peterbirks | Martin misses out again

So, Scorsese once again misses out on the Oscars. I have no view on whether The Aviator deserved best movie or whether Scorsese deserved best director. When it comes to betting on the Oscars I have always been of the opinion that seeing the films is a disadvantage. The Oscars is about politics and money, not about quality. This is nothing new. Orson Welles' Citizen kane was beaten for best picture in 1941 by the masterpiece How Green Was My Valley. And I picked up a nice few quid on Adrien Brody to be best actor in The Pianist (8-to-1 with Ladbrokes) because I reckoned that people who felt they could not bring themselves to vote for Polanski would vote for Brody as a proxy. And they did. Actually, they voted Polanski in as well (14-to-1 with Ladbrokes) which was something of a surprise.

The Acadamy hates Scorsese. I've never quite worked out why it is, but dislike him they do. In a sense I think that it's good that The Aviator didn't win, because any award now would really be an apology for the failure to give him best director for Raging Bull, or Taxi Driver.

I watched After Hours last night, the first time I have seen this movie from Scorsese's "forgotten years" (in this case, 1985). It looks lightweight and episodic (Patricia Arquette, for example, snuffs it within 25 minutes, despite being one of the film's leading characters). Of course, any movie with Linda Fiorentini in it is worth watching, and one with her topless (albeit only briefly) is doubly so. And by the end I'd come to the conclusion that this was actually a rather better movie than I had initially given it credit for.

It's very rare that I sit down in front of the TV and just relax with a movie these days (see the "transferring to DVD" fiasco earlier). I should do it more often.