Talk about an imbalance in the sphere - the “conversation” that is the exchange of thoughts and ideas and action – it couldn’t be more diverse:
At one extreme are the ugliest worries and poison and exchanges about the politics of things like Crimea, so-called freedoms (to hate and discriminate?!), bullying and terrorism in all their forms, and on and on in that vein in the seemingly “normal” news cycle…….
…… At another, is all the hype about the Academy Awards and who will, and should win each the awards.
My wife and I are movie lovers, and we make a special effort each year to pay attention to the Oscars and all of the preliminaries to it.
As probably one of the few who have seen all nine best picture nominees, an observation: there is a lot that is potentially depressing about both extremes, depending on how you view things, and this is likely an expression of the times.
We embark on this crazy/fun mission each year to try to see all of the movies that are nominated for Best Picture. It’s a little expensive, and certainly a great diversion.
It’s a nice mission to get us through an unending winter like this!
When there were only five movies nominated in past years, we had a decent chance of succeeding. Since the Academy has expanded the number of nominated pictures, this is the first year that we managed to see all of them. (Nine this year – but we only paid theatre prices for four – but that’s another story!)
We are very unsophisticated movie critics. We go with very base-level observations. “Which one did you like the most? Which ones do you want to see again? Given how the Academy actually chooses, which will win?” goes “our conversation”.
I loved “Her”, probably because it was the most bizarre – I would love to see it again, and it has zero chance of winning. We both really liked “Dallas Buyers Club” and “Gravity”, would like to see both again, and both probably have a good chance of winning.
Beyond that would be a full movie review – but what stood out big for us was the darkness throughout the group and our very lively discussion about how that reflects our times.
If you look for hope and bright spots, you really had to look for it in many of these movies – as with the news cycle. Many eventually delivered on that – sometimes it was a small victory, or more of a vindication of all the persistence through of the ugliness of the stories.
Given a little elevated spirit – or actually a whole lot of that, and plenty of weaving together of the noble work that goes with it – plus a huge about of hope and temperament and steadfastness, maybe we can make such progress in the “real” sphere of activity.
Enough – no authority at all here – but I do believe that collectively our thoughts and awareness can have shared value.
