Another late night post --
On my drive home from work this evening, I considered the various nominees for Academy Awards, and realized Sideways and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle are the same movie. One man struggling with love, another struggling in his career, venture from their urban encampment to find salvation in gustatory delight (wine, hamburgers, respectively). Along the way, they experience some lows (running to the hotel naked thru an ostrich field, having Doogie Howser come on your car's passenger seat) and highs (sex that is to be enjoyed for the first time in ages, high, literrally). But, at close, they are in a new place, a better place, and better equipped to confront the next phase of their lives.
Where was the Academy nod for Harold and Kumar, then?
No, I don't think the exclusion was racially-motivated. Rather, I think it's age. While Hollywood butters its bread with cheeseball, cartoonishly-violent summer releases that appeal largely to those in their teens and twenties, Hollywood is middle-aged (and narcissistic). So, when looking at Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and Sideways back-to-back, they gravitate to the one that functions as a (literal) mirror to their lives. And, ba-boom -- the film about two (almost) middle-aged, but definitely mid-life crisis suffering, men leaving LA for the rejuvenating wine-springs of the Santa Barabara coast is their boy (to use Kornheiser and Wilbon's terminology).
Oh, and there is the matter of Sideways having doubtless the greatest Beavis and Butt-head homage yet: Giamatti (cannot remember character's name; it's late, ok?) gets off the phone, having learnt of his novel's third rejection and his agent's rejection of him as a client, pops a pill, and ponies up to the bar to get a full, Got-damned pour. The barkeep proves obstrepourous, so Miles -- now, I remember the character's name -- does the only thing he can think to do: grab the discards pot and pour it all over his face, hoping some will hit his open maw. Damn. All that was needed to make it truly Beavis-worthy would have been him stretching his shirt-collar over his head and screeching, "I am Cornholio. Are you threatening me?"
(Doubtless it would have come to pass, if that Mike Judge would not have needed to receive a writing credit were it to have been included.)
But, I doubt (at least, not openly) that Hollywood's elite are picking their choices by the criteria of Beavis and Butt-head.
It's all age. And that stinks. Because Harold and Kumar was a better film -- hotter dolls, better drugs (and I say that as a sometimes wine-drinker who has never tried marihuana; ether, though...), better 90s sitcom wash-up (Neil Patrick Harris over Lowell from Wings any Got-damned day)... It should have been king.
"It's good to be king". -- Tom Petty (who, as he is a stoner, would have favored Harold and Kumar)
On my drive home from work this evening, I considered the various nominees for Academy Awards, and realized Sideways and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle are the same movie. One man struggling with love, another struggling in his career, venture from their urban encampment to find salvation in gustatory delight (wine, hamburgers, respectively). Along the way, they experience some lows (running to the hotel naked thru an ostrich field, having Doogie Howser come on your car's passenger seat) and highs (sex that is to be enjoyed for the first time in ages, high, literrally). But, at close, they are in a new place, a better place, and better equipped to confront the next phase of their lives.
Where was the Academy nod for Harold and Kumar, then?
No, I don't think the exclusion was racially-motivated. Rather, I think it's age. While Hollywood butters its bread with cheeseball, cartoonishly-violent summer releases that appeal largely to those in their teens and twenties, Hollywood is middle-aged (and narcissistic). So, when looking at Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and Sideways back-to-back, they gravitate to the one that functions as a (literal) mirror to their lives. And, ba-boom -- the film about two (almost) middle-aged, but definitely mid-life crisis suffering, men leaving LA for the rejuvenating wine-springs of the Santa Barabara coast is their boy (to use Kornheiser and Wilbon's terminology).
Oh, and there is the matter of Sideways having doubtless the greatest Beavis and Butt-head homage yet: Giamatti (cannot remember character's name; it's late, ok?) gets off the phone, having learnt of his novel's third rejection and his agent's rejection of him as a client, pops a pill, and ponies up to the bar to get a full, Got-damned pour. The barkeep proves obstrepourous, so Miles -- now, I remember the character's name -- does the only thing he can think to do: grab the discards pot and pour it all over his face, hoping some will hit his open maw. Damn. All that was needed to make it truly Beavis-worthy would have been him stretching his shirt-collar over his head and screeching, "I am Cornholio. Are you threatening me?"
(Doubtless it would have come to pass, if that Mike Judge would not have needed to receive a writing credit were it to have been included.)
But, I doubt (at least, not openly) that Hollywood's elite are picking their choices by the criteria of Beavis and Butt-head.
It's all age. And that stinks. Because Harold and Kumar was a better film -- hotter dolls, better drugs (and I say that as a sometimes wine-drinker who has never tried marihuana; ether, though...), better 90s sitcom wash-up (Neil Patrick Harris over Lowell from Wings any Got-damned day)... It should have been king.
"It's good to be king". -- Tom Petty (who, as he is a stoner, would have favored Harold and Kumar)