Oscars Ignore True American Values

What was it that made the Academy Awards seem so flat and tired on Sunday night?

My guess is that the folks at home know that today's most compelling and widely-watched films worldwide were not among the nominees, that the films likely to win Oscars of, by and for the liberal Hollywood elite have become irrelevant.

We are now at war, and the world's most watched films are carefully staged as social media propaganda to create emotional shock and awe — terror and fury — by the terrorist government that calls itself the Islamic State Caliphate. These snuff films of ISIS feature involuntary actors — real people — being beheaded, burned alive, or killed in other gruesome ways by Islamist executioners.

Famed Hollywood actor-director Clint Eastwood created a film of today's real war shown from America's side — "American Sniper," which Sunday won only the Oscar for "Best Sound Editing." Academy voters rejected "American Sniper" for Best Picture, and its star Bradley Cooper for Best Actor. Eastwood was not even nominated for Best Director.  Hollywood again demonstrated the huge gulf between its values and America's.

In one of the bright moments of the awards, emcee Neil Patrick Harris noted that last year's Hollywood films combined have grossed $600 million — with half of this (roughly $320 million U.S.) coming from the box office of just one film, "American Sniper."

As the liberal New York Daily News observed, "American Sniper" was "the lone blockbuster among the eight nominees for top film." Eddie Redmayne won Best Actor for his portrayal, in "The Theory of Everything," of British scientist Stephen Hawking's real-life struggle with Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS) and his love and marriage with a woman who in real life would later divorce him.

Best Picture went to "Birdman" (or "The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance") which is about Hollywood's favorite subject, itself and the life of actors, writers, and others in the wonderful business of show. Full disclosure. Your columnist is a member of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and a voter for the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Birdman's plot recalls the old joke about the four stages of an actor's career:

• Who is Michael Keaton?
• Get me Michael Keaton.
• Get me a Michael Keaton type.
• Who is Michael Keaton?

This film echoes the career of Keaton, who decades ago starred as Batman, Beetlejuice and Mr. Mom. In Birdman, Keaton plays an actor whose career is nearing bottom long after he starred as a superhero that still possesses, haunts and empowers him in odd ways.

Is Birdman a black comedy? A parody of European art films? Or, is it magical realism in the Latin American style of deceased Nobel laureate novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Its Mexican director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, on Sunday, also won the Oscar for Best Director.

During Sunday's broadcast the first black president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, gave a vague but rousing defense of free speech so broad it could be taken as an attack on President Barack Obama's plan to turn the Internet into a government-controlled, conservative-stifling public utility.

President Isaacs has been deflecting threats by Rev. Al Sharpton to protest the lack of minority nominees for the awards after Oprah Winfrey's "Selma" fell short at the box office. The Academy, 95 percent white, 76 percent male, whose average member is a limousine liberal white male 63 years old, is an easy target for such a shakedown.

"I would love to see . . . a greater cultural diversity among our nominees," said Isaacs in January. Don't expect to see conservative films in that diversity. Oscar voters stiffed Angelina Jolie's true story, pro-American film "Unbroken."

Two other Oscar moments of light. When the America-bashing film "Citizenfour" won for Best Documentary Feature, Neil Patrick Harris quipped, "Edward Snowden could not be here tonight, for some treason." Do not expect this Politically-incorrect emcee back next year.

To their credit, musician John Legend and rapper Common spoke out against the murderers of French satire magazine editors and against the "oppressors in Hong Kong." Without naming names, they thus attacked Islamist terrorists and the Marxist dictators in Communist China. Hollywood, in future films and Oscar shows, tell the whole truth.

Lowell Ponte is co-author, with Craig R. Smith, of "The Great Withdrawal"; "Crashing the Dollar: How to Survive a Global Currency Collapse"; "The Great Debasement: The 100-Year Dying of the Dollar and How to Get America's Money Back"; "The Inflation Deception: Six Ways Government Tricks Us . . . And Seven Ways to Stop It"; and "Re-Making Money: Ways to Restore America's Optimistic Golden Age." Read more reports from Lowell Ponte — Click Here Now.