Funny or not, The Onion's Quvenzhané Wallis tweet was effective satire that reflected back at us.

That so many were so outraged this morning is precisely the point.  Satire at its best highlights the lesser parts of society, using amplification to reflect it back at us and make us take notice of our own behavior.  Those decrying The Onion, a satirical newspaper, for running an offensive tweet about Quvenzhané Wallis are possibly missing the point.  Obviously this wasn't someone online expressing an honest opinion about how they felt about a nine year old actress celebrating her first Oscar nomination.     It wasn't Rex Reed calling Melissa McCarthy a hippo or Brett Easton Ellis whining that Kathryn Bigelow wouldn't be considered a great director if she wasn't a hot white woman who made manly war pictures (essay).  This was an intentionally offensive, knowingly disruptive statement intended to provoke outrage and offense sent out by a technically 'fictional' twitter avatar.  Sadly, it wouldn't have been as shocking if an even slightly older woman had been called a "cunt".  Because we do *that* all the time.

The year the presumed favorites didn't even get nominated. Thoughts on the 2013 Oscar nominations...

Despite all of the pre-awards chatter and what-not, there were still a few surprises in this morning's Oscar nominations.  The biggest shock, for me anyway, was the inclusion of Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor in Django Unchained and the unfortunate exclusion of Leonardo DiCaprio (who I frankly expected to win) and Samuel L. Jackson (who gave the film's best performance) for same.  Waltz is fine, although it's interesting in that A) he's basically the film's lead character and B) he's playing a riff on the work he did in Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, but this time on the side of the angels (it's possible that voters simply voted for the most morally righteous white character in a film full of racists, ala Tommy Lee Jones's expected nom for Lincoln).  Django Unchained scored a best picture nomination (one of nine films nominated) but Tarantino was denied a Best Director nod.  The other massive snub was the exclusion of Ben Affleck for Best Director for Argo, despite the film being up for Best Picture and Alan Arkin snagging a Best Supporting Actor nomination.  I honestly can't figure that one out, as pretty much everyone who loved Argo gave Affleck full and complete credit for the film.  It's disheartening in that Affleck has made a real effort to use his star power to direct the kind of mainstream big-studio grown up genre fare that has been neglected over the last decade, and a snub can surely be read as 'Don't bother, just go direct Justice League'.  The Best Director category also provided the other mega-shock this morning, snubbing the proverbial front runner Kathryn Bigelow.  I'd hate to think the stupid 'torture debate' had an effect, but I think the stupid torture debate had an effect.     

Review: Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) is an engrossing, intoxicating, and devastating modern-day fable.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

2012
90 minutes
rated PG-13
Opening June 27th in select theaters.

By Scott Mendelson

Beasts of the Southern Wild is among the most transporting films you're likely to see. Director and co-writer Benh Zeitlin, using Lucy Alibar's play Juicy and Delicious, crafts a fully enveloping world that is both pinpoint specific and all-encompassing enough to be a timeless fable.  On the surface, it is a character study of one six-year old girl as she comes to terms with the possibility of becoming an orphan as a natural disaster devastates her dirt-poor backwoods community.  Yes, it's about people surviving Hurricane Katrina and yes it contains certain social/political commentary, but it is a universal saga of grief and survival.  The film's greatest narrative strength is that it refuses to be a representative saga of the impoverished victims of that 2005 storm.  It is merely a heart-wrenching would-be myth told from the point of view of a single child.