3/8/10

We previously discussed my state of Acceptance with the decreasing relevance of the Academy Awards, and this proved to be an excellent year to reach such a state.  While others might be aghast at the feeble dual hosts, the unpardonable decision to skip the Original Song nominees, a sorry round of badly-paired 2nd-tier presenters doing mostly stiff and nervous runs through lousy material and The League of Extraordinary Dancers breakdancing and doing the robot to the Best Original Score nominees (not to mention the Academy finally finding a Best Picture that even most frequent adult moviegoers were unfamiliar with), I was content to enjoy the things about the evening that worked and then go to bed (at the stroke of midnight, justifying Tom Hanks' otherwise difficult to understand decision to treat the Best Picture announcement like the climax of a ticking-clock action thriller).  Let us begin with the half-full portion of our glass and work our way up to the empty air above it.

The Oscars serve a dual purpose:  to ideally remind you of the great movies and performances you saw during the year and, failing that, to give you a crash course on the allegedly great ones you missed (in other words, a four-hour second-chance trailer for movies you chose not to see).  In this respect, last night's telecast may have been the best I've seen.  The clip packages for the ten nominated Best Picture candidates were solid one-minute three-act summations of the films, leaning heavily on their best clips and moments (who'd have thought you could do Inglourious Basterds so effectively in 60 seconds?).  The nominated performances also got unusually apt collections of showcase moments, and while I still stand by my decision to skip Precious:  Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire because its plot sounds like a melodramatic mountain of unpleasant tragedy, there's no disputing that its nominees seemed quite worthy (and writer Geoffrey Fletcher, the evening's only surprise winner in a major category, gave quite a moving speech).  The big losers in this clipapalooza were The Blind Side, exposed next to its fellow nominees as the glorified TV movie it is, and star Sandra Bullock, who gave a performance of surprising depth and emotional resonance... in The Proposal, and then won Best Actress for a performance every cast member of Knots Landing gave on Lifetime at one time or another.

But she did give a nice speech that highlighted the camaraderie among the Best Actress nominees, and it was hard to feel too upset about anyone in an evening carefully modulated to serve as a lovefest among all present.  The introductions by former costars were a wonderful way to take the edge off the coming loss for four of five (and Jeff Bridges still thanked Colin Farrell even if he had just come out to wish Jeremy Renner luck against him), although the decision to have Precious coattail-rider Oprah Winfrey introduce Gabourey Sidibe rather than one of her co-stars was a mistake.  And, luckily, Supporting Actress winner Mo'Nique later clarified her comment about the award being about the work and not politics as being a swipe against those who'd publicly dissed her lack of campaigning for it and not her fellow nominees, although it was still a thought better saved for another venue.  Bridges took over the stage for the evening's most joyous acceptance, reveling in a crowning achievement of a career that seems to have allowed him to duck the clichés of miserable, selfish stars.  Christoph Waltz got to celebrate the biggest of his year full of big moments with yet another of his patented rambling extended metaphors, which have become goofily endearing as he keeps cooking up one after another for each award he wins.

It was, of course, The Hurt Locker's night, and while for me the bomb diffusal drama was no better than another of the year's pretty good dramas, it was easy to root for the cast and crew as they took their turns at the podium.  The night's most historically relevant moment was, of course, Kathryn Bigelow going where no woman had gone before and claiming the Best Director prize.  I suppose in the end it was always going to have to be the director of an utterly unfeminine film who broke that barrier, and Bigelow has specialized in broken noses and crunched bones throughout a career that produced cult classics like Near Dark and Point Break and underrated triumphs like Strange Days and K-19:  The Widowmaker, all of them red-meat guy's movies that just happened to be made by a woman.  Categories that had anything to do with stuff blowing up (editing, both sound awards) inevitably went their way, and Mark Boal completed the unlikely double-dip of debuting screenwriters (although he did previously have a Story credit on In the Valley of Elah) taking home the top prizes.

I loved the tribute to John Hughes, however random it might have seemed, and in an evening of solid clips, his reel showed just how wrong the Academy's failure to recognize the poet of 80's teen angst with a single nomination was.  Solid presenters included the witty Robert Downey Jr./Tina Fey debate between actors and writers, Elizabeth Banks' spirited attempt to remind us that they had the Technical and Scientific Awards ceremony, and another great Ben Stiller sight gag, this time presenting the makeup award in pretty fair Na'vi Face.

So, great show, right?  Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell... not so much.  As I expected, the pairing of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin as hosts produced a few cute pre-taped segments (like their riff on Paranormal Activity), but mostly just the awkward sight of two guys standing next to each other stepping on each other's lines.  Failing to create different personas for the two hosts, we were left with Baldwin doing a stiffer version of what Martin has already successfully done alone.  As much as I love Neil Patrick Harris (and the dude was Dr. Horrible, so rest assured I love him quite a bit), his opening number was dreadful and smacked of the more aggressive Oscar disasters of old.  Never a good idea to have someone take the stage, ask "what am I doing here?" and fail to adequately answer the question.  In a night of stiff presenters, New Moon stars Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart were further hindered by a script that forced them to introduce a pointless montage of horror clips by stating that the genre had been ignored since two wins by The Exorcist 38 years ago, before their reel proved to be chock full of Oscar-winning films like Misery, Bram Stoker's Dracula and The Silence of the Lambs.

The show did come in shorter than any before it, but that was partly because so much of the meat was missing.  My two favorite wins of the night were the awards that went to Crazy Heart, but to see Ryan Bingham, Colin Farrell or both denied their chance to sing "The Weary Kind" on stage just because the Academy insisted on filling out the category with nominees no one wanted to hear was pitiful.  Speaking of which, was it just me, or was the Academy making up some of the nominated movies (Paris 36?  Il Divo?) on the fly?  And what a year to bump the presentation of the Lifetime Achievement Awards!  Lauren Bacall and Roger Corman?  Nah, nobody wants to hear from them!

But the biggest news of this round of Academy Award winners was not the passing-over of the highest-grossing movie of all time for major awards (no sci-fi movie has ever won Best Picture, after all), but instead the decision to bypass a Best Picture field full of blockbusters and anoint the first true Best Picture winner no one has seen.  The Hurt Locker grossed just 14 million dollars and never played on more than 535 screens (a platform it reached the week of August 7).  So, if the Academy is right, how does Summit Entertainment account for their failure to get the movie to any kind of audience?  And if audiences were right to avoid it, how does the Academy justify being so out of touch?  You can go all the way back to 1970 and not find another Best Picture winner that grossed less than 50 million dollars.  FOURTEEN.  Wow.  So much for ten nominees bringing the show back to the people.

P.S.  Did you get a load of Sandra Bullock's appearance at the Golden Raspberry awards Saturday night?  She basically earned her Oscar right there by blowing up those Razzie buffoons with a wagonload of All About Steve DVDs for them to watch since they so clearly hadn't seen it that they voted she and co-star Bradley Cooper Worst Screen Couple despite them playing a stalker and her target.  She went on to point out the serendipity of her winning Worst Actress after announcing that she would attend if she did:  I'd imagine they'd have nominated Jeff Bridges if he promised to show up.  Of course, he'd have faced tough competition from The Jonas Brothers, named Worst Actor for their appearance in a concert movie.  Yeah, those Razzies sure are a hoot, or at least they were when I was 12.