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Happy Monday (Or Is It Happy Tuesday?)
Ladies and gentlemen, the 2017 Academy Awards ended (fittingly?) in ‘la la land.’
So, the movie that should have won and that people wanted to win (La La Land) lost to a movie that most people had, quite frankly, not even seen or barely knew about (Moonlight).
Sounds like most Academy Awards, doesn’t it?
My yearly analysis for Oscar winners and losers is that the Academy is right when they’re right and wrong when they’re wrong. Sure, that seems like common sense, but there’s more to it that presumed simplicity.
For example, the Academy was right to award Titanic the golden statue for best picture many moons ago and it was right to award Sandra Bullock the golden statue for best actress for her leading role in The Blind Side in 2010. Conversely, the Academy was wrong to award Slumdog Millionaire the best picture in 2009 and not even nominate The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger deservedly won a posthumous Oscar for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight for one of the greatest acting performances in cinematic history, but the film as a whole is a revelation and a masterpiece and it was wrongly shafted and stripped of its Oscar moment for the film’s team and Batman fans everywhere.
Last night, the Academy was clearly wrong in fumbling the announcement for Best Picture. However, the Academy was right to clarify this mistake in real-time. As a result, the 89th Oscars will be defined by that painfully embarrassing moment and help Steve Harvey recover a little bit more quickly.
Random Advice: Maybe don’t hire Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as editors of the obituary section of a newspaper.
Have a Better Week Than Last Week.
Happy Monday!
It doesn’t hurt to shine a golden light on a Monday.
Rules Don’t Apply is a new movie that focuses on the late, great and eccentric aviation innovator Howard Hughes and the Hollywood film industry in 1958. This Golden Era of movie-making is as popular and captivating as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby. Fittingly, Lily Collins (Marla Mabrey) starred in the Amazon pilot based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final and unfinished book, The Last Tycoon.
The decision to move The Last Tycoon to series (I voted yes in the post-viewing survey) is still being determined. The first chapter in this TV show shows promise and sparks curiosity. Rules Don’t Apply, on the other hand, will be premiered to the public in its full form on November 23rd of this year.
The star-studded cast will either work beautifully or, you know…Equally important, the story needs to elevate far above the seemingly predictable third act set on an all too familiar linear path. The cast suggests there should be entertaining twists-and-turns. Howard Hughes and the Golden Age of Hollywood deserve that, at a minimum.
The hope is that the old rules of unsurprising movie-making won’t apply to Rules Don’t Apply.
Have a Great Week!
Jimmy's Daily Planet 