best film I saw last year was Coogler’s debut movie, Fruitvale Station, which chronicles the real-life summary execution of a young, black man named Oscar Grant by Bay Area transit police in 2009. Grant is played in that film by Creed star, Michael B. Jordan. Jordan and Coogler also got snubbed by the academy for Fruitvale Station, but at least the academy didn’t give a Best Supporting Actor statue to Kevin Durand for his cameo as the bully cop.
Much was made of Will Smith’s failure to be nominated for Concussion this year, in which he plays the real-life doctor Bennet Omalu, who discovered CTE and broke the NFL concussion cover-up. It was a good film and Smith’s performance was noteworthy, but by no means a lock for a nomination.
Beasts of No Nation, a Netflix original film that depicts the life of African child soldiers, was a good movie and groundbreaking in terms of showing where the future of movie production may lie, but while Idris Elba’s portrayal of the unit’s commander was good, I found it remarkably similar to David Harewood’s performance in Blood Diamond a decade earlier. It was a bigger slight for Elba not to have been nominated in 2005 for the HBO original film, Sometimes in April, in which he played a soldier caught up in the Rwandan Civil War. O'Shea Jackson Jr.’s performance as his father, rapper Ice Cube, in Straight Outta Compton should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and the same could be said of Jason Mitchell’s performance as band mate Eazy-E in the same film.
What shocked me most was Mad Max: Fury Road’s six statues (editing, production design, costumes, makeup and hairstyle, sound mixing and sound editing) on ten nominations–including one for Best Picture. Sure, Immortan Joe was one of the coolest-looking bad guys in action movie history, but the thin plot, weak story-line and lack of any meaningful story-arc or dialog left it feeling rather run of the mill in my opinion. The story was basically, the world is dying; why, we don’t know; this quiet guy (Tom Hardy as Max) is tortured because he let someone down, let’s run away from the bad guys; let’s turn around and go back; the end. It was almost like a movie that was produced in order to facilitate the video game that came shortly after its release.
I want to know why we’re running (aside from the hot virgins), who killed the earth, and how we’ve managed (far off in the future) to have devolved into a bunch of morons who worship some form of Viking religion and chrome (to the extent of spray painting our mouths silver) and shout "mediocre" when we mean awesome. Okay, most of that is fairly obvious, but still. This is the most celebrated movie of the year, the one with the highest aggregated rating in Rottentomatoes.com’s history? No wonder Donald Trump is on the verge of ruling the free world.
I much preferred Englishman Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, a real thinking man’s sci-fi film that poses serious questions about technology and ethics in a story that was well conceived, expertly told and steadily engaging. Comparing Ex-Machina to Mad Max is sort of like comparing Citizen Kane to Transformers, which is okay if you’re talking about which is going to sell more tickets, but the Academy Awards are supposed to be about quality, not quantity. Ex-Machina was only nominated for screenplay and visual effects, winning the latter largely on the back of hot, naked robots.
The second best film I saw in 2015 was Felix Herngren's Swedish comedy, The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. The movie is based on the best-selling novel by fellow Swede Jonas Jonasson. Think Forrest Gump meets James Bond with smart writing and good acting. It was nominated only for best hair and makeup but lost out to Mad Max: Fury Road, which is fair since it only got there by way of a young actor in old man rubber face garb, but I don't understand how it didn't get a nomination for either Best Picture, Best Actor or Best Adapted Screenplay.
Ratings for this year’s show were down even from last year’s abysmal numbers, hitting an eight-year low that suggests people are getting over the Academy and its weak selections and obvious oversights, and that the Oscars are becoming more about talk-show and internet fodder–John Oliver, Trevor Noah and Larry Wilmore had a field day–than what is good in Hollywood. Nonetheless, the nominations–especially Best Picture–do give immense exposure to the films and lead to more people seeing them. That’s a responsibility that should be taken more seriously. I get #OscarsSoWhite, but I also think there’s room for #OscarsSoWeak.
Ringo’s Top Five Sleeper Hits for 2015 1. Dope
2. The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
3. Ex-Machina
4. Straight Outta Compton
5. Paper Towns
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