Oscar Nomination Commentary, Sort Of

I have to admit, in the frenzy of getting caught up from my trip and starting a new term and trying my damndest to hit a couple of book deadlineas and to get some seriously accruing other work done, I have not been able to see Munich yet. You may recall that in December I read Leon Wieseltier's review and was somewhat worried. Well, it seems that Spielberg recently described his critics as "fundamentalists." That really pissed off Mr. Wieseltier. I think that maybe pissing of Wieseltier was a mistake, as you can see from Wieseltier's response. Ouch.

As for the Academy Award nominations, I have to admit, I have not seen as many of the movies as I have wanted to, at least in part because so many saw their release come as the end of the year. "Good Night and Good Luck" was wonderful, and I am a bit shocked by all of the critics of its politics, the majority of whom admit to never having seen it. GNaGL is certainly not an apologia for communist inflitration of government, Hollywood, or anything else. But it is condemnation of a particular kind of smearing in which people were attacked and accused without evidence and where the very real threat of communist infiltration was not quelled as a result. My criticisms of McCarthy, and more importantly, his ilk, was not their goal, but rather their means, and perhaps more significantly, their incompetence. That there were real communists and a real communist threat is not up for serious debate. But that quite literally becomes almost irrelevent in the face of a communist scare that did little actually to bring those communists to light. (For what it's worth, this is one of my biggest problems with the Bush administration -- not its goals, but its means, and its competence and cynicism.)

The best thing about the DVD age is that most of the nominated movies are already available and I can watch them at home, or are still in theaters and I can go catch them on the big screen. In theory I am pleased with the fact that so many of the nominees are tied to historical films. But that a film is historical is not enough to make a historian happy. We actually want some sense of integrity to historical events as well.