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Ahahaha! The big winner was Shakespeare in Love -can I call 'em or what? Excuse me while I bask in my own sense of self-worth at being able to predict the fickle nature of Hollywood culture. Anyways, since I spent four hours watching the latest Oscars ceremony, I thought I might as well give my impressions of the evening. I also learned recently that only 1% of those polled had seen all five movies nominated for Best Picture. Nothing to say about this other than that it puts me in a very small niche.
Overall I enjoyed the show, all four hours of the fool thing. There wasn't one film that dominated the awards this year, so it was actually surprising to hear the winners get announced. Five good films were nominated rather than one obvious winner and four "we're just happy to be here" picks. Plus, all the recipients were actually happy to win rather than viewing the award as a reaffirmation of their own ego. There wasn't any action that rivaled that of James "I'm king of the freakin' world" Cameron.
On a related note, it was interesting that the awards weren't fully ruled by box office results- critical praise played a larger part than usual this year. In fact, both Gene Siskel and Peter Travers were mentioned by name. I'm not sure what that means, but I did find it interesting.
I actually enjoyed the job Whoopi Goldburg did as ringmaster. She relies on an unflappable personality rather than written material to pull her through, which is a good thing since the written material, as usual, was pretty lame. Watching hour after hour of flop sweat is never pleasant. Whoopi knew the thing sucked but just kept going. There's something admirable about that. Also, we didn't have to listen to Billy Crystal sing, so the Oscars scored one point right off the bat. [The second pre-show point was given for not nominating Jim Carrey. He wasn't that good in The Truman Show; having the restraint not to talk out of your butt does not necessarily entitle you to an automatic Oscar nomination. I am, however, interested in seeing how he does in Man on the Moon.]
Now some general comments...
Most Pointless Bit: The Pre-Oscar thing hosted by Geena Davis. What happened to her career? It played like some sort of Super Bowl pre-game show. I half expected Terry Bradshaw to chime in with some of his incomprehensible commentary.
John Wayne Award: James Coburn. Every once in awhile an Oscar gets
bestowed on someone for seemingly no good reason. This year's
inexplicable winner was James Coburn. I haven't seen Affliction yet,
but based on Coburn's previous body of work this one was a real
head-scratcher. He also gave the dullest acceptance speech.
[Note: Since I wrote this, I mangaed to catch Affliction. For the first
time in decades, Coburn actually bothered to act. I don't know if that makes
him Oscar worthy, but I'd like to note that Nick Nolte is really on a roll right now.]
Most Enjoyably Awkward Moment: The award given to Elia Kazan. Kazan not only contributed a great deal to both directing and cinema, he turned professional stoolie during the McCarthey era. The room was torn between honoring his work or telling him to screw off. It was great. I was hoping it would be even more strained, but I think most of the bad blood was vented beforehand.
The "What happened to HIS career?" Award: Peter Gabriel. He sang the theme song to Babe, Pig in the City? Wow.
Lamest Category: Best Song. As if the Grammies didn't do a good enough job of confirming that corporate rock sucks, this reminder comes along. Quest for Camelot? Babe, Pig in the City? Who saw these movies?
Best Appearance by an Insane Italian Man: Roberto Benigni. Anyone who becomes so excited when they win that they hop around on top of chairs -and on top of Steven Spielberg's head- is okay in my book. His rapid-fire piecemeal English combined with the fact that his film was pretty good to boot added to the enjoyment.
Oddest Looks: I was quite surprised when I realised that I have a better looking haircut than Val Kilmer, and that's saying something. Plus, Tom Hanks looked like he was starring in The Billy Joel Story.
Worst Old Tradition: Yanking out a gospel choir during one of the musical numbers. That, or Oscar's seemingly never ending fascination with interpretive dance.
Worst New Tradition: Honoring the latest former cast member of SNL who died.
In Memorium: I liked the memorial tributes overall. Good to see they focused on Frank Sinatra when he was young, as opposed to his waning, not-cool years. It was odd that Spielberg described the late Stanley Kubrick as "a visionary who showed us tomorrow." A more accurate, but less crowd friendly thing to say would of been "he made brilliant, mean-ass movies." That probably wouldn't of gone over too well.
I liked the Cowboy salute -you can't get enough of that weird Singing Cowboy sub-genre- if for nothing else than Val Kilmer was outshined by a horse. Never work with an animal, especially on live television. The salute to heroes, however, was pretty pointless. Movies that focus on Christopher Columbus and Louis Pastuer? Yahoo.
Weepy Acceptance Speeches: The speech by the woman who won for Short Subject Documentary was nice; you could tell she was genuinely overwhelmed. [She was also billed by the announcer as former Ms. Japan Grand Prix. I'm sure she'll be replacing that with "Oscar Winner" on her resume shortly.] In contrast, the speech by Gwyneth Paltrow, where she thanked her entire extended family, became tedious. My feeling that Cate Blanchett should of won didn't help matters either.
Best Mugging for the Camera: When Gods and Monsters won for best adapted screenplay the cast huddled together and grinned like they were posing for day camp photos.
All in all, it was overly long and just an excuse for Hollywood to smile at itself. But that's what the Oscars always are, so once again the show was dead on the money. ^_^
Comments? Drop me a line at [email protected]. And the Oscar goes to...
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