The Academy Awards 2014 - newer horizon's
The spectacular show of the
86th Academy awards lived up to its expectations yesterday at the
Hollywood Center, California. The pride that the academy have in their movies
and their creators is incredible. It’s a proud Academy that awarded Lupita
Nyongo, a Kenyan for her brilliant performance as an abused slave in “Twelve
years a slave”; a slightly unfair Academy that ignored the intense rendering of
the Somali pirate Muse, by Barkhad Abdi (an ex Limo driver) in “Captain
Phillips”; a socially sensitive academy that honored the Aids story with an
Oscar to “Dallas buyers’ club”; a balanced academy that chose not to honor
“Gravity” as the best motion picture; an artistically sensitive academy that
decorated the mature and deep performance of Kate Blanchet in “Blue Jasmine”,
overlooking the likes of Meryl Streep and Sandra bullock; a playful academy
that acknowledges the universal language of Animation in “Frozen” – and more
importantly, an academy that values its history and its quest for perfection in
the art of Motion pictures.
Every single artist honored
was worthy enough to hold aloft the Knight in Gold plated Britannium; clutching
the crusader’s sword, standing over a reel of film with five spokes depicting
the five seminal aspects of Film making: Actors, writers, directors, producers
and technicians – all held in equal scale in the creation of a film and duly
respected by the fraternity. Each one of those coveted seats in the auditorium
is filled with a person whose contribution has helped move the bar of film artistry
ever so slightly higher than before. There are amongst them legends like Meryl Streep,
who has been nominated a whopping eighteen times and won it on three occasions,
and on the other hand we also have the unlucky, charming and talented Leonardo
de caprio nominated five times; but never once had the honor of walking on to
stage to receive it.
The world criticizes the
Academy awards as biased, American- centric, and to some extent racist as well.
So be it…. All these futile sentiments
are stilled when one looks at their work and art: The
degree of devotion, love, hard work, and unflinching commitment to the
authenticity of the medium; yet popular, entertaining and commercially
successful – they have time and again proved that they are the undisputed
masters of Movie making. Their work touches all fringes of social fabric and
they are not afraid to break taboos. One of the persistent tragedies of any art
is that it quickly becomes a cliché and starts becoming monotonous, but
American Films have not fallen into that rut. Year on Year, we are bedazzled by
the freshness of their thought and brilliance of its implementation. Who could
have thought that a dry run of the mill event in the
Deep waters of Somalian coast
could be transformed into a story (Captain Phillips) that could showcase the
deepest of emotions in two diametrically opposite personalities; or a hundred
other films which draw inspiration from common place incidents but turned into
a social drama by the Midas touch of a great director or an actor.
Well, I can keep waxing
eloquent about this all day long, but the purpose of this short essay is to pay
my compliments to the lovely winners of this year’s Oscar’s. They have given me
many moments of deep pleasure and contemplation. That according to me is
entertainment at its best…….
God bless…..
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