February 26, 2004
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The Oscar for best picture goes to…
The Best Picture
Aldous Huxley, 1925
“… And when at last one has arrived at San Sepolcro, what is there to be seen? A little town surrounded by walls, set in a broad flat valley between hills; some fine Renaissance palaces with pretty balconies of wrought iron; a not very interesting church, and finally, the best picture in the world.
The best picture in the world is painted in fresco on the wall of a room in the town hall…. Its clear, yet subtly sober colours shine out from the wall with scarcely impaired freshness…. We need no imagination to help us figure forth its beauty; it stands there before us in entire and actual splendour, the greatest picture in the world.
The greatest picture in the world…. You smile. The expression is ludicrous, of course.”
Yet not as ludicrous as the following
Cheesy Consolation
The Harvard Jesus:
Maureen Dowd on
The Passion of the Christ:
“I went with a Jewish pal, who tried to stay sanguine. ‘The Jews may have killed Jesus,’ he said. ‘But they also gave us ‘Easter Parade.’ “
– New York Times, Feb. 26, 2004
For a truly cheesy Easter parade at Harvard University, see
