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The Green Book




Spike Lee looked like he swallowed a lemon when Green Book won best picture and tried to escape the Dolby Theater only to be turned back by ushers.  It wasn't so much that he didn't win best picture himself, but Spike like many other critics thought The Green Book tread too lightly over the Jim Crow South -- a Driving Miss Daisy with roles reversed.  This too was a sore point for Spike, as he was beat out by the 1989 dramedy as well.  For now, Spike will have to content himself with an Oscar for best screenplay, his first.

It also doesn't help that Peter Farelly was the producer and director.  Past movies include Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary and Shallow Hal, not exactly Oscar-caliber stuff.  But, he hit the jackpot on this one.  Kind of like the way Robert Zemeckis won everyone over with Forrest Gump.

Green Book wasn't my first choice.  It was a light film with plenty of cringe-worthy moments like the time Tony Lip gets Don Shirley to try Kentucky Fried Chicken and schooling the concert pianist on rhythm and blues.  I can see how that would get some people's goat, as Farelly treated segregation as a backdrop for a "buddy movie."  But, this was a true story, at least to some degree.

It could have been worse, much worse, had not Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen lifted the movie beyond the level of tripe with great performances.  Farelly did provide some great moments of his own, like the scene in which the Cadillac overheats in front of a cotton field and a group of sharecroppers watch as Tony Lip gets out to put water in the radiator while Don Shirley sits in the back of the limo.  No words were spoken because none were needed.

Not too many persons even knew what a "green book" was before this movie, so Farelly did shed some light on the era.  It was also a very interesting role reversal in Tony Lip driving for Shirley and serving as his bodyguard in a deeply segregated part of America.  Lip had to overcome his own prejudices along the way, which I suppose is why it appealed so much to Academy viewers.

If Farelly had tried to delve too deeply into the segregated South he probably would have only gotten into more trouble.  This after all is a very touchy subject and few have escaped the wrath of critics when trying to deal with it head on.  I suppose what galls critics is that when someone does try to tackle it in a more serious manner, the Academy has shunned his or her efforts.  This was the case not only for Spike but for Ava DuVernay a few years ago with Selma, arguably the best movie of 2015, but it fell to Birdman.  And even when a notable movie by a black director does win the Oscar, the director does not, as was the case with 12 Years of Slave.  Steve McQueen lost out to Alfonso Cuaron.  Oddly enough, Justin Chang who thought Green Book was the worst best picture winner since Crash, thought the world of Gravity, in which we watch Sandra Bullock drift listlessly in space for nearly two hours.

Anyway, the Academy tried to right itself last night by awarding Oscars to multiple black actors and movies.  Mahershala Ali took home Best Supporting Actor and Regina King won an Oscar for her supporting role in If Beale Street Could Talk.  Black Panther won multiple awards and Spike finally got his coveted Oscar for his screenplay for BlacKkKlansman.  Since Farelly wasn't even nominated for Best Director, Cuaron won his second directing Oscar for Roma.  Spike probably wasn't too happy about this either, but at least showed some humor.

What's odd to me is that Green Book wasn't even nominated for Best Score, despite the wonderful score by Kris Bowers.  If Spike really wants to gripe, Terrence Blanchard should have won the award for his score for BlacKkKlansman, rather than Ludwig Goransson for Black Panther.

The thing with the Oscars is that it's a crap shoot.  You have over 8000 members of the Academy who all have the opportunity to cast a ballot.  It has been widely reported that many don't even watch the nominated movies and some hand over the ballots to their kids to fill in.  So, it usually comes down to which movies are getting the best buzz during the week the ballots are collected.  Yet, for some strange reason we put so much weight on an industry whose only business is to reward itself.

It's Best Picture category is generally reserved for English-speaking films so it was a surprise Roma was even nominated in this category.  Typically, big studio productions are the norm.  You see very few independent movies unless they were picked up by a major distributor and were breakout films during the year.  As a result, many great films and performances are overlooked completely.

Still, you want to see your favorite film win so that you can claim bragging rights at the water cooler the next day.  Green Book may not have been very many persons' first choice.  There were those desperately wanting to see Bohemian Rhapsody or A Star is Born win.  However, it is certainly not the "worst best picture winner since Crash."  Looking through this list, there weren't very many memorable winners since 2005, or even before for that matter.  Green Book is as good as most of these best pictures, and had an interesting story to tell.

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