Who knew that Prince could be so understated—I’ve never seen him in concert, but everyone I know who has talks about how dynamic he is. Not tonight—he was lower-energy than a refrigerator light bulb, and he had way more trouble with the Spanish and French names/words than he should’ve. (Every heard of rehearsal, P?). Jorge Dexler serenading the academy with a snatch of his award-winning song, followed by a simple, “Thanks. Gracias” was nice—although the severe stoopage caused by the mike setting for Prince was a little awkward.
Sean Penn’s defense of Jude Law proved that he may be a good actor (an amazing actor as it happens), but conceding that you have a “compromised sense of humor,” doesn’t make your humorlessness any more acceptable. (I know, I know, I was complaining that Chris Rock had been too hard on Law, but Penn just came across as a humorless grouch.)
Hilary Swank is to acting what Christian Laetner is to basketball—lucky, lucky, lucky. I can’t resist someone who calls herself a “girl from a trailer park” … well, except in Hilary Swank’s case. Two Best Actress statues at 31, and I challenge you to mention a non-Oscar-winning movie she’s played in (I’ll spot you The Affair of the Necklace, since even if you’ve heard of it, I’ll bet you haven’t seen it).
Ah! Finally, an award I’m excited about. Mar Adentro/The Sea Inside was my favorite movie of the year, and Alejandro Amenábar (now if he’d gone onstage immediately after Prince, there’d’ve been no problems with the mike height) gave a great speech. It was gracious to give one-third of the credit to Ramon Sampedro, one-third to Javier Bardem, and one-third to the producer and crew—especially when Amenábar gave such a one-man-band effort, writing, directing, producing, editing, even writing the (astonishingly effective) music.
How weird was it that Charlie Kaufman had his own second tier of award recipients, with Michel Gondry (the director for chrissakes) and Pierre Bismuth hugging their statues but keeping a distance from the man himself and not even attempting to approach the microphone?
I wasn’t altogether convinced that Jamie Foxx hadn’t practiced that speech, complete with the catch in the voice and fighting the emotion, since it was such a beautifully structured complete thought, but who cares? It was touching and sweet, and he took his little daughter to the Oscars, and how cool is that? Plus, his imitation of Sidney Poitier (conjured for the second time of the night) suggests the subject of his next biopic might be a certain dinner guest …
Julia Roberts (what’s with the happy birthday shout-out—you couldn’t even get away with that on local talk radio) and the couple of old Fokkers seemed out of place (and you forgot your glasses, Barbra, when the whole point of your being there was to read out a name?), but Clint Eastwood is a man of great talent, and he does come across very well when he’s accepting statues, and his mother is 96 years old and at the Oscars, so no complaints.
And perhaps it all just means that Martin Scorsese will carry on making great movies …
(I know this last bit wasn't live, but someone called R right as the Best Foreign-Language Film was going to be announced, so we had to pause, then we had to figure out some moving logistics, but it's not a competition, is it?)
The first bit of shtick in the next section was painful—not Ben Stiller-Owen Wilson as Starsky and Hutch painful, because it was at least schlocky and winking—but Chris Rock should’ve had more comeback than mere eye-rolling to Adam Sandler’s “you’re so sexy, Cat Zeta Jones” chat; and Rock’s reading of “When I was a little girl growing up in Wales” hardly compares with Celine Dion singing “When I was a little nappy-headed boy” in her Las Vegas show …
I hadn’t realized until Alexander Payne thanked his wife that he was married to Sandra Oh. It seems especially odd since, when he spoke after the preview screening of Sideways that R and I attended, he talked about the importance of credible casting—that, for example, Virginia Madsen is all the more believable in that role because she actually looks like a woman waitressing her way through graduate school (unlike, say, Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball).
Beyonce and Andrew Lloyd Webber performing their nominated song from Phantom of the Opera? More like Beauty and the Beast.
The winner for Best Cinematography seemed high, but dedicating his award to the nurses and doctors tending to his mother, in hospital for the last 45 days, was very sweet, so I’ll give him some slack.
Chris Rock’s introduction of Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayak—“You won’t be able to take your eyes off these next four presenters”—was a little tacky, but, I must admit, true. Salma certainly deserves the award for rack of the evening. (I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that. It’s Chris Rock’s influence.)
