Arts: Baiters Gonna Bait

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Movies Baiters Gonna Bait Stop complaining about Oscar bait! By S.T. VanAirsdale Posted Wednesday, Dec 26, 2012, at 02:00 PM ET Earlier this month, just after the New York Film Critics Circle kicked off yet another season of movie accolades and awards, one of the season's most noteworthy eminences made his voice heard. "If I were Oscar-blogging this year," tweeted Mark Harris, "a long rant about the empty foolishness of the phrase 'Oscar bait' would be on the way." Indeed, Harris has for years been one of the smartest, most plugged-in Oscar bloggers around. He sat this year's awards season out because he also happens to be married to playwright Tony Kushner, whose script for Lincoln is the prohibitive favorite to win the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. It's one of numerous Oscars for which the Steven Spielberg-directed epic is expected to compete in the months ahead. In part that's because the film is excellent. It's also because Lincoln, with its A-list pedigree, deep ensemble cast, and strategic release during the film industry's annual hardware harvest, is the ripe, dripping quintessence of, well, Oscar bait. Yet there's nothing at all empty or foolish about the phrase Oscar bait, which movie critics and pundits have long applied to the types of films developed, funded, and produced for the express purpose of pursuing gold-plated glory. Oscar bait's existence as a Hollywood species seems without question. Harris and others' disdain for the phrase raises the real question: What's so bad about Oscar bait? Oscar bait is an art form, a state of mind, a ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Dengue, aka "Breakbone Fever," Is Back When Blaxploitation Went West Why the U.S. Shouldn't Sign On to Empty Human Rights Treaties	Advertisement
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