in Oscar nomination notes…
I don’t ever think I’ve seen a movie as savaged as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close critically earn Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor.
Also, I don’t care that Viola Davis & Octavia Spencer could win Oscars in the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories — The Help shouldn’t win anything. I’m sick of “magical white woman” movies, and despite the fact that The Help was well-acted by all in it, particularly Davis & Spencer, that was not only a “magical white woman” movie and book but entirely reductive about the nature of Southern racism and Jim Crow. It’s easy to reduce the horrific racisim to Jessica Chastain’s character and glide over the truth that it’s really the casual racism and tacit approval of everyone else allowed it to fester for centuries. But showing how ostensibly good people do nothing is not exactly movie material, thus we get this crap.
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