The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg has posted Oscar-race opinions from a refreshingly blunt-spoken, presumably long-of-tooth female Academy member who hails from the public relations branch, and I’m telling you that if this woman wrote a daily online column with this kind of double-barrelled candor I’d be worried about the competition. Her views about Citizenfour are appalling (Edward Snowden has “a God complex”?) and stating that Birdman‘s “single-shot thing gave me a headache” probably reveals more about her core psychology than the film, but otherwise everything she says cuts right through the b.s. and the hoo-hah. Terrific stuff.
Quote #1: “I put in the Inherent Vice screener, and it became apparent that it’s a terrible, incoherent movie, so I turned it off. I thought it was not possible for me to hate something more than I hated The Master, but I hated this more.” Quote #2: Boyhood‘s Patricia Arquette “gets bonus points for having no work done during the 12 years. If she had had work done during the 12 years, she would not be collecting these statues.” Quote #3: “When a movie about black people is good, members vote for it. But if the movie isn’t that good, am I supposed to vote for it just because it has black people in it?” (HE response: “If you wind up writing a column you can’t say stuff like this. You’ll get beaten up by the p.c. Stalinists and guys like David Poland will tweet that you’re a racist. Trust me.”) Special “take heed, Sasha Stone and Anne Thompson” quote: “If you told me when I saw Boyhood that it would win best picture — or even be in the running — I would have told you that you were insane. I thought it was ambitious and a directorial triumph, but I never thought, ‘Wow, this is The One!'” HE aside: Is this woman friendly with Steve Pond by any chance?