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February 10, 2020- by Steven E. Greer, MD
I watched a little bit of the Oscars. I saw the opening monologue with Steve Martin and Chris Rock, then the big speeches by the actors and actresses.
I don’t think there was much of a political tone. Brad Pitt tried to get political and mention impeachment but it fell flat on the audience. He also insinuated that there should be murder and violence against Trump. These guys are a bunch of punks
The Hollywood communists have been thoroughly defeated. Their losing attempt to impeach Trump has been, and forever will be, a humiliating exposure of their impotence. They want to move on like men who could not perform during sex. The audience at the Oscars wanted nothing to do with anti-Trump rhetoric.
By the way, I watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood before the Oscars. That is the Quentin Tarantino movie for which Brad Pitt won his Oscar.
I had low expectation. I can’t stand Quentin Tarantino because of his gratuitous glorification of violence, and the fact that he plagiarized scene-for-scene Reservoir Dogs and parts of Pulp Fiction. Also, he has a formula for pandering to Hollywood, by killing Nazis, depicting chain smoking in most of his scenes, and waxing nostalgic about the film industry.
The only reason any of his films have been a hit is because Tarantino is also a record buff. He has a room in his house designed to look like an old vinyl record store. His unique songs for the soundtrack are what made Pulp Fiction appealing, for example.
With Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he addressed the elephant in the room (i.e. that films like his, glorifying gun violence, lead to real-world violence) by avoiding gun violence in this movie. He murdered people instead with flamethrowers and pit bulls. How kind of him.
Having said all of that, his screenplay was actually pretty good. I was surprised. It had smart plot twists. We all know the story of the Charles Manson murders and we expect this movie to portray that to the end, but it does not. Tarantino cleverly addresses that, and other historic events of the day, by dancing around them yet not delving into the meat of the subject.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was a nice escapism period-piece film. It is the first Quentin Tarantino movie I have watched that was enjoyable.
Tarantino made some interesting social commentaries in this film. He depicts hippies from 1969 as dirty filthy raccoon-like characters. They are his equivalent of the Nazis this time. I think he was making the comparison between hippies then and the far-left anarchists now. There is a secret brewing hostility among mostly-male Hollywood directors and actors against the cannibalistic fascists of today who created the “cancel culture” (The Oscars could not find any official host again this year due to the cancel culture).
Brad Pitt’s character and acting were deserving of the Oscar. Leo DiCaprio’s performance was deserving of his Oscar nomination.
Word of caution: Tarantino has Leo chain smoking in almost every scene. It is repulsive.
This film caused me to spot a bigger theme or trend coming. Hollywood was hit hard by the #MeToo movement, which caused an eradication of nude scenes since 2014 and “diversity police” on sets. There have not been many movies worth watching in half a decade. With the #MeToo movement waning, I think the next “woke” moment to hit Tinseltown will be the realization that glorification of gun violence in movies causes real mass shootings. That is currently a big political topic for the Democrats. Look for future movies to avoid gun violence. It is a good thing that Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger have essentially retired.