Cinemavenger

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The Imitation Game

The New Cinemavenger Dictionary (Revised 3rd Edition) defines "Oscarbation" as the act of purposefully making an Oscar bait film.  Also known as the Golden Globe Grope or Hollywood Handjob, Oscarbating can lead to the unintended contraction of cinemydia, a nasty film transmitted disease (FTD) known on the streets as the Wrath of Cannes.  Symptoms include rectal gigantism, vaginal hypertrophy and delusions of odorless feces.

The Imitation Game is a textbook example of Oscarbation.  It takes a somewhat overlooked real world genius, uses his story to spout politically correct feelgood malarkey, is packed with buttloads of faux drama, features an overexposed star-of-the-moment and is directed by some unknown foreigner essentially making his Hollywood debut (that way the producers know he doesn't have any enemies among the Oscar voters).

Eatadick Smellysnatch, I mean Benedict Cumberbatch, plays Alan Turing, father of modern computer science, and he plays him like a stiff-lipped, tea-sipping, 1940s Sheldon Cooper.  If you don't know who Sheldon Cooper is, you've obviously never seen The Big Bang Theory and therefore are, by definition, pop culturally retarded.  Turn on a TV once in a while, Melvil Dewey!

During World War II, Turing led the team of British scientists that broke the Nazis' Enigma code.  This helped the Allies win the war and shaved somewhere between two and four years off of its duration.  Turing's efforts cracking Enigma also resulted in the construction of one of the first computers and laid the groundwork for our current understanding of artificial intelligence.

While The Imitation Game touches on all of this, it treats the important bits - like Turing being instrumental in winning WW Fucking II and ushering in the iPhone Age - like footnotes.  Because why linger on such trivialities when you can turn your movie into a throbbing, veiny PC dickslap by focusing on how only people who are "different" matter while everyone else is a slobbering Neanderthal . . . or worse?

You see, Turing was a homosexual, and back then being a male of the pole-smoking persuasion was a criminal offense.  He may have been a genius, but he got caught with his cock in the cookie jar, so to speak, and narrowly avoided prison.  Say what you will about the solid gold insanity of "pray the gay away" and conversion therapy in general; at least we don't imprison and/or chemically castrate gays any more.  Now that's progress!

The Oscarbators responsible for The Imitation Game probably dislocated their shoulders patting themselves on the back about how clever they were for having the title of their movie refer to the predecessor of Turing's famous AI test as well as to the practice of codebreaking and to Turing's own life in the closet.  Shame they couldn't use any of that "creative" energy to get below the surface of Turing or anything else.  Brav-fucking-o, you bunch of cunts.

Charles "Tywin Lannister" Dance, Mark "Big And" Strong and Keira "Proper Sexy" Knightley join in all the Keeping Calm and Carrying On in the shallowest, most blatant act of public Oscarbatory overkill since The Tree of Life.

April 12, 2015  Video release review rather than theatrical release review because I love my dead gay Turing.