David Edelstein's Final Thoughts on the Oscars

David Edelstein seldom updates his NY Magazine blog the Projectionist, but when he does, it's a real treat. He posted Friday about the Oscars. It's a rather sobering post--if a post on a frivolous awards show can be that. But it's the most insightful thing I've read on the awards show in a while. On Kate Winslet:

For the record: If, as expected, Kate Winslet takes home the prize for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, it will be an outrage and a scandal, given that Oscar should have gone to Kate Winslet — but for Revolutionary Road, not the dire The Reader. Let’s admit, for the sake of argument, that RR has its problems, among them that its message — suburbia suffocates the soul — seems beside the point now that suburbs and all they represent are going the way of Lehigh Acres, Florida. (From the New York Times: “Lehigh Acres, like much of Florida and many suburbs nationwide, was born with speculation in its DNA … Signs of trouble were ignored …”) The actors, though, were enthralling, and there’s no rational reason for favoring thick-clumpy-German Kate (has a sexual coming-of-age ever been less sexy?) over pretty-suburban-American-hysteric Kate — unless, as Ricky Gervais averred in Extras, the Holocaust really is the pixie dust that conjures Academy Awards out of the air.

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