I don't care about things like the Oscars, and reacted very badly to a radio report I heard the other day which had either an actor or director (I didn't catch who it was) talking about "British" success at the Oscars (I haven't actually seen "The Reader", the Kate Winslet film about underage sex, so I don't know how British it actually is) whilst simultaneously calling for more public money for the film industry. Why we should be subsidising rich people to make films I don't know -- if they want more money for films they should ask Kate Winslet for it, not me -- but the person on the radio seemed to think that wealth transfer from me to Kenneth Brannagh is a natural state of affairs and that only a churlish philistine would object to it.
Well I do. Although I like films, just as everyone else does I suppose, I'm not really that interested in them or the actors. I can remember years ago talking to someone about Alien, which is one of my all-time favourites, a film that I've seen countless times. They asked me something about one of the actors in it, and I hadn't got a clue, because I didn't pay any attention to them outside of their characters in the film, if you see what I mean. My all-time favourite film is the original Australian cut of Mad Max, and my opinion of that film wasn't changed one iota when I found out that Mel Gibson is an anti-semitic nutter, because I wasn't interested in him in beyond the context of the film. I'm not saying the Oscars should be banned -- I don't feel that strongly about them one way or the other -- but I do wonder what they are really for.
[posted with ecto]
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