The Reader: The Reason People Hate The Oscars

There are two types of movies that win Academy Awards. One kind where you watch an Oscar winning / nominated film and you say "that was really good." The other is when you watch an Oscar winning / nominated film, you get about 48 minutes into it, and you say, "This piece of shit won an Oscar?!?"

Trust me, I know the Oscars are not a popularity contest. If that were the case what ever movie made the most money would win Best Picture, and Michael Bay and 80's era Steven Spielberg would be sleeping on a bed made of little gold men. (Well Michael Bay probably does anyway, cause he is a weird fruit.) They are supposed to be based on some kind of artistic merit... I think.

Each year I try and watch as many of the Oscar nominated movies as I can. I was really good this year, I think of all the movies in the top categories, I have seen all of them. Saw Frost / Nixon (should be boring but its not), saw Benjamin Button (Obviously), saw Milk, saw Slumdog (my pick to win, it was really good). And then the last one was The Reader which unfortunately falls into the category of "I can't believe this piece of shit is nominated for best picture!"

God! What an overly long, boring, dry, self involved, self important, soft core porn, piece of shit this movie is. I love Kate Winslet. I think she is great. In all my Oscar pools I was gonna vote for her, then I saw this movie. She should have been nominated for Revolutionary Road, which is hard to watch, but I'd take it to desert island and watch every day to keep from ever having to watch The Reader again.

This movie is just ridiculous. The first half hour belongs on Skin-A-Max. It is just her and this kid screwing and then stopping to have him read her a story. (See THE READER. Did it hit you over the head hard enough?) I am no prude, I enjoy nudity, but the nude scenes in this movie were like the ones in Showgirls, after a while they get annoying. Its like "Really, she is naked again."

So she is this illiterate with a thing for 16 year old boys, they break up. She disappears and the kid sees her again in law school when she is on trial for being Nazi Prison guard. An illiterate Nazi prison guard, with a thing for 16 year old boys. She is on trial and ends up getting a harsher sentence then the other lady Nazi prison guards because she admits to writing a report about killing 300 Jewish women, that she didn't write. I know, I know "but Jason, she can't read, how could she have written that report?" EXACTLY! She goes to jail for life cause she too ashamed to admit she can't read! The lesson here: learn to read, and that's one to grow on.

But the movie is STILL not over yet, cause the kid has to grow up to be an emotionless Ralph Fiennes who was in the "I can't believe this piece of shit won an Oscar film: The English Patient." (seriously after over 10 years I have yet to find anyone who enjoyed that film.) So Ralph starts sending his illiterate Nazi with a thing for 16 year old boys former lover, now in old age make-up apparently applied by a blind high school drama student with a "C" average, books on cassette while she is in prison. That's is right he is sending her the literary equivalent of a mix tape.

So he does this for ten years and in doing so SHE LEARNS TO READ! And after twenty years in prison she is about to get released. But at the last minute, she hangs herself. And why? Cause she couldn't handle the modern world, with ya know being able to read now and all. The movie then prattles on for like another 20 minutes with Ralph giving some coffee tin to a hot Holocaust survivor. UGH!

All in all, the moral of this movie, while Nazi war crimes are bad, not being able to read is much worse.

I hope Meryl Streep wins.

Jason