Roger Ebert Agrees With Me

Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Wading through the various liberal bona-fides he injects to show his heart is in the right place...

"Good Night, and Good Luck" was surely a "safe harbor" for liberals, with its attack at a safe distance on McCarthyism -- although it carried an inescapable reference to McCarthyism as practiced by the Bush administration, which equates its critics with supporters of terrorism.

... he hits the main point:

The nature of the attacks on "Crash" by the supporters of "Brokeback Mountain" seem to proceed from the other position: "Brokeback" is better not only because of its artistry but because of its subject matter, and those who disagree hate homosexuals.

If we were just giving out Oscars based upon the subject matter of a particular film, every year we would give the Best Documentary Oscar to a movie about the Holocaust, or racism, or America turning a blind eye to genocide/starvation/AIDS in Africa, or the environment, or about a physically handicapped or mentally challenged individual overcoming the odds and doing something special.

Oh, wait a minute, that's exactly what we do. Never mind. (Okay, except for the penguin movie. But that was sort of a movie about the environment, right?)

Weirdest part:

"Capote" was a brilliant character study of a writer who was gay, and who used his sexuality, as we all use our sexuality, as a part of his personal armory in daily battle.

Roger F'n' Ebert "uses his sexuality... as part of his personal armory in daily battle"? In what manner? As a threat? As in, "Give me more Russian dressing on this Reuben sandwich or I swear by everything holy I will take off my pants and rub my fat ass and dirty gud* all over your restaurant"?

Ebert uses his sexuality "in daily battle." I knew there was some reason he'd been on television this long.

* Gud= "Gut pud." Sort of that indistinct merging of the pundendum and belly in people approximately the same size and shape of Roger Ebert.

posted by Ace at 01:59 PM

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