People really hate the fact that Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture.

Specifically that it beat Saving Private Ryan.

I disagree with them. I'm glad SIL won. There will be a gazillion more SPRs in the future. War movies are basically 2 hour long cliches filled with hero worship and embarrassing nationalist pandering and racism.

I guess you could say that about many things, but SIL was a unique, fun, wonderfully inspirational and visually appealing journey filled with near perfect performances throughout the cast....... (Ben Affleck excepted but that is to be assumed in all of his performances. he really sucks as an actor when he's doing anything but paddling freshmen in high school hazing rituals).

I believe that you can learn life lessons from SIL, whereas SPR, like all war movies, is focused strictly on the ways individuals react and respond to the most stressful, life-threatening situations imaginable. Sure, that's nice to know and all and maybe will come in handy when the apocalypse hits, but barring that, it really didn't tell me anything I didn't know or am likely to need to know in the future.

Whereas the simple concept of, "I dunno.... It's a mystery" has served me well consistently through the years.

Also, the fact that individuals of that time regularly walked in on each other having sex with their mistresses and did so without any hint of concern for any sort of propriety was quite funny.

Course I'm sure part of my affinity for the film is probably due to the fact that I saw it during my first few weeks of my California experience and as such was in a great place (Cupertino... apparently that is near where the nerds live... thankfully i have escaped their nerdishness) to embrace such a message, but there's nothing I can do about that. I still would rather watch SIL again than SPR if I had to choose one.

Not to mention the fact that any moment spent watching Tom Sizemore is an annoying moment that feels like you're watching Steven Segal or Chuck Norris (ie. an absurdly overrated-by-most, waste of time in 99.5% of cases) so I'd rather not have to do that again.

Bye!