ESSIE, THE OSCARS AND WHAT STOOD OUT FOR HER (ERR ME)

Well... Last weekend WAS all about the Oscars, wasn't it

The one big surprise for me personally was the fact that Boyhood and Richard Linklater didn't so much as get a look-in. I'm not going down the #BoyhoodWasRobbed route but come on... They should have given him Best Director, let Birdman have Best Picture, fine... *grumble grumble*
But anyway, that is not the snub I am the most concerned with this year. I watched Selma the morning of the awards ceremony and oh my Goodness, that film WAS robbed... Check out Film Debate (see link on the right) for my review of it later this week for the details as to why I think this... But in the meanwhile...

To continue on the subject briefly, of course this years ceremony saw its' fair share of social issues. Two women stood out this year. One was Patricia Arquette who used her time on the podium to champion equal rights for women in the domain of wage equality... Check out the speech if you haven't caught it already... 

Reese Witherspoon also used her moment in the limelight to take a stand with her #AskHerMore campaign, challenging journalists to ask actresses deeper questions and not get focused solely on the dresses they were wearing... Then of course when she did finally tweet "who she was wearing" she was promptly hauled over the coals for it... I mean come on - she couldn't really win, could she - a whole different set of people would have hauled her over a whole different set of coals if she HADN'T revealed the darn thing... What she did was lend a strong voice to an important discussion... Which is what we should be concentrating on at this stage because it is an argument that is far from being won... 

But let's remember folks, when it's all said and done it's all showbiz - it's all a bit of fun. Discussing them and arguing about them is well and good but let's not get carried away, they are very, very far from being the end all and be all of the cinema... 

This week I mull over not one but two films I rather love... They are far from being new but they are definitely classics... Classics that still offer up a lot of food for thought... 

happy viewing!

Essie