Well, it’s The Artist, obviously. Anyone who saw them all knows that. I wrote a post critical of this movie, but that’s mostly because I found the ads for it misleading. I think that’s false advertising, and it also led me to expect something the movie does not deliver for most of its running time: a feel-good story. It has a happy ending, but most of the running time is not a feel-good movie.
But did you see the Oscars? Nobody clapped for The Artist when it was read aloud as a nominee for best picture. WTF? Was it jealousy because it is the best picture of this past year? Everyone calls it “a French film”*, but as they pointed out: it’s the only movie of them all that was 100% made in Hollywood! So it’s really more of a Hollywood movie than all the others! (I knew that from watching it!)
So shouldn’t it have been cheered on for all the jobs it brought to Hollywood? Oh, that’s right, I forgot: only the “above the line” people are even invited to the Oscars, so they don’t care one little teensy bit about local Hollywood jobs. They’re already rich, so they don’t care, and why would they? But I’ll bet the IATSE people (you know, the people who really make the movies) would have cheered it heartily! For not only was this a great movie, but it was made in Hollywood, USA! And that ought to count for something, especially in this outsourced recession economy of ours. Don’t you think so?
* (Sometimes it takes an outsider to truly appreciate something wonderful we take for granted because we’re exposed to it all the time, n’est-ce pas? And then we see it for the great thing it is again. This is what The Artist does for Hollywood. And this is the real gift, and the legacy, of this movie. I have always loved classic Hollywood movies, so I have always appreciated them and the mystique of old Hollywood. But living here all the time, I forget sometimes that this is where it all happened. In the daily grind, the exceptional loses its luster, and the magic evaporates. That’s why it takes a French team to remind us that we’re in the stardust factory: this is Hollywood, baby! And it is special, even if we sometimes forget that because we live here all the time. And we should appreciate it.)
