I rarely measure my age by birthdays anymore. In fact I think few adults do. Instead most grown-ups mark the years by the passage of their perennial obsessions. Be it shopping for Christmas, filling out brackets for March Madness, making a yearly visit to a favorite vacation, or blowing a large percentage of your income on the annual lawsuits you face as one of the nation's top manufacturers of fireworks, we all have activities that we use to mark the passage of our lives. For me one of the select items that I anticipate every year is the Oscar ceremony. When we reach that time when a small group of
Besides one of my main goals with this blog was to set my one agenda. I would not needlessly link to other's articles on recent events. I would write about things I cared about, that I could truly make a statement about. This would not be a webspace for second-hand analysis, but for my first hand thoughts. If I write about anything because I feel forced to or obligated to, just because it's "that time of year" I worry that I will start to become dull and predictable. I really can't be expected to offer new thoughts on a topic just because it occurs annually. Eventually my writing will become predictable and my posts tedious to the readers. Why would anyone want to see me trot out the same tired insights about events year-in and year-out? That's how you get clichés. I want my content to remain fresh which means I need to find fresh items to write about. I may define myself by the perennial events I follow, but there's no reason to define this blog that way.
All that having been said there are the twelve observations and notes I thought were worth mentioning about both the choices the Academy made in giving out their awards and the Oscar telecast itself.
12. I was slightly disappointed by Ellen DeGeneres's performance as host. The great Oscar hosts always brand the evening with their own style of wit and humor to give the ceremony a definitive mood. John Stewart did this well with his apologetic liberal bit last year. Steve Martin was absolutely phenomenal by showing how he is like so many of us holding Hollywood at arm's-length intellectually but fully embracing it emotionally. Even David Letterman made the Oscars his own with his Oprah-Uma bit. It's just a pity Dave's humor and the Academy's tastes are too divergent. Billy Crystal is a passable host because he doesn't have any real defining characteristics to bring to the ceremony, so it's okay every Oscars he's hosted has been a sort-of funny not-really-memorable affair. Chris Rock could be great but didn't go for it when he hosted. Whoopi Golberg doesn't do it for me. Any hosting arrangement with more than one person MC-ing is set up to fail because then no one leaves an impression. I had high hopes for Ellen. I've been a fan of her sticom, her stand-up, her writing, and her talk show. However she just never took over the show and left you you with a moment where you thought "Now THAT is why you let Ellen host the Oscars!"
11. Was it a little disorienting for anyone else to hear the lullaby from Pan's Labyrinth over and over even though it wasn't nominated for best picture or director? The telecast's producers kept using the song, especially early in the evening, and it just seemed odd to me. It seemed even more odd when it didn't win the biggest awards it was up for (Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay). When the film lost for Best Original Score, essentially an award for coming up with such a memorable song, it seemed sickly ironic.
10. I cannot remember a single Oscar night that did not involve Jack Nicholson in some way. The Academy always squeezes him in some how, almost as if they are required to by some secret by law in the AMPAS charter. I'm a little worried that when he dies they won't be able to have the Oscars anymore. We better start grooming someone to be the next Jack. My vote goes to Mark Wahlberg. Who's with me?
9. I was a little upset that they cut so many of the winners off mid-speech. Most people tune in to the telecast with the expressed purpose of watching those speeches. Be they emotional (Jennifer Hudson), goofy (almost anyone who won a short film award), or simply spontaneous (Alan Arkin who looked genuinely surprised to have won) they are usually the most enjoyable part of the evening. You know they could have found a few extra minutes to play with if they cut all of the fluff they loaded in like dance groups, foley artists, and Celine Dion. Let us watch the speeches, it's what we want to see for Pete's sake! Also, we should have a special channel we can turn to just to watch the losers squirm in their seats as the winner gives her speech.
8. I was not at all upset that they cut of William Monahan, who pretty much said he was on medication as he took the stage. I know he just won a major award, but come on. You don't give the biggest speech of your life in a chemical haze. If I want to hear the ramblings of a stoner with a writing gig and aspirations of intellectualism I'll just visit my local campus coffee house.
