Hollywood: Going Forward AND Backward

I've never really looked up to Hollywood as the benchmark of masterful filmmaking. Capitalist filmmaking, yes. Filmmaking as an art? Not exactly. Most Hollywood filmmakers look at cinema as a piggy bank, not as an art medium.

On the same note, I never really took the Oscars® seriously, it's mostly just a popularity contest. Oscar® — the tiny, golden, (and probably) naked guy — mostly favors the popular and the money maker, not the artistic. Just think: Hitchcock never won an Oscar.

White Oscar

With (alleged) propaganda film American Sniper getting lots of publicity and attention, it wouldn't be a surprise if the film wins the major awards at this year's Oscars.

Gone Girl Finds Herself

Forsaken by that Lady fair

She glides unheeding through them all

Covering her brow to hide the tear

That still, though checked, trembles to fall

She hurries through the outer Hall

And up the stairs through galleries dim

That murmur to the breezes' call

The night-wind's lonely vesper hymn.

- Emily Brontë

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK

Peter Weir, 1975

Forming a sense of attachment is often easier than the mere thought of detachment. Change is the only thing that is permanent in this world. That's a fact that we know. So why do we still cling to things of temporary existence? Simply because we want what we can't have.

In Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, a group of schoolgirls and their teacher disappear during a Valentine's Day picnic at Hanging Rock. Those left behind are shaken to their Victorian core.