Steve Regan, King of Hull - He's Far From Dead 7th March 2006

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Does anybody - apart from a few fluff-headed showbiz presenters on GMTV - care a flying fig for the Oscars? I certainly find this annual gong-fest intensely boring, and so do most TV viewers, since the ratings have been falling year on year. In fact, I find the whole of the modern Hollywood film industry and its, ahem, "stars" fantastically dull. Take the so-called top actresses. They seem like simpering anorexics to me, indistinguishable from each other, mainly blonde and forever having gushy "blonde moments" when interviewed.

Today's leading ladies seem quite without personality (with the possible exception of Sandra Bullock). When you consider the ballsy Hollywood women stars of the past they seemed so much larger, more interesting and they simply exuded charisma. I refer to the likes of Shelley Winters, Bette Davis, Lauren Bacall, Shirley McLaine and Deborah Kerr. They were REAL women. Compare that lot to today's coy young beanpoles such as Reese Witherspoon and Britain's own Rachel Weisz, both Oscar winners this year, and both bland beyond belief.

Witherspoon should have received the Halle Berry Award for emotional incontinence.. on the strength of her Oscar acceptance speech alone. Then there's Gwyneth Paltrow, the drippiest, most tediously macrobiotic female thesp of the lot. The modern film industry is pants anyway. In our own country, our cinemas are packed with US films. Why? How did it come to pass that British films can hardly get made unless they conform to a stereotypical view of British culture that will please dumb-ass American audiences, and will always feature a Yank actor in a prominent role?

Why should British culture, in movie-making terms, be relegated in its home territory to the status of minority and art-house cinema? Why should the makers of culturally British films face such Herculean struggles to bust through the American distributors' stranglehold on UK cinema screens in order to get their flicks shown at all in a few outlets? US films are mainly full of whiz-bang special affects, gun-toting, car chases and charmless US-style swearing. (Yet it is funny how swearing by British characters in films always seems funnier and more satisfying somehow. I wish they'd make a sequel to Withnail and I.)

There is now precious little subtlety to be found in mainstream US films; no clever dialogue, no soul, no profound character development, no magic. In the main, these are movies made for morons to enjoy. Also, what the hell has happened to Hollywood's leading men? Once they were either craggy or characterful, or manly and charismatic - fellas such as Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, Richard Widmark and John Wayne. But these days, the leading men are prettier than the leading women! Think of Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Brad Pitt and Jake Gyllenhaal. They all look like pouting girls. * * *

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