Pajiba

hey Paul, you know how you can get even wither than you are, why don't you choke down an entire gallon of bleach? of course it's not gonna make you sick, you know what? drink two, or three and then you'll be the whitest fairest of all creatures and all those fairies in those white cap will make you there fair king of their fair land.
I saw crash four years ago and I still have diarrhea.

Is the The Parsifal Mosaic the one involving the kids of Nazis who fled to Argentina after WWII? Brother and sister Nazi assassin incest for everyone! Plus, killing with sex!

Hmmm, looked it up, guess it's a different one, though I can't imagine why.

Okay, Dustin, Ron Howard is the second whitest director ever, but at least he's an actual director, unlike that tool Paul Haggis.

That was unfair though, you already knew that, as well as everyone who reads this site, or possesses real brain function.

tcfkab,

I can tackle your sports analogy much easier than the movie one, so here goes:

Great coaches can be a master of managing egos (Phil Jackson), gameplanning (Bill Belicheck), in-game manipulation (Greg Popovich), turning losers into winners (Larry Brown), lineup maneuvering (Joe Torre), assistant hiring (Belicheck again), or any number of behind-the-scenes factors.

Bad coaches can do none of these.

Oooh, oooh! I got it! Mike Brown (Haggis) of the Cleveland Cavaliers (Valley of Elah) is a perfect example of a bad coach (director) who would be terrible with any other team (movie/script). Lebron (TLJ) won them 66 games last year (lesser awards during Awards Season), but the playoffs demand a good coach to guide the team to a championship (Oscar gold). Orlando (every other great movie that year) owned their asses because Lebron (TLJ) couldn't do it all by himself. I think this responds to part of your idea.

I figured Ron Howard would be prepping the inevitable adaptation of "The Last Symbol" for a 2010 release. Alas, not. The Parawhatsit Mosaic sounds pretty boring.

Questions about Haggis. I know he gets bashed around here so my question is, how much of Casino Royale was written by him? I know he co-wrote or submitted some bits, but does anyone know what he brought to it because that movie was freaking terrific so maybe he has "some" talent somewhere.

I'm an everyday man and I'm a douchebag, overrated, phone thrower....

Is directing sort of like coaching a sports team? You never swing a bat or take a jump shot or carry the ball, but you get the credit for winning when you have great players and people think you're to blame for losing when you suck?

I think it really depends upon the director. Some might just be coaches, but clearly there are those who have their own visions - no matter the material. And clearly, those directors deserve credit for truly fulfilling their roles (i.e. Lynch, Cronenberg, Burton etc.).

but the playoffs demand a good coach to guide the team to a championship (Oscar gold).
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Check me if I'm wrong, but a Haggis movie has a Best Picture Oscar. I know it's a movie we hate, but obviously not everyone did.

Let me ask: When we decide we like or don't like a director, aren't we really making a judgment about his film choices? I mean, he's just a hired hand like an actor, right? Somebody (is this the producer's job?) has to offer him/her the gig, right? And the director can accept or turn it down. (OK, Haggis wrote "Crash" too, so he's responsible for that, but just follow along with me.) And many directors know that their strengths tend to run in certain genre, so that's what they stick with. If we don't like the genre, aren't we more apt to believe the director sucks? Does it really have a whole lot to do with the work as it actually appears? Well, some of it does, sure. But ... see what I'm getting at?

Look at the Coens. Now Haggis and the Coens both own Best Picture Oscars. I generally like the Coens' movies, even though I don't always get what they're up to. They have a neat look and style, no denying. But isn't part of what makes them popular in a crowd like ours that their story is so cute? You have two brothers who seem to think with a single brain, one of them casts his wife all the time, they do oddball projects ... of COURSE we love them, before we even see what they put on the screen (I thought "Burn After Reading" was OK but didn't live up to the hype), because they're an interesting story in themselves.

We don't like "Crash." I hated "Crash." But a shitload of people didn't, including the Academy. I DID like "Elah," I thought it was a quiet, well-made movie with a fine actor doing a good job, and a decent mystery story underlying it all.

So ... am I right to call Haggis a hack when he made a movie I liked? Does it say more about my tastes than about his hackiness? Can I STILL call the guy a hack if he made a good movie? Or do I just have to write that off as a lucky accident, because otherwise I have to admit that's he's not really a hack, he just ended up writing and directing a script I didn't like?

Check me if I'm wrong, but a Haggis movie has a Best Picture Oscar. I know it's a movie we hate, but obviously not everyone did.

Nitpick. That assumes that Academy voters aren't morons, and that they pick the film that's (a) objectively best or (b) that they like best, neither of which seem to be entirely true. I seem to remember around the run-up to the Best Picture race that year a number of older Academy members openly refusing to watch Brokeback Mountain or even consider it for the award. That, combined with the 'worthiness' of Haggis' film (everyone hates racism, after all) meant that it was valued high above its actual quality as a film. I don't think Oscar gold is analogous to sporting achievement, unless it's in a sport like gymnastics where judges gives scores; and even then, judges seen to be favouring or ignoring a nation based on prejudice or a sense of worthiness would be disbarred.

Shay, But we don't think ALL the Academy voters are morons, just the ones who vote for movies we don't like, right? And if they vote for the Best Pictures and Actors and Actresses etc. that we like, we think they're geniuses who recognize deserving talent, even though they're basically the same group of people from year to year.

Quite honestly? Nope. There may be some Academy voters who aren't morons, who vote both for and against movies I like for what I'd term the 'right' reasons, but I genuinely think that, on aggregate, they're stupid, shallow morons year in, year out, who get swayed by superficial Oscar bait ("Look! It's a mentally challenged person overcoming adversity! It MUST be good!") and have no sense of whether a film's actually well-made and enjoyable or just ticks the worthy boxes. Looking at the Best Picture winners over the past decade, not once has any of them been my favourite film of the year. It's rare that the winner is even my favourite on the list. I'm delighted when the Academy picks a movie that I support or an actor that I like, because it means a boost for that film/person and more people are likely to see something or someone I like. But I certainly don't think that there's an issue of 'trying to have it both ways' when you're happy about certain Oscar choices while still maintaining that the Oscars as a whole are shambolic.

(Incidentally, when I went to confirm that I haven't particularly liked a Best Picture in the past decade, I was reminded that Chicago is a former winner, and now have Cell Block Tango stuck in my head. Pop Six Squish Uh-uh Cicero Lipschitz! Damn you, cfkab! Pop Six Squish...)

Had "Crash" won nothing, Haggis would at least not be burdened by an undeserved award (I'm looking at you, Paltrow). I, too, liked "Elah". It wasn't perfect, but it was compelling and I thought most of the acting was for the most part good.

I can't get past the first 3 sentences without my eyes glazing over. Zzzzzzz...