Jeremy, At long last our paths cross once again. Thank you!
I too am a hopeless film buff. I see everything, In fact, I probably should have been in that business to some extent, but the sleazeness of what it take to get the GREEN light to make a film is distasteful enough to want ban myself to a morbid life of electrical work. {I hate that too}
Robert Redford is in fact an artist and probably only looked forward to stepping out there to shove that comment in all of the faces of the Halle Berry's and Julia Robert's out there in the audience. I doubt if they even understood any of it. "Blah, blah, blah!"
David, I couldn't agree more. Ian McKellan's performance was phenominal in LOTR, and it was an Oscar deserving performance. But so was Jim Broadbent's in "Iris" and even Russell Crowe's in ABM.
This years awards smacked of a political correctness, not just because of the color barrier being broken for Best Performance, but the fact that of all the wrongs that were placed on the modern personal life of John Nash and because of this insideous race for the gold, that we forget that the story is in fact--not fact. It was great movie making by two talented "commerical" film makers, but far from the reality that it projected.
Yes, David Lynch is one of America's great film amkers, but he is also in dire need of amking a film that has a subject matter that palatable for the movie going public. (Something like "Blue Velvet") Don't forget the talented Coen Brothers whose movie "The Man Who Knew Very Little" was not even seen by their most devout fans. The studios, in their ever present state of grace decided that it should not be widely released, and thus eliminated anyone from ever having the chance to see black and white film noir at its finest.
Love or hate "Moulin Rouge!," the talent that it took to write, direct, and visionage that movie is unbelievable. Baz Lurmahnn went home with nothing. How about the effort it took to finally bring Lord Of the Rings to the silver screen, and for those of you out there that have read the books, the exacting recollection of the story and how it followed it as if Tolkein him self was directing it. Peter Jackson's efforts should never go unheralded, especially since they filmed two more movies in there! Talk about time consuming!
While I may be straying from Golf Architecture here, I can say that I relate all of it to as much of movie making as I do to vino.
That is where the real beauty of all of this comes from!