WNYC's Brian Lehrer asked film critic Owen Gleiberman to reflect on Al Gore's night at the Oscars. Gleiberman answered with an opinion about Gore as candidate instead -
Lehrer: Owen, you're a movie critic, why are you going there?
Gleiberman: Movies, politics... it's all one now.
A Firedoglake commenter shares this observation from the Libby trial -
After each day's events I have stood outside the exit of the Barrett Prettyman courthouse. I have been able to observe the Libby team exit and the MSM's cameramen (no women) and their coverage of him.
They anxiously await with a scout in the hallways signaling to them when Team Libby is about to exit from the courthouse.
When Libby exits the cameras start flashing and Libby begins to pose... yes pose. When I first saw this display I was in shock. Somehow I assumed one would want to escape the courthouse onslaught of the MSM. But no, Libby poses. I wondered if I had gotten off the wrong metro stop and ended up in Hollywood.
Libby stood, turned his head slowly and struck a pose. Cameras flashed. He turned his head and struck another pose; cameras flashed again. So scripted!
The next day (Wednesday of last week) I watched as Libby's wife exited first from the revolving door. She stopped, just outside the door, flipped her hair and struck a pose for the cameras. It seemed like eternity because not one camera flashed, not one. I almost felt bad for her but her actions seemed so deliberate, so arrogant, so what I consider pathetic.
A few minutes later Libby came out and the same MSM exercise that had taken place the day before repeated itself. Libby poses, cameras flash, he strikes another pose, cameras flash.
As I closely watched Libby and his wife being chauffeured away in the jet black SUV, his wife tossed her hair and they began to laugh and continued to laugh.
Meanwhile, from a San Francisco Chronicle columnist at the Vanity Fair after-Oscar party -
James Woods was arriving with his golden-haired squeeze, Ashley Madison (a perfect starlet name). Fingering her diamond necklace, a circle of hearts, he told reporters it came from Jason of Beverly Hills. It was on loan. Next on the line was Faye Dunaway, whose face is mostly lips nowadays. There was a man in front of her telling the TV journalists all they needed to know: H. Stern earrings, dress by Jay Mandell, shoes by Stuart Weisman. He was kind of an announcer for her, as she made her way down the line...
...Some of the stars arrived, posed, chatted, went inside and came out pretty quickly. A lot of this party is about business... Faye Dunaway's drive-by was 15 minutes long,
And so the people came and went, which was all visible from the viewing stands, and this leads to a philosophical and maybe self-hating observation. Daniel Craig, the new James Bond, was on his way out of the party when the photogs spotted him and started screaming. He shook his head and walked right by them, refusing to pose. There I was, standing right in the middle of the crowd, one of the salivating dogs hungry for a bone; but there is something pleasing to me in his gesture.
Inside the party later, I mentioned to Francis Ford Coppola that the spectacle of that red carpet meat market gives me the willies, and he turned it back, perhaps rightfully. "That's what the media's become," he said.
I dunno, seems like a partnership.
And over at Bagnewsnotes -
How perfect. Just three days before the awards show, and TIME plays the hype to imagine Hillary as Bette Davis, the "great but aging actress" in All About Eve, and Obama as the (female) ingenue looking to take her down.
Besides the specific typecasting, what could be more thematic than likening Democratic candidates to actors playing actors.
Maybe I've been in Europe too long, but really, I could care less about David and Maureen and the Hollywood - Beltway mafia and their personal bones to pick... What I do care about is how the media eggs this stuff on to profit off the entertainment value.
SO... let's talk about Meryl Streep at the Oscars... the Meryl Streep who has earned (operative word) more Academy Award nominations (14) than any other actor... the Meryl Streep who is described by her friends as "startlingly earthy - without a whiff of pretense." Earthy is a word that comes up often regarding Streep.
The Meryl Streep who is famously UNinterested in the trappings of showbiz glamour:
One consistent thread in Streep’s career has been her resolute decision not to play the beauty card. “I think the most liberating thing I did early on was to free myself from any concern about my looks as they pertained to my work,” she says. “For an actress worrying about appearance is a horrible, horrible trap. It’s great for acting to be unconscious of how you look and to be willing and to be willing to mess up how you look, and see what that does to people.”
