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Obligatory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Neb6AqXDBKM
How is it possible that the highest-grossing, best-reviewed film of the year - by critics and audiences - that was credited with saving the film industry amid near-total collapse would not be winning Best Picture at the Oscars on Sunday, March 12th?
There is no question that Top Gun Maverick should be winning. In the real world that is what would happen. It deserves it more than any movie ever has in the 22 years I’ve been covering the Oscars. But will it win? Of course not. ...
For several years now, the Oscars have been in an ongoing tug-of-war over merit and equity. It started with the rise of marginalized voices on social media calling out the Oscars for not giving enough of their wins to women and marginalized groups.
This led to big changes by the Academy to bring in new members and diversify its roster. Every year activists would count the heads to see whether certain criteria had been met.
When Trump won it caused mass panic that led to a kind of ongoing hysteria that targeted filmmakers via social media. La La Land was “racist” so Moonlight won. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was “racist” so The Shape of Water won. Then came Green Book, where the hysteria peaked.
The already declining ratings got even worse as Hollywood took a side against Trump. They just assumed all of their viewers and ticket buyers agreed with them and if they didn’t they were expendable.
As Oscar ratings declined, the tug-of-war between merit and equity continued heating up, largely due to political polarization. At some point, everything Hollywood put out seemed to be in some way political. As a climate of fear gripped Hollywood it began to infect everything from late-night comedy to screenwriting to award shows.
And so “Woke Hollywood” was born.
It would only get worse by 2020, after the Great Awokening in the Summer. By now, equity has easily beaten merit and the public was starting to notice. They couldn’t stand being lectured to by Hollywood elites, especially at awards shows.
By the time COVID hit, it wasn’t just empty theaters threatening to end Hollywood as we once knew it. It was also the newfound zealotry that had captured the entire industry. Prestige movies that came out in 2021 bombed. By 2022, we were all getting nervous. The Oscars were dying on the vine. Their brand seemed to be toxic. Politics, Wokeism, and activism had choked the life out of the film industry and the Oscars.
And then came Top Gun Maverick. The only thing people knew about it was that it was good and it wasn’t “woke.”
There he was, the last movie star, Tom Cruise, doing what we’ve always needed them to do: be great. Be larger than life. But it was more than that. Dripping with testosterone and alpha male energy, Cruise peacocked through the movie in a way that has been mostly absent in movies as studios tried to force women into those roles to re-order the hierarchy and hack our sensibilities.
But there was nothing they could do about it. Top Gun Maverick took off like an F-15.
Even Steven Spielberg noticed that Top Gun Maverick saved Hollywood. ...
The best thing about this movie is that it doesn’t try to fix society, or shame the non-compliant, or even name an enemy. It has one job, to entertain us for a couple of hours, make us feel good and send us back into the world all the better for it. ...
The industry and the Oscars have become an aristocracy of a kind that seems to believe telling stories that resonate inside their Royal Court have any meaning beyond those castle walls. They don’t.
Their primary mission seems to be to drive propaganda to audiences, the kind of thing that so many Conservatives feared back in the 1940s and 50s about Communism. Now it’s not only happening but it’s almost mandated.
There is no question that Top Gun Maverick should be winning. In the real world that is what would happen. It deserves it more than any movie ever has in the 22 years I’ve been covering the Oscars. But will it win? Of course not. ...
Is Val Kilmer dead?
What is Hollywood gonna do this year???
There is no "Top Gun" to bail them out.
One of our readers and a friend of 20 years, Ransome Carl McKissick, Jr., was a US Navy flight officer. He flew off an aircraft carrier deck in an A-6 Prowler electronic warfare plane. Carl was not the pilot. He was one of the very skilled officers who operated the sophisticated electronics systems on this aircraft.
Let us go back to October 1969. I was a student at Tulane and enrolled in the US Navy ROC Program (Reserve Officer Candidate Program). I went to Belle Chase Naval Air Station. My dream was to be a US Navy pilot and fly jets off an aircraft carrier deck. The test seemed simple but it was very sophisticated and clever. I found out that I did not have the proper skill sets, aptitudes, and temperament to be a US Navy pilot. I asked if I could be considered for the job of Radar Intercept Officer. This is the man or woman who sits in the back seat of the fighter and controls the weapons systems. I was told that the US Navy had twelve people with aeronautical engineering degrees applying for each position.
The first filter to flying off an aircraft carrier is this test. Only 10% of the applicants are accepted. One next must go to Aviation Officer Candidate School run by the US Marine Corps. This school was made famous in the Richard Gere movie "An Officer And A Gentleman." 25% of the candidates fail to complete this program.
The 75% of candidates who earn their commission as an Ensign in the US Navy next go to US Navy Flight Training at the Pensacola Naval Air Station. Only 70% of the students complete flight training and earn their coveted wings of gold. Sadly, within the 30% failure rate are students killed in various flying accidents.
The new pilots are then sent to a base like NAS Corpus Christi for advanced flight training to turn them into fighter pilots and Radar Intercept Officers capable of flying advanced fighters like the FA-18 Hornet and F-35 Lightning II.
It costs over $1,000,000 to train each one of these highly capable men and women. I'm a great fan of Tom Wolfe's book "The Right Stuff." He gave fascinating statistics that stay with me for life. Let us assume that 100 US Navy aviators and US Marine Corps aviators report for duty on their first aircraft carrier. Each man and woman decide to stay in the US Navy for 20 years. If there are no wars or military actions, only 80 of these highly qualified and trained people will live to retire after 20 years. The other 20 will be killed in various accidents. If wars come up, the loss rate could be higher.
Rolling Stone magazine once did an in-depth expose on pilots and crew members of the US Navy F-14 fighter. Time and again, they asked the question: "Why do you do such a dangerous job?" Most responded: "Because it is so much fun!"