Oh man, Mickey's gonna flip his shit:
The day before the Academy Awards, a swarm of the people behind this year's amazing crop of politically conscious films were enjoying a warm day in the courtyard of Bob Bookman's Hancock Park home, scene of the CAA agent's annual celebration of his agency's Oscar nominees. In one corner was "Crash" director Paul Haggis, not far away from Grant Heslov, producer of "Good Night, and Good Luck," while across the way were Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, the screenwriters of "Munich."
But what really struck me, as I roamed around, was that virtually every filmmaker I stopped to talk with was at work on a socially conscious film — and these were the other people at the party, not the guys preparing Oscar speeches. Maybe it was the tangy spring air, but it felt as if the '70s were back again. For years, film lovers have waxed nostalgic about the heady days of '70s cinema, when, inspired by the trauma of Vietnam and Watergate, a seemingly endless array of movies offered a bracing critique of American society.
Suddenly that era doesn't seem so distant at all. The socially engaged atmosphere that dominated the Oscars this year is not going away. In fact, the next crop of films aren't low-budget releases bankrolled by indie financiers but, by and large, movies fully financed by major studios, geared to reach a mass audience.
The article then goes on to list a few of them off. I'd tell you which I'm excited about, but having missed every single one of the best picture nominees this year -- even though I genuinely wanted to see all but Crash -- I feel rather disqualified from opining on this sort of thing.
On a related note, I caught the end of 50 First Dates on HBO last night. That has to be the saddest set-up for a movie I've ever seen. And to see such a dark comedy presented as a piece of whimsical fluff is pretty jarring. As for the arc, what's supposed to be a joyous finish seemed unrelentingly cruel to me: cruel to Sandler, whose wife will never remember him; cruel to his wife, who'll have to acclimate to an accelerating life she doesn't remember choosing; and unbelievably cruel to the glimpsed daughter, whose mother will have to meet her anew each morning. I've never seen such a tragic happy ending.
