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EspañaBarbra should have been 1st female Best Director for Yentl
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Joined: Mar 2010
Posts: 1
Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - 15:34
Barbra should have been 1st female Best Director for Yentl
Watching the Oscars on Sunday was bittersweet...watching Barbra present for best director when everyone knows how the Academy has dissed her from day one...she got ripped off so badly with Yentl...absolutely beautifully made and the soundtrack stunning...there are many good female and male directors but none can director, and produce music like Barbra...she is a multitalented creative genius and I hope that someone will invent an award that will rival the ol' boy Oscars...Barbra you are a giant among men...
Replies for this Forum Topic
Certainly Yentl is and was a unique film at the time, for which Barbra deserves all credit, however I think Prince of tides was definitely a winner and the Academy's decision to overlook Barbra as Best director was surely political.
Hollywood is probably more about politics than Washington, at least I get that impression from here overseas.
Barbra Streisand will win a Best Director Oscar if she directs a subject that would be particularly popular with the Oscar voters, such as a "Gypsy" remake--for show business industry members who have roots in the Broadway/New York/musical theater elements of entertainment--or the film version of "The Normal Heart"--again, insiders with Broadway/New York/Tony Award roots, plus the GLBT members of the entertainment industry. As good as "Yentl" was, it was a subject close to the heart of Streisand, but not necessarily Oscar's. Streisand has to aim her Cupid's arrow at the soft spot in the heart of the average Oscar voter.
I'm still freakin pissed off over that, and there is no way to correct that.
It's like using the stupid asterisk in the baseball historical scores. They should put an asterisk next to Barbra's name in the "Official Academy Awards log books", meaning that Streisand would have won "Best Director" IF they (Academy) had not had been such misogynsts. (By the way, women can be some of the worst misogynsts- you don't have to just be a man).
Even though it may not have hit the "soft spot" of the Academy voters, they should have enough good sense and integrity to judge someone on their talent and their directing and cinematograhy skills- not on what made them feel good or powerful at the time. It was all political. Do you know how much thought went into some of those scenes and shots? It wasn't all done with computer graphic art like a lot of stuff is. The compostion of those scenes were pure art. Rembrandt is one of the HARDEST artists to copy- some of the best artists in the world still cannot do it successfully- simply because of the type of palette he used, the pigments and the way he primed his canvas'. Barbra was able to reproduce that EXACT look on film, but they were too ignorant to recognize that. I'm not just saying that because I love Barbra so much, (which by the way, I do), i'm saying that because I STUDIED REMBRANDT- art is my thing. I went to the Louve Museum in Paris from Germany on the bullet train by myself, not speaking any foreign language, and with only a few euros in my pocket to see some of his works, I wanted to go to Amsterdam but I ran out of time, and money. However, the general public was wise enough to recognize it was something special- hence all the people's choice awards Barbra won for that movie.
They have always been that way with Streisand. It was another way of trying to make sure she didn't "get too big for her britches." "Who does she think she is producing, acting, directing- no one else has done it before, why does she think she can?"
At that time, I think it was the "good 'ol boy" club back then. In my heart of hearts, Barbra will always be the first female director- plain and simple. While Kathryn Bigelow may have had an ok film with "The Hurt Locker" - I feel that was done sort of as a "try to correct the mistakes of the past, so they gave it to a woman this time," out of the choices, I think "Avatar" or "Precious" were better. (Even though "Precious" was disturbing as hell, sometimes art is disturbing if it is relfecting a disturbing truth that needs to be confronted.)
Sorry, I call 'em as I see 'em, and that's how I see that. You touched a very sensitive spot with me with this topic. Even 28 years later, I still see it that way.