The Meryl Streep who has said...
"All that attention to the perfect lighting, the perfect this, the perfect that, I find terribly annoying."
"I don't have very much interest in trends and fashions. I don't follow the fashion shows and stuff like that."
...and in a recent magazine conversation between Helen Mirren and Streep:
MIRREN: One of the great advantages of getting older is that you can walk into a world which is more truthful and less to do with other people's fantasies.
STREEP: But I felt the desire to f--- around with how I look from the very beginning. And the idea that you're married to some sort of glamorous look makes me crazy. I hate all that bulls---. I mean, I'll put on foundation over my pimples, but really it pisses me off.
...who said of her nominated role as Amanda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada:
“I had a blast stepping into Miranda’s shoes, literally,” laughs Streep. “But I couldn’t care less about fashion to the degree Miranda does... It was hard work dressing like that, too. I felt like I was wearing or putting on underwater gear. I guess a normal woman would find it extremely enjoyable to wear those clothes. For me, I didn’t enjoy it. It just felt like a straight jacket."
"We finished filming right after Hurricane Katrina and Anne [Hathaway] had the great idea that we donate all of the clothes from the set to a charity auction. Not only does the money from the auction go to people who really need it but the clothes, shoes and coats that were auctioned off went to people who actually wanted them, would wear them and would be comfortable in them. If I had taken any home, they would have remained in my closet for the rest of their existence.”
It's not that Streep hasn't thought deeply about the social and psychological impact of fashion...
"But fashion has a profound effect on young girls. And as a mother of young
girls I think about that. I remember the effect that fashion magazines
had on me when I was growing up, and how they added to my feelings of
inadequacy and un-attractiveness and yet they were some sort of
inspiration. You know, I was thinking that if only I could be that
thin, or change my nose, or my hair, if I had the right shoes and the
jewelry, well, maybe everything would be alright for me. So it’s all
tied up in ourselves and it’s very conflicting within ourselves."
...or the essential role of wardrobe in creating characters:
"I love costume. In my next life, I'm going to be a costume designer."
"Yes, I'm a notorious pain-in-the-butt for any costume designer because I have so many opinions about how my people should present. I feel very strongly that we make decisions about what we're giving to the world, what we're withholding from the world by virtue of what we put on our bodies, and what we choose to say and not say. So, for me, clothes are kind of character; they're more interesting in those terms."
In other words, she understands the difference between costume for a role and how she makes her way in the world as a human being.
That Meryl Streep went to the Oscars this year and got panned by multiple fashionistas for not getting her dress right. "What was she going for," sneered one, "earth mother?" There's that "earthy" business again. Oh my, it seems Meryl Streep walked down that red carpet as her authentic self. How dare she be real? Didn't she understand she was supposed to play a role in their constricted little fashion play? Yes, according to the fashion cops, the woman with 14 Oscar nominations doesn't know how to act.
Which is how I found myself yelling at the TV screen and the newspaper and the radio , "She's not in your damn play! Why are you reviewing her as if she were, you shallow moron?!" Streep knows the difference between acting and being, and has the integrity to hold the line that is right for her. Talk about missing the interesting story!
When TIME's Karen Tumulty uses the strained & silly metaphor of All About Eve to tell us something "newsworthy" about Barack and Hillary, she's doing the same thing - framing a story in a little meaningless box that says more about her than the actual story.
When Chris Matthews obsesses (watch the video) on Bill Clinton's "philandering" as a fruitful topic in assessing Hillary's candidacy, he's doing the same thing. (h/t Lance Mannion)
How did we arrive at this place of oddly skewed frames and too much posing and sick mutually narcissistic partnerships and It's All Entertainment? I ask only because it's draining the life out of us. Slow death by posing.
There's only one ticket out: excruciating authenticity. Now that, Karen, would be "a bumpy ride." Because - hoo-boy - just about everyone concerned is way, way, way out of practice! They're going to need rehearsals to get real.
