Can’t watch the video right this minute? FINE. Check out the panel below.
But I think it’s even better when you can watch their delivery. (The video’s only a couple of minutes long.)
And listen. There’s a really thoughtful (if long) read by Grantland’s Mark Harris. The fact that artistic license was taken in this movie has spurred conversation that centers on Lyndon B. Johnson, rather than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He talks about how that contributed to the movie falling out of competition for the Oscars:
“And so, to venerate Johnson and themselves, they have defamed this film and advanced a counter-myth about LBJ that is, in many cases, shamefully disingenuous. Rebuttals are beginning to appear — last week, The New Yorker published a detailed one by Amy Davidson called “Why ‘Selma’ Is More Than Fair to L.B.J.” But the damage has been done. While Selma managed a Best Picture nomination, its Oscar chances, whatever they had been, are diminished (never let it be said that Johnson’s men don’t know how to get what they want). And although, over time, movies as good as Selma always survive this kind of piling-on, the asterisk that attaches itself to them can be long-lived as well. A spurious, discrediting taint — “Isn’t that the movie that lied about LBJ?” — may cling to Selma for years in references, hyperlinks, and stories about whatever next year’s victim of this process turns out to be, while the prevarications of its accusers, if recent history is any indication, may be shrugged off as part of the Oscar news cycle.
Is that a fair reason for a great movie to be disqualified? I know which way I lean on that answer. How about you?
