Some Oscar thoughts

I don’t really know why, but the show seemed a whole lot more compelling this year than other years.  It wasn’t the set, which was ugly, non-glamorous and bluntly utilitarian, and it wasn’t that I knew anyone up for an award.

Maybe it was, as Ellen Degeneres noted, the international flavor of the thing.  It seemed like less of a clubhouse kind of affair than usual, and the people who stuck out weird were the ones who treated it as such.  All kinds of people from all over the world and all kinds of backgrounds are making movies these days, and their movies are quickly becoming better, and in some cases more popular, than what Hollywood is producing.

Or maybe, taking a cue from casting Ellen Degeneresas host, it’s that the show business community is finally going back to saying “Oh yeah, that’s right, we’re liberal, and we actually don’t have to apologize for it.  We forgot about that for a moment.  We’re the cool kids, the Washington guys are the jerks.”  The routine with Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore was funny to me because I honestly half-suspected that Gore really was going to take the moment to announce his candidacy (although I’m glad he did not, at least not at a showbiz event).  The only thing that would have made Gore’s presence more gratifying was if someone had referred to him as the President of the United States.

Maybe it was the montages offered on the various themes.  It’s always baffled me how, for decades, so much of the Oscar broadcast is handed over to dance numbers.  Why are we watching (bad) dance during a program dedicated to the art of film?  The montages made me remember what I was watching this for, that I am part of (or at least witness to) a long artistic tradition, that greatness is possible in all times, and that there’s nothing wrong or shameful about wanting to be a filmmaker.  It made me sit up and, involuntarily, name aloud the movies I’d seen of those referenced, and feel a lack where there were ones I hadn’t seen.  It made me want to see more movies, which is, to say the least, not the usual effect of the Oscar broadcast.

Maybe it was that I felt like the movies being honored were worth being honored, and that the winners deserved their awards.  There wasn’t a single moment where I felt “so-and-so got screwed” or “this is all political” (with the possible exception of Eddie Murphy losing to Alan Arkin).  I preferred Pan’s Labyrinth to The Lives of Others, but I wouldn’t say that the latter movie, a gripping political drama, didn’t deserve to win.  In fact, I’ll say the opposite: I’m glad that The Lives of Others won so that maybe people will go see it this weekend.  I made a joke in an earlier post about how “West Bank Story” would win because it’s about Israel, but when I saw the actual clip I thought “Wow, that’s a great idea for a movie, I want to see that.”

Maybe it was my daughter Kit (4), who got caught up in the dresses, particularly the red number Jennifer Hudson wore during the Dreamgirls medley.  “She’s bee-yoo-tee-full,” cooed Kit.  Then when Beyonce came on, she said “Who’s that?”  When I told her who was who, she thought for a moment and declared that both were “bee-yoo-tee-full,” but Jennifer Hudson was the most “bee-yoo-tee-full.”

Or maybe it was the bag of gourmet caramel corn that ate during the show.  What the hell do they put in that stuff that makes it so you can’t stop eating it?

CONFIDENTIAL TO

r_sikoryak

:

I know you have no plan of moving to LA, but if you do, you could probably make a living off of people mistaking you for Jackie Earle Haley.  I’m not saying, I’m just saying.