Salma’s commitment to the “Al Otro Lado del Rio,” the nominated song from The Motorcycle Diaries was a little hard to understand (and for a moment I thought she was wrong in claiming it was the first Spanish-language nominee, because I remember Lila Downs singing a song from her movie Frida in the 2003 telecast—but that was “Burn it Blue,” and the lyrics were in English). I have to give Antonio “El Cigala” Banderas credit for playing the part, but joder, the cock-rock posing from Carlos Santana and Antonio’s Argentine-accented quasi-flamenco vocal stylings were hard to take—especially for those poor souls who lack the TiVo fast-forward button.
Credit to Chris Rock for taking on the second-class award-giving in his nice riff about drive-through awards in the parking lot (“an Oscar and a McFlurry”), but it’s too bad he had to wait so long—I guess he had to wait until he came on after a winner who went on too long, in which regard the gay couple who won the Documentary Short category were happy to oblige.
Poor Jan. A.P. Kaczmarek, composer of the Best Original Score, he thought he was the first person to thank Harvey Weinstein. Actually, in the first section of the show, one of the winners of Best Art Direction thanked ‘Arvey, it’s just that his Italian accent was so strong, it was hard to make it out.
When will folks in the audience learn not to applaud the folks pictured in the In Memoriam section? It leads to uncomfortable displays of relative affection—OK, so Ossie Davis got more applause than Ronald Reagan, but so did Jerry Orbach. And the live music? Love him, but next year I think we should have less YoYo and more ByeBye.
The segment from Costumes to Counting Crows was a bit dull, no? Except for the inspired trip to the Magic Johnson Theater to talk to African-American movie-goers. It wasn’t scientific to ask folks who obviously see a lot of films and who cited movies like Alien vs. Predator, Chronicles of Riddick (a Dame Judi Dench fan?), and White Chicks as their recent favorites if they’d seen the nominated movies (I notice he didn’t ask about Ray, for example), but it was definitely interesting. It was also one of the most incisive swipes at the relevance of the cinematic MSM that I can recall, especially at the Oscars.
Scarlett Johansson, who I really admire as an actress, seemed incredibly awkward both in the weirdly deserted box (later filled with statue-clutching geeks) and in the 10-second film clips from the scientific and technical award ceremony.
Pierce Brosnan did well with Edna Mole (even though she outshone him by several lumens), but his coughing over the nomination tape was distracting. I realize he wants the exposure, but perhaps he really should’ve called in sick.
I loved Chris Rock’s line about Tim Robbins “boring us to death with his politics” when he’s not knocking us out with his acting—good juxtaposition of compliment and burn.
Cate Blanchett was fantabulous, though the line about hoping her son will marry Martin Scorsese’s daughter was a little odd (not to mention heterosexist).
In the weird “let’s try something different each time” method of handing out the “minor” awards (which is exactly why I don’t like it—we all know there are six Oscars that really matter, two or three more that matter quite a bit, and then a whole bunch that we all forget about right after the telecast, but it feels rude to acknowledge it), my favorite so far was the editing award. When announcing the nominees, they didn’t show the people in their seats, but rather in photographs (the first time all night that I’ve really felt like I knew for sure what the nominees looked like), but then the winner got to take the walk of fame and make a speech from the stage. The winner was Scorsese’s longtime editor, who also won for Raging Bull, and he seemed genuinely moved by her dedication to him.
Counting Crows’ version of the second Best Song nominee confirms my view that the acoustics of the Kodak Theater must be bad. I don’t care for the group (though I did once go to the theater with the lead singer—we didn’t go together, you understand, but we both went to the same performance of Assassins at Studio 54), but, like Beyonce, the guy is a talented and creative singer, and he sounded suspiciously off-key.
Oscar night? Is there a more exciting evening in the entire year? This time last year we were in Amsterdam, and thanks to the joys of jetlag, watching the telecast in the wee small hours (I think they ended around 5:30 or 6 a.m.—just about when I’d’ve been getting up if I hadn’t been on vacation), and, boy, does the memory make me grateful to be in the US of A. Not only do the so-far-infrequent ad breaks provide an opportunity for live-ish blogging; they also serve to remind me how awful Jonathan Ross and his crew of overdressed nobodies were last year. (The BBC showed the U.S. telecast, but when ABC cut away to ads, the Beeb cut away to inane—and how!—chatter; it should be compulsory viewing for anyone who assumes that all British television is better than the American equivalent.)