7. You have to believe me when I say I'm not out to rag on Ellen, but I wish she had just picked one outfit and stuck with it the whole evening. I thought her all white ensemble toward the end of the evening was very fetching, and felt like she could have just worn that all night long. When I first caught sight of her in her burgundy velor pantsuit I was almost convinced there had been a last minute switch and Hugh Hefner was our master of ceremonies. I think Ellen fell victim to a nefarious trend that has claimed many female award show hosts before her. The producers of these shows are convinced that viewers want females to put on mini fashion shows. Apparently you have to repeatedly come out in a new outfit if you're a woman and you'll be on TV for more than three consecutive hours or else no one will pay attention to you or care about what you have to say. If there was any woman out there who I thought could buck the system and get away with it, it was Ellen. Now sadly we seem to be doomed to an endless series of fashion show oddities when we're supposed to be celebrating film.
6. I enjoy Will Ferrel. I enjoy Jack Black. I even enjoy John C. Reilly. I wish we could have more comedians involved with the Oscars. Ask any actor and they will tell you its harder to sell the audience jokes then it is melodrama, yet dramatic films and performances have a near stranglehold on the Academy awards. Even knowing all that I still found the song and dance number too hokey and predictable to be really funny and too light and silly to be really memorable. Overall I felt it was a waste of a few quality minutes of airtime that could have been spent watching Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio awkwardly banter.
5. I couldn't help but notice that the Academy nominated both Abigail Breslin, a very capable child actor who played the utterly adorable beauty pageant hopeful in Little Miss Sunshine, and Jackie Earl Haley, the former child actor who played the utterly creepy neighborhood pedophile in Little Children. I wonder if the Academy did that on purpose to send a message to little Abby. If so, I wonder whether Haley's example was supposed to give her hope that she can continue to work as an actor into adulthood, or scare out of show business by letting her know people are only interested in former stars as career train wrecks reduced to playing despicable characters to get a part.
4. I'll admit I took a little pleasure in seeing Eddie Murphy lose. It's not that he hasn't been incredibly entertaining throughout his career. Nor is it because I dislike him as a person for things he has done in his private life (though there were a few who wanted to deny him the award on those grounds as if that has the least bit of relevance to his quality as a performer). Simply I hated those Norbit ads and I wanted to see someone suffer for cramming that stuff into my eyes and ears everywhere I turned this winter. I would have much rather seen either Michael Sheen or Paul Dano win, but you can't expect to get everything you want. I don't know if Eddie will ever get a chance to win another Oscar, but I do know he doesn't need a little golden statue to justify his career. Maybe, just maybe this will convince him to go back to making movie that don't offend my senses and intelligence.
3. The Man of the Evening Award has to go to Clint Eastwood. He charmed me right in with his appearance in the Nominees Montage. He captivated the audience when he presented the honorary Oscar to Ennio Morricone and then translated Morricone's speech. Then when he bantered with Ellen and co-directed a photograph with Steven Spielberg I instantly recognized that we were watching a classic Oscar moment. Everyone wishes they could age as gracefully as Clint. Most of Hollywood hopes to be half the filmmaker he is. Plus he'll always have one of the most memorable acting careers of an American film actor. The runner-up was obviously Al Gore, if only for getting Melissa Etheridge to speak so glowingly of any man.
2. As has happened to us all in year's past I fell for one of the films nominated for Best Picture and had to live with the certainty that it would not win. Returning readers may remember that I declared my loyalty to Capote in a year that was dominated by the choice between Crash and Brokeback Mountain. This year I decided after much deliberation that my favorite film of 2006 was The Queen. It was touching, charming, well-made, well-acted, and showed an incredible degree of craftsmanship. I was touched like everyone was by awards favorite Little Miss Sunshine. I saw the merits of both Babel and The Departed which my finely tuned Oscar sense told me were the only two films that really had a chance. Still I am here to tell you that the best movie of 2006 was The Queen do yourself a favor and watch it if you haven't, or watch it again if you have.
1. Even with everything else I mentioned we all know the 79th Academy Awards were only really about one thing: the coronation of Martin Scorsese as one of the all time greats. Welcome to the Pantheon Marty. You deserve it.
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