From The Washington Post: Oscars for Osama by Charles Krauthammer. (via TIA Daily)
Nothing tells you more about Hollywood than what it chooses to honor. Nominated for best foreign-language film is "Paradise Now," a sympathetic portrayal of two suicide bombers. Nominated for best picture is "Munich," a sympathetic portrayal of yesterday's fashion in barbarism: homicide terrorism.But until you see "Syriana," nominated for best screenplay (and George Clooney, for best supporting actor) you have no idea how self-flagellation and self-loathing pass for complexity and moral seriousness in Hollywood.
From the Telegraph: Bereaved parents call on Oscars to drop suicide bomb movie by Harry de Quetteville.
The families of three Israeli teenagers who were killed in a suicide bombing are appealing to the organisers of the Oscars to drop a film from the nominations because they say it glorifies terrorism.Paradise Now, a film about two friends from the West Bank who decide to carry out a joint suicide attack in Israel, will compete in the best foreign language category at Sunday's Academy Awards.
Sunday is also the third anniversary of a attack by terrorists on a bus in the northern Israeli town of Haifa, which killed 17 people and wounded 53 others.
Among the dead were Yuval Mendelvitch, a 13-year-old boy whose parents yesterday sent a petition to Sid Gains, the president of the Academy of Motion Pictures, calling for Paradise Now's nomination to be withdrawn.
Via Little Green Footballs: Director of "Paradise Now" Would Be a Suicide Bomber.
In other words, had you been living in the territories, you would have become a shahid (martyr)? Abu-Assad hesitates for a second before replying, “yes.” He recounts an episode in which he was humiliated by a soldier at the Kalandiya checkpoint near Jerusalem, and says this was what made him realize what runs through the heads of people who later become suicide bombers.You feel like such a coward it kills you, he describes, saying this cowardice makes people start hating life and feel impotent.
I realized, Abu-Assad explains, that when a man systematically goes through such humiliation, he chooses to kill his own impotency by carrying out an act of “let me die with the philistines.”
UPDATE -- March 6: From FoxNews: Academy Awards Ratings Down 8% From '05.
An estimated 38.8 million people watched the Academy Awards on ABC, down 8 percent from last year and the second-worst showing in nearly two decades, according to Nielsen Media Research.Posted by Forkum at March 5, 2006 06:59 PM
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