ARTS Wednesday, February 15, 1989 The Michigan Daily Page 8 40 Oscar (de)nomination For sale: The Academy Award for Best Picture 0 BY TONY SILBER JVk Featured above is one of the photos from the exhibit Racism and the Law: The Scottsboro Case, showing at the Baker/Mandela Center. 'Just a little place' Photos recall Scottsboro Case Do you remember which film won the Best Picture Oscar of 1976? It's a tough question, with a sad and revealing answer. Three great films, All The President's Men,Network, and Taxi Driver were nominated, but the winner was Rocky. Why? Rocky was a good picture, a fun picture, but it wasn't a "Best Picture." By winning, it joined an exclusive group of the greatest films ever produced, a group it didn't, and doesn't, belong in. This isn't a bash session about how mad I was that Rocky won; but it did represent an unpleasant change in the criteria that is used in selecting this prestigious honor. The selections for Best Picture chosen by the voting members of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have lessened the credibility of the once-cov- eted Oscar statuette in recent years. It's not the fault of the Academy, however, that the films of the last ten to 12 years have been clearly inferior to the films of the early 1970s all the way back to the birth of the cinema in the late nineteenth century. The writers are lazy, the directors are too conservative, the producers are too scared of risks, r and the studio executives only see the bottom line of budget sheets. And the result is bad movies and bad Best Pictures with few exceptions. The downfall of motion picture quality in recent years may be attributed to the economic situation in the United States. The oil crisis in the mid-'70s began the trend. The price of cellulose, the oil-based substance used to make film,rose sharply. The Hunt brothers' attempt to corner the silver market in the late '70s also caused prices to skyrocket because silver is also a prime ingredient in- cellulose. As a result of these events, budgets rose, projects were scrapped, new, innovative filmmakers were squeezed out of the industry, and executives scurried for cover. But who needs big budget extravaganzas to make great films? The Acad- emy, that's who. The most recent trend is to award Best Picture to the most expensive picture. Money has replaced quality as the frame of judgement for motion pictures, and this is the tragedy of the Best Picture. In eight out of the 11 years since Rocky won, the Best Picture has had the highest budget of the five nominees. They are usually large scale films with budgets exceeding $30 1 4 million, like The Deer Hunter (1978), Chariots of Fire (1981), Gandhi (1982), Amadeus (1984), Out of Africa (1985), Platoon (1986), and The Last Emperor (1987). With the exception of Deer Hunter and Amadeus, these films did not deserve this honor, but due to their "bigness' in budget and scope, they were easy to choose. With the transformation of motion pictures into these giant, generic, multi-million-dollar cinematic bonanzas, the qualities that appeal to people have been lost. Patrick Stockstill, a historian with the Academy, has an interesting theory about the difference between the older films and today's films. "I think people are more romantic than they really want to say they are, so they respond to the older films," he says. "Those films were more idealistic, the basic human needs were better portrayed than they are now." You can relate to Paul Scofield in A Man For All Seasons (1966) and Robert DeNiro in The Godfather, Part II(1974), but you feel as if you don't even know Willem' Dafoe in Platoon (1986) or Robert Redford in Out Of Africa (1985). The genres of the Best Picture have also changed in recent years. A comedy hasn't won since 1977 (Annie Hall), a musical since 1968 (Oliver). The last Best Picture to take place in America was in 1983 (Terms of Endear- ment). What has happened to the era when all the nominees were great films, when a prediction was nearly impossible, when you stayed up till 12:30 in the morning to wait for the big announcement? The drama of the ceremony itself has vanished because the films of today don't have the magic,, mystique, and personality that the older films did. Today, the Academy will announce its nominees for this year's Oscars and hopefully the trend of bland, big budget winners will turn around. But the Motion Picture Industry as a whole has to reform its system into something resembling the studio system of the '30s, '40s, and '50s if it is to return to the glory days of the great films. It's a different world today than it was 50 years ago in 1939 when the nominees for Best Picture were Gone With The Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr.Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, Ninotchka, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, and Dark Victory. If this year's winner is half as good as any of these, then things are looking up. BY DONNA IADIPAOLO Scottsboro's just a little place No Shame is writ across its face Its court, too weak to stand against a mob, Its people's heart, too small to hold a sob -Langston Hughes MAYBE this photo exhibit doesn't harness the usual artsy glare and pre- tentions surrounding local BFA shows. But then again, maybe Hughes and others would think that a certain unmatched expression lingers in these photos. Racism and The Law: The Scottsboro Case is a historical photo exhibit which captures the essence and energy that arose during a landmark protest opposing prejudice and injustice. Intended to reveal how the Scottsboro Case fused together a ,multi-racial group of people, the photos depict a community bolster- ing support of nine young Black men who were unjustly convicted. "They shall not die" was the slo- gan taken up by thousands of Blacks and whites in the United states in 1931 when nine young Black men were convicted and sentenced to death because of rape charges fabricated against them. While today's history books may not depict these disturb- ing upshots of our legal system, the work of the photojournalists, poets, and reporters connected with the Scottsboro case are kept alive in this exhibit. This wasn't the first time preju- dice had found its way into the coun- try's legal system; but the case cre- ated a unique awareness of the in- equity. Through these photos, news ex- cerpts, and poems, we are able to witness the South hard hit by the de- pression, the predicament thousands of Black and white sharecroppers See Place, Page 9 a0 Chekago By Natalya Lowndes Doubleday/$17.95 Every day we read or see things telling us how the Russians are ei- ther the Evil Empire, out to destroy us at any cost, or a bunch of misun- derstood nice guys who only want friendship. Whatever the real thrust of Soviet foreign policy may be, the Russian people remain an enigma to us. Travel to and within the Soviet Union is tightly restricted, and Rus- sians whose opinions and lifestyles are not heavily regulated are rarely allowed to come to this country. What are Russians like? What do they think about? What do they do on Saturday nights? Natalya Lowndes' novel Chekago answers these questions and many more besides. Lowndes is a British academic who has travelled exten- sively within the Soviet Union, and her knowledge of the Russian people and culture is shown in this almost baroquely detailed novel. The story centers around Sasha, a single man who picks up garbage by day and gets drunk by both day and night. He lives in what we would call a dorm - eight or ten rooms plus a centralized kitchen and bath- room. Sasha is looking for a wife, which isn't difficult as there's a large surplus of single women in the So- viet Union, so he halfheartedly an- swers a "lonely hearts" ad in a newspaper. All goes well for some time until the sudden arrivals of Sasha's mail-order bride, a beautiful and truly deranged American grad student, and a pair of secret police- men. The bride is from the country and annoys everyone including Sasha, and the American makes friends with everyone and returns to the States to write a book describing in sociological terms what lowlifes Sasha's housemates are. The two secret policemen simply move in and steal their food. One of the men beats everyone else up, while the other, in an extremely backwards way, tries to become ev- eryone's friend (and quixotically succeeds) by coercing them into lis- tening to his poetry readings. Sasha's housemates can't complain to the government about this be, cause these men are the govern ment. Chekago continually illus2 trates what Lowndes feels to be the driving spirit of the Russian people to stand up and keep going no matter what misery they are forced to en. dure. 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