Another Kind of Award Show

My goodness. I watched the BAFTA awards this evening -- the British film academy awards -- it was only 2 hours long and immensely more worthwhile than that Grammy fiasco. Interesting to see it now -- more evidence that the Universe does what it does with purpose. If you look for meaning in the world you will find it.

The five movies up for best film were Brokeback Mtn (which won), Capote, The Constant Gardener, Good Night and Good Luck, and Crash. I can vouch for Crash, at least, which was brilliant. And nary a fart joke or a giant computer-generated ape in any of the list... So I got to thinking about the movie industry and how I just might have given it short shift in my "art is irrelevant" post last night. The famous producer of Chariots of Fire and The Killing Fields and Memphis Belle was on the BAFTAs and talked about how he retired from the film industry 8 years ago thinking there was no place for him and his kind of film anymore. And he pointed out these five nominees for 2005 and said how grateful he was to those who'd made them -- thus proving him wrong.

Gee. The medium that gave us Memento... The Sixth Sense... American Beauty... LA Confidential... Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon... The Motorcycle Diaries... Run Lola Run... Dark City... I mean, wow. They don't all disappear, do they? Gawd, I watched Citizen Kane the other day. Like 60 years old, and there I was marveling at this black-and-white thing. The ability of film (that is, images plus music plus story) to convey and create emotion...

And my friend Jen made a darn good point, too, about music. Even when I'm totally uninspired, as I have been recently, music inspires me. it's not all American Idol and Kanye West, is it? The entertainment industry may be blockbuster-obsessed, but that's not to say art itself is made irrelevant by the slimy, talentless leeches who made a business out of it. It's the concept of art as industry that's totally frelled, ain't it boys and girls? Just because The Wedding Crashers makes more money than Serenity did, doesn't make it better art, of course. Just because something has a larger audience doesn't make it the only thing that's out there.

Kinda' like politics, now that I think of it. The system we have is the one that majority-rule gave us, right?

Hmm.... If only some of these many hundreds of seemingly important ideas floating around in my head would distill somehow into a formattable story-type thing, I might just get inspired again. But right now, nothing I've got started and/or waiting to be started seems to interest me. And I figure, if I can't be interested enough to write the damn things, then I sure as hell cannot expect their eventual/potential readers to give a crap.

It's a strange kind of writer's block, the sort I haven't had since... gee, I don't know really. Maybe never. I'm 36. Is this the bleak Frodo-and-Sam-on-the-hill-overlooking-Mordor vision of an oncoming midlife crisis? Or what?

--CAS
confused, bleary,
entirely too deep into house-buying financials,
and questioning every damn thing