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Monday, February 28, 2005

Live Blogging the Oscars, Part 4
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?)

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