Everyone hates each other — it’s Hollywood

On his show Friday night Bill Maher mentioned how suspicious it is that even though "The Hurt Locker" has been out for many months only in the last two weeks are people coming forward to questions its credibility. I agree. This has all the stench of a plot launched by someone competing against Hurt for Oscar glory. But as this article from the UK Times online points out, myriad are the plots afoot.


Everyone hates each other — it’s Hollywood

Chris Ayres, Los Angeles

It is a night of glittering statues, pristine red carpets and gracious speeches. But behind the air-kisses, smiles and displays of magnanimity at the annual Oscars ceremony, dirty, though often expensive, battles go on, with competitors more than willing to knife each other if it means taking home a trophy. After all, winning means more business at the box office and higher fees in the future. Not to mention the bragging rights and publicity.

This year, perhaps because of the recession, which has made the financial stakes of an Oscar win so much higher, the tactics appear to have sunk to depths even lower than those in the past. Hence the controversial announcement by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences this week that it was banning a producer of The Hurt Locker — the Best Picture favourite — from attending Sunday night’s ceremony.

It is the first such order in the organisation’s 83-year history and an extraordinary rebuke for “negative campaigning”, given that the worst punishments previously handed down have involved nothing harsher than a studio’s ticket allocation being reduced.

The ban was provoked by the producer, Nicolas Chartier, allegedly sending out a mass e-mail to friends and colleagues, many of them academy members, encouraging them to vote for his low-budget Iraq war thriller and “not the $500 million film” — a non-too-subtle reference to James Cameron’s Avatar.

for the rest go here:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article7048862.ece