America Goes to the Movies: 2017

'Tis the Awards season again and America gears-up for its annual tribute to what used to be called the 'land of celluloid' and now might be considered the 'land of cellulite' - at least among the unbuffed or interjected. The Golden Globe Awards presage the up-coming Oscars in a lighter 'more fun' approach to 'giving'. This year no less than others. The Emceeing was brilliantly wicked, even lacking Ricky Gervase, and the night was an upscale accolade to film and the women who make it all plausible.

Newly-buffed Mariah et alii

This year, you see, saw the coming-together of a number of tectonic 'issues' that had arisen in the 'ennertainment whirled' - Harvey Weinstein and  the 'second-class economic status'  automatically afforded to females by an industry predicated on the  old Yiddish notion that 'he has a fambly to feed'. As well as that,  there is the constant struggle of the 'bud' of  gender expression,  yearning to 'break free' and blossom, and polly ticks -  Trumpites and anti-Trumpites.  This year everyone, except a couple of 'real weird-ohs', wore black - with a variety of bows, badges, bangles, dangles  and pins to represent their particular sides of  'the struggle'.  A glittering night it was.

The Issues

The star of the evening and potential candidate for the next President of the United States was Oprah Winfrey! Whether she planned that or not, Trump might want to hire her speech writer.  For had she been in the Oral Office, and calling for another crusade into Central Asia, the mall-trotters would have abandoned their shopping carts and decamped to the nearest outdoor/Army surplus/gunshop/ outfitter to equip themselves, at their own expense, and, probably, even buy the tickets to 'deploy' themselves.  Oprah could move the housing market with a word - for the 'unable' to apply for a house, and bankers to give them a wobbly mortgage (not that they aren't already doing that, again, with automobiles). Had she actually said something about it, recruiting sargeants might not have been able to down a single coffee last week. Oprah - hush mouth now - might even be able to raise the dead - but don't say I said that.  She made me want to be my best me - imagine her effect on Putin,  or Kim!

But although the evening was about the movie industry and its art, I'm thinking that the 'black' thing was more in the way of a camouflage for the best year of wasted investment in film since the invention of the kinetoscope. The movies 'honored' by the press awards were some real stinkeroos. Three of the top nominees - 'Lady Bird', 'The Florida Project' and 'Three Billboards Outside somewhere in Missouri'  must have been written/directed by graduates of a film school where 'happy endings', or any other sort of endings weren't on the syllabus. They remind of someone who, in the middle of a screw (good, bad or indifferent)  gets up and goes out .... forever.  They made me feel like eating the bottom out of my popcorn container in search of whatever I missed. Personally I think they were intended to be 'internet theft bait' and they accidentally made it into a couple of film festivals. Maybe the  best of the year's crop:  'The Post', 'Thank you For Your Service' and even the paean to the real military '12 Strong' are to be considered next year.

That would leave something to really look forward to.   Perhaps, rather than reprising 'black' - not a happy color in most cultures - the Oscars could shift to mourning purples, violets and mauves - with flash of chartreuse in there, to represent the dawn of a new day - when the 'casting couch' reverts to being a contractual arrangement as it should have been - rather than another dreary porn set - for everyone , all along.