Real America, with Abe Sauer: Oscar Season is for Patriots

by The Awl December 1, 2009

by Abe Sauer

Like Christmas, and puberty, the Oscar movie season gets earlier every year. This year, one ambitious writer even declared “The Oscar Season Begins In August With Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds.’” But by any measure, we are now well into the time of year when Oscar-hopeful films get dumped into theaters to be ignored by almost everyone. This season’s crop? The Road, Brothers, Broken Embraces, Precious, A Single Man, Crazy Heart, The White Ribbon, Invictus, Nine, The Lovely Bones, It’s Complicated, An Education, Avatar and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. (Up in the Air is disqualified for basically being the 40-Year-Old Virgin with moodier lighting.) But what about Oscar season for the crowd who thinks all those liberal Hollywood movies are for socialist pansies? For them, there is Photoshop.

Photoshop (MS Paint?) has become a powerful tool for the right to express its fears, feelings and frustrations with the current administration. Manipulating movie posters proves to be a fun and infectious way to get out the message. The Obamatized movie poster is a staple of right-wing message boards and sites. However, they are very often bad.

So what follows is only the best of the Photoshopped Obama movie posters of 2009.

The Illusionist: Shaky concept. Poor execution. Confusing. Trying to hard to tie things together. Basically just a high-concept fluffed up to look like it has something deeper to say… just like Crash.

Liar Liar: An obvious choice. But this entry shines in the credits. Look at the attention to detail. Ashley Dupree’s big break!

The Sting: Way beyond the usual cut and paste of images. This person is very, very talented.

Apt Pupil: Just like with Oscar bait films themselves, on fake posters you can also never go wrong going with Nazis.

Duplicity: There is certainly more romantic chemistry between Obama and Pelosi than Julia Roberts has had with anyone in years.

The Jerk: Not technically excellent. But with all the words used recently to describe Obama, “jerk” is adorably quaint. This entry is the Little Miss Sunshine of Photoshopped Obama posters. (Also: Cesar Chavez?!?!)

100 Days Later: CAMPAAAAAAIIIIIIGGNNNNNNNNNSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!

Apologize Now: “The machinist, the one they called Axelrod, was from Chicago. He was wrapped too tight for D.C.; probably wrapped too tight for Chicago. Geithner, on the finances, was a famous professor from the ivies around MA. One look at him and you wouldn’t believe he would ever make a profit in his whole life. Clinton… Ms. Clinton… was from some Arkansas shithole and the light and space of D.C. really put the zap on her head. Then there was Rahm, the Chief. It might have been my mission, but it sure as shit was Rahm’s boat.”