March 05, 2006

Paradise Lost

06.03.05.PradiseLost-X.gif

From The Washington Post: Oscars for Osama by Charles Krauthammer. (via TIA Daily)

Nothing tells you more about Hollywood than what it chooses to honor. Nominated for best foreign-language film is "Paradise Now," a sympathetic portrayal of two suicide bombers. Nominated for best picture is "Munich," a sympathetic portrayal of yesterday's fashion in barbarism: homicide terrorism.

But until you see "Syriana," nominated for best screenplay (and George Clooney, for best supporting actor) you have no idea how self-flagellation and self-loathing pass for complexity and moral seriousness in Hollywood.

From the Telegraph: Bereaved parents call on Oscars to drop suicide bomb movie by Harry de Quetteville.

The families of three Israeli teenagers who were killed in a suicide bombing are appealing to the organisers of the Oscars to drop a film from the nominations because they say it glorifies terrorism.

Paradise Now, a film about two friends from the West Bank who decide to carry out a joint suicide attack in Israel, will compete in the best foreign language category at Sunday's Academy Awards.

Sunday is also the third anniversary of a attack by terrorists on a bus in the northern Israeli town of Haifa, which killed 17 people and wounded 53 others.

Among the dead were Yuval Mendelvitch, a 13-year-old boy whose parents yesterday sent a petition to Sid Gains, the president of the Academy of Motion Pictures, calling for Paradise Now's nomination to be withdrawn.

Via Little Green Footballs: Director of "Paradise Now" Would Be a Suicide Bomber.

In other words, had you been living in the territories, you would have become a shahid (martyr)? Abu-Assad hesitates for a second before replying, “yes.” He recounts an episode in which he was humiliated by a soldier at the Kalandiya checkpoint near Jerusalem, and says this was what made him realize what runs through the heads of people who later become suicide bombers.

You feel like such a coward it kills you, he describes, saying this cowardice makes people start hating life and feel impotent.

I realized, Abu-Assad explains, that when a man systematically goes through such humiliation, he chooses to kill his own impotency by carrying out an act of “let me die with the philistines.”

UPDATE -- March 6: From FoxNews: Academy Awards Ratings Down 8% From '05.

An estimated 38.8 million people watched the Academy Awards on ABC, down 8 percent from last year and the second-worst showing in nearly two decades, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Posted by Forkum at March 5, 2006 06:59 PM
CFBooks_ad.gif