Chris Rock? So far, so fabulous. He seems not to give a crap about offending people, which actually gives the jokes a bit of naughty heft. (When the host really is buddies with the folks he’s poking fun at, or aspires to be in their circle, the punches get pulled and the laughs are pretty superficial.) Still, some of the digs seemed a bit unfair. I loved the “If you want X, don’t settle for Y, wait for X” riff—especially Chris Rock’s offering up of himself as a poor substitute for Denzel Washington—but it seemed too hard on Jude Law. Sure, he was in too many movies this year, but he also happens to be a far better actor than Tom Cruise—the guy producers were supposed to wait for when they were tempted to hire Jude—which made the joke seem undeservedly cruel. (And was it just me, or was the laughter canned at that point—I don’t think actors would laugh at full-on digs at their comrades. Some of the actors who were getting close-ups while Rock was speaking—Kate Winslet, for example—are good pals of JL’s; I’m sure it wasn’t coincidence that there were no audience cut-aways while CR was working that vein of material.)
I loved Rock’s riff about how “there’s no acting at the Oscars,” but the dig about Nicole Kidman’s reaction to Halle Berry’s win seemed too hard. Am I just being too Seattle—I like digs, but only if they’re at people that I don’t like? Perhaps. I certainly had no qualms about the swipe at Michael Moore wishing he’d directed Supersize Me—after all, he’d done the research.
The presenters have all been good so far—though Halle Berry looked like she was trying out for a role as a Catalino Sandino Moreno lookalike, and Renee Zellwegger look way too skinny—that corset seemed to haved pulled her eyebrows up on an unfortunate angle like someone who’s had too many facelifts. She did her job well, but I hated Cate Blanchett being up in the cheap seats while announcing the makeup nominees—apart from anything else, it was just way to hard to know who the actual nominees were because they were sitting with their dates, and it just feels rude to have them give their speeches up away from everyone. I don’t care how long the telecast lasts; I want the winners to give their speeches on the stage.
Morgan Freeman was brief and very gracious. I loved The Aviator’s art director’s pronunciation of “Arvey Westeen.” Robin Williams needs help for his Attention Craving Disorder—when he suddenly interrupted his lame ramblings (gay cartoon character jokes; how original) to ask, “What are we talking about?” I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who had no idea.
Chris Rock is doing a lot of “black” material, but as was NOT the case when Whoopi Goldberg last hosted, it’s absolutely appropriate. His riff about the black version of The Incredibles—The Aiights—and his story of Cate Blanchett giving such a convincing portrayal of Kate Hepburn that Sidney Poitier went to her house for dinner last night were right on. He made a dig at Halle Berry for Catwoman 2; I hope he’ll poke at Beyonce for that rather off-key version of the very lame Best Song nominee from Les Choristes. (If ever a category needed to be retired for lack of decent nominations, surely Best Song is it.)
How better to get one’s blogging mojo going than to tackle a meme?
How many total songs? 3,667; total time 11.6 days
(Compulsory excuse: A lot of my CDs aren’t on the computer; a bunch of CDs on the computer aren’t in iTunes.)
Sort by song title—first and last. “ ’Ave That”—Radioactive Man “Zvielicht”—Modern Jazz From Eastern Germany
Sort by time—first and last. “This Is an Ashanti Proverb”—Fela Kuti (Red Hot & Riot) (0:09) Mum Wants a Bungalow Tour—Peter Kay (research, honest) (1:15:07)
Sort by album—first and last. #1—Fischerspooner You Gotta Pay the Band—Abbey Lincoln & Stan Getz
Top 5 played songs? (I don’t really play songs in iTunes—I just use it to shift them to my iPod.)
Find “sex”—how many songs show up? “Everybody Deserves To Be F*cked”—Sex in Dallas “Sex Education, Ghetto Style”—Gil Scott Heron “Iest Sexy”—Shantel vs. Mahala Rai Band “Anarchy in the UK”—Sex Pistols
Find “death”—how many songs show up? “Ode on the Death Of François II”—Aileen Carr and Brian Miller “A Little Warm Death”—Cassandra Wilson “Death Letter”—Cassandra Wilson
Find “love”—how many songs show up? 106. The first is “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding,” by Elvis Costello; the last is “You Must Believe in Spring & Love,” by Abbey Lincoln (who seems to have a lot of songs that begin with the word “You”).
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Thursday, February 10, 2005
Get Me Tickets, Stat!
While on my way to a dental appointment downtown yesterday, the bus passed The Paramount. On the giant marquee, it looked like Feb. 13 would see a performance of “EAT HER LIKE A LADY.” I guess it was that perspective thingy that hid the first two letters. (Looking at the Paramount’s Web site, it appears to be a straight, religious version of an E. Lynn Harris novel.)
