‘Django’ Is Great, But Not Oscar-Worthy
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes at Esquire that while he was entertained by Quentin Tarantino’s slavery-themed Western Django Unchained, he doesn’t agree that the film deserved an Academy Award nomination.
First, let’s get this straight: I liked Django Unchained and have been recommending it to everyone. It’s gritty and lively and filled with entertaining scenes. It zigs when you think it will zag, and, as with all Quentin Tarantino movies, it has flashes of brilliance. The character of Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), the malevolent house slave who is the real brains behind the plantation, is an inspired creation. His smug compulsion to destroy the innocence and humanity that he has lost but sees in others echoes the best of villains from Harry Lime in The Third Man to John Claggart in Billy Budd. (And Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen? He’s no Fifth-Floor Guardian, but he deserves an Oscar. As do Jamie Fox, Christoph Waltz, and Kerry Washington.)
But should Django have been nominated by the Academy for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscars? No. Not unless the Academy starts new categories such as Most Entertaining Movie or Best Kick-a*s Movie or Movie I Most Wish I Was In. Until then, the Academy members have a responsibility to promote films that demonstrate the highest quality on both a technical and literary level.
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Holly-weird confirmed who ‘Django’s’ real star is by giving the Oscar to the white German Dude [aka Dr King Schultz / Christoph Waltz], who was the only cast member up for an Oscar.
So are we now bent all out of shape because a film featuring a Black in a leading role did not win an Oscar!
If a Black is in the film and we like it, it’s supposed to win right?
Does anyone know and understand what the criteria is to even be nominated?
Is it arbitrary? Is it subjective?
I’ve only seen the Oscar’s several times, none lately, it seems to me however part of the drama, part of the excitement is in the surprise’s; each year, often, a film wins that was a long shot, or know one expected to win, and just as often a film lose’s when most thought it had a excellent chance of winning!
Do we now have to legislate that at least one film staring a Black has to at least be nominated each year!
Thank God that they didn’t demean us further by giving that piece of c**p an Oscar! I was insulted by that “spoof” of black life, and life in particular during slavery time. Jamie in a loud blue suit, Samuel Jackson, painted blacker than he is, revelling in such a demeaning role, where even a a real Sambo would not have been that self-hating. Why, great pleasure seekers do you think that Jackson had to be painted blacker than he already is–because black is evil?
In all the killing we never thought of the fact that
the director did not let you see the face of the white woman
being killed, wonder why was that, black people?
Footnote, I saw the movie by alternative means! Ha!
Pathetic, I say, Pathetic.