11-10-2023, 08:48 AM
It's silly but I'll keep porting these to bump this thread sure:
![[Image: 61190218.jpg]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1675643958i/61190218.jpg)
It's not exactly a straight forward history but each chapter has something more like a theme that ties in certain years or awards. For example there's chapters that involve the transition into talkies, Weinstein's campaigns to win awards, the Blacklist or New Hollywood. Only a couple chapters focus on any one Oscars award show, though only one really covers the presentation and show itself with the other focusing on the wrong winner getting named. Some of the reviews on Goodreads bitched that he provided too much background information to where the setup sometimes swamps the actual "Oscars drama" but I had no problem with that at all, many of those same reviews complained about the length of the book but that's also not something I generally complain about but yeah, it's almost 600 pages. I think the general aspect he takes of the Oscars within the context of the industry is the proper way to go and I don't really give a shit about it ruining the "mystique" and "drama" like who seriously thinks the Oscars are some kind of pure merit awards or some grand cultural event. The funniest part is that one of the worst and most cynical movie moguls of all time, Louis B. Mayer, was maybe the most serious of all the founders about it actually being that. He thought maintaining the legitimacy of the awards would help justify film as art which would ward off the attacks that began in the silent era (and have never left us) from conservatives worried about social justice that film was corrupting and from Satan unlike books or music or stage plays. All of which was bad for business.
![[Image: 61273680.jpg]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1678035943i/61273680.jpg)
Meh. It was okay to start when LeBron is a kid and then becomes a high school star, though the book explains everything with NO FATHER and curiously never mentioning the far more unique ONLY CHILD. But when he hits the NBA it basically becomes about the Business of LeBron and less and less basketball as it goes on. Trump gets more pages than the Cavs 2016 title run. There's essentially no criticism of LeBron in the book, Maverick Carter takes the fall for The Decision but generally his inner circle is treated as perfect too. The most insane thing is that this book came out this year but it ends with LeBron signing with the Lakers. The basketball talk is highly questionable at times, suggesting that the Cavs did nothing to surround LeBron with talent (except getting Shaq) when the 2010 team was pretty clearly better than the 2011 Heat. It took another year for the Heat to figure out how to surround LeBron and Wade with multi-position 3 and D guys rather than ancient veteran names. My favorite parts were mentioning a since deleted Marco Rubio tweet where he says Cleveland is never getting LeBron back a couple weeks before he went back and some classic Stephen A. Smith takes about how LeBron wasn't a leader and even that the Heat needed to break up the Big Three right before they won their title too.
It's not exactly a straight forward history but each chapter has something more like a theme that ties in certain years or awards. For example there's chapters that involve the transition into talkies, Weinstein's campaigns to win awards, the Blacklist or New Hollywood. Only a couple chapters focus on any one Oscars award show, though only one really covers the presentation and show itself with the other focusing on the wrong winner getting named. Some of the reviews on Goodreads bitched that he provided too much background information to where the setup sometimes swamps the actual "Oscars drama" but I had no problem with that at all, many of those same reviews complained about the length of the book but that's also not something I generally complain about but yeah, it's almost 600 pages. I think the general aspect he takes of the Oscars within the context of the industry is the proper way to go and I don't really give a shit about it ruining the "mystique" and "drama" like who seriously thinks the Oscars are some kind of pure merit awards or some grand cultural event. The funniest part is that one of the worst and most cynical movie moguls of all time, Louis B. Mayer, was maybe the most serious of all the founders about it actually being that. He thought maintaining the legitimacy of the awards would help justify film as art which would ward off the attacks that began in the silent era (and have never left us) from conservatives worried about social justice that film was corrupting and from Satan unlike books or music or stage plays. All of which was bad for business.
Meh. It was okay to start when LeBron is a kid and then becomes a high school star, though the book explains everything with NO FATHER and curiously never mentioning the far more unique ONLY CHILD. But when he hits the NBA it basically becomes about the Business of LeBron and less and less basketball as it goes on. Trump gets more pages than the Cavs 2016 title run. There's essentially no criticism of LeBron in the book, Maverick Carter takes the fall for The Decision but generally his inner circle is treated as perfect too. The most insane thing is that this book came out this year but it ends with LeBron signing with the Lakers. The basketball talk is highly questionable at times, suggesting that the Cavs did nothing to surround LeBron with talent (except getting Shaq) when the 2010 team was pretty clearly better than the 2011 Heat. It took another year for the Heat to figure out how to surround LeBron and Wade with multi-position 3 and D guys rather than ancient veteran names. My favorite parts were mentioning a since deleted Marco Rubio tweet where he says Cleveland is never getting LeBron back a couple weeks before he went back and some classic Stephen A. Smith takes about how LeBron wasn't a leader and even that the Heat needed to break up the Big Three right before they won their title too.
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