Thank the god of technology for the Portuguese equivalent to TiVo, in my case, the MEO box, for I got to fast forward whenever I felt like it - and that was plenty - and I ended up «watching» the Oscars in one hour flat :)
Let me splice some of professional people's «my thoughts exactly»:
[my comments in square brackets]
I say it year after year, but I think I'm finally done with the Oscars. I know, it'll never really happen. (...) I may be a film cynic, but I'm also a film masochist, and some of why I keep watching the Oscars is just part of my addiction to the pain of being a cinephile in the 21st century.»
I'm not quite sure why Hughes received or deserved such an exclusive deal, especially in a year when the Academy decided to hand out the annual honorary Oscars separately from the main event (though the telecast awkwardly allowed time for Lauren Bacall and Roger Corman to stand and be applauded). Maybe because he's considered more popular to TV viewers than, say, Eric Rohmer?»
[pandering to youth, I tell you]
The Hughes tribute wasn't my least favorite thing about last night's ceremony (that might have actually been the terrible camera work and direction of the show -- when Tyler Perry has a scripted bit involving shots, it might be wise to actually coordinate this correctly, and who thinks those over-the-stage shots or from-behind-Meryl-Streep's-neck shots were a good idea?). But it was a big part of what I think is wrong with the Oscars' continued attempt to cater to the mainstream, especially the youth audience. Attempting a horror montage? Showing an extensive sound editing explanation employing infamous Oscar snub The Dark Knight? Getting people to breakdance to film scores? Did the kids, even those who are fans of America's Best Dance Crew, even appreciate that?
This was Cinematical
This was indeed a night that made history – David Letterman is now no longer the worst-ever Oscars host. Co-presenters Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin proved they couldn't hit a gag with a trunkload of IEDs, falling back three times on comedy misreadings of the autocue, to ever-diminishing returns.
Best drinking game
The one where you do a shot every time someone mentions Meryl (surname very much de trop, obviously). Ever since the heyday of the studio era, an adorably defensive Hollywood has wanted you to know that it doesn't just have sex symbols who can turn in a role. It has actors – men and women who deliver something so much more epic than mere performance.(...)
This year's second-best drinking game? The one where you take a gulp every time a member of the motion-picture community salutes the troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. It really puts stuff into perspective.
Best acceptance speech - Sandra Bullock
Best They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To moment
Footage of Lauren Bacall accepting an honorary Oscar at a gala a few months ago. "A man at last," drawled Bacall of her statuette. "The thought that when I get home I'm going to have a two-legged man in my room is so exciting I can hardly stand it." At the Oscars, this was immediately followed by a cutaway to Cameron Diaz chewing gum. Truly, it was the stars that got small.
Worst cutaway
A tough category, now that reaction shots appear to be subject to the most heavyhanded ethnic profiling. Ethan Coen was the night's go-to Jew, the guy they cut to right after Steve Martin made the joke about Inglourious Basterds star Christoph Waltz playing a Nazi "obsessed with finding Jews", and observed that the contents of the Kodak Theatre were pretty much "the motherlode". Don't worry, viewers – see, Ethan's laughing! The Jews totally get the joke! The sledgehammer cutaway was also deployed each time an African-American star was mentioned. The fact that you could practically hear a producer screaming, "Close-up on Morgan Freeman! Or one of the other four, goddammit!", really added to the sense of how far we have come.
Most never-ending segment - the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers
[wasn't it the League and somebody misread it?
Or is it a mashup of that movie and the horrid Legion titles