i was doing a gis looking for a picture of a little kid typing and this was in the first page of results so fuck it, this is the image i'm using. it is amazing.
i clicked on the article about the oscars by accident (i was meaning to click on the link to look at the fashions, because i am shallow and vapid and not very intellectual, and therefore really prefer not to read the articles in the newspaper) and was instantly mesmerized by how horribly, horribly written this is. it reads like an overly ambitious literature paper in an 8th grade english class. these are actual phrases contained in this article:
"the 80th annual Academy Awards gave a bruised movie industry a chance to refocus its ever-inward gaze on laurels"
"Marion Cotillard won the Oscar for best actress for her incarnation of the tormented chanteuse"
"Tilda Swinton took best supporting actress for playing a nervous wreck of a corporate lawyer who throws morality under the bus of her ambition"
"Juno, in which a pregnant teenager forges her own solutions"
"That sense of being unmoored was not the only disconnect on display."
"Cate Blanchett picked up nominations in both actress categories, but Angelina Jolie (“A Mighty Heart”) and Julia Roberts (“Charlie Wilson’s War”) went unacknowledged." (n.b. this part isn't poorly written, it's just the most confusing expression of surprise i've ever read.)
"Rather, relative unknowns like the 21-year-old Ellen Page and the 13-year-old Saoirse Ronan nabbed nominations for best actress (“Juno”) and best supporting actress (“Atonement”), respectively. For that matter, Mr. Clooney (“Michael Clayton”) and Johnny Depp (“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”) picked up best-actor nominations [ . . . ] Instead, the megawatts would be supplied by the awards presenters — Mr. Hanks and Mr. Washington among them, along with stars like Jessica Alba, Renée Zellweger, Forest Whitaker, John Travolta and Harrison Ford" (is it just me, or is this actually saying that jessica alba and forest whitaker are more famous than george clooney?)
"there were many areas in which excitement could be seen bubbling up out of the ground like Daniel Plainview’s black gold" (this statement immediately follows a mention of heath ledger, i swear to god)
the last line of the article says, "If small and dark films captured the attention of critics and the academy, it was not for lack of ambition among Hollywood studios." and that's it. it follows that thing about excitement bubbling up like black gold (texas tea, etc). it is completely disconnected from the rambling, somewhat inappropriate bit in the piece going on about how nominating movies like there will be blood is dangerous and stupid and probably anti-american and will render the academy irrelevant because everyone likes titanic or something, which is kind of confusing because then he points out that the nominated films all received much larger than usual "oscar bumps" in their profits so actually people do pay attention to the oscars and it's good for everyone! but anyway, yeah, the ending of the article is like, did you die at the keyboard? pass out? where is the rest of the article? i mean, thank you for not continuing any further but where is your editor to get rid of this hanging sentence? it is especially hilarious because the lede is all about how some people think that no country for old men has a shitty non-ending! maybe this conclusion is meta?
anyway, the article's author also vaguely gives away the ending of no country for old men, which i still have yet to see, expresses surprise that owen wilson did not reference his suicide attempt while giving away the best animated short award, and actually implies that jon stewart was funny (this was easily the most baffling part).
how do people like this maintain paying jobs at reputable newspapers writing like this? anyway, my service to you today: i read this so that you didn't have to.
(ok, i just looked closer and this article was written not by one talentless hack, but three of them! what the fuck!)
UPDATE: it's good the guardian must've seen this piece and thought, "how can we make our oscar reporting even lamer?" this is the worst attempt at zing culture i've ever read! it's like an snl castmember trying to do an imitation of michael musto via rex reed, but somehow worse than that would even imply. british people are terrible.
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