Can Hollywood See the Tiger?

Salman Rushdie talks about the possibility of the strike in Hollywood ushering in a new influx of foreign films. I hope so, I'm pretty tired of a lot of the stuff coming out of Hollywood right now. The fact that Gladiator garnered the most nominations is a disgrace with the two best movies of the year competing with it. For the record, I think Traffic and Crouching Tiger are the only two movies in the category and I give the award to Traffic. While I think Crouching Tiger is slightly superior in its artfulness, Traffic is too directly intertwined with so many of the issues that underly our country right now. More importantly, they are issues our politicians refuse to deal with logically. One of the things I found most dis-heartening about the Clinton administration was its continual waging of the "war on drugs." For eight years he allowed McCaffery to relentlessly dump money and arms on Colombia without in any way equivalently boosting treatment centers in the US. He still believes that drugs are confined to the inner-cities and that all we need do is shut down some dealers in Colombia and the problem will go away. If he doesn't feel this way, his actions do not indicate it.

To return to Hollywood, however, I hope the "Academy" recognizes that Gladiator doesn't belong in any category save special effects. I hope Traffic is recognized not simply because it was so spectacular, but because its based on a five hour film that was made 11 years ago. Though I haven't seen the original ("Traffik") it was clear in one scene that some of the script was a bit dated.

Catherine Zeta-Jones amazes a Colombian drug lord with a plastic child's toy made of plastic. The toy is actually 95% cocaine. The toy is not detectable by drug sniffing dogs and yields almost 98% pure cocaine when dissolved. This is an older smuggling technique that was used not with toys, but with dog crates. Those huge beige plastic dog crates. 95% cocaine. Stunning amounts of coke in them.

Again I digress. In the face of the great movies that came out this year, the academy will truly have shown that it can be bought if Gladiator wins anything but special effects.
- posted by levinson @ 3/09/2001 09:06:00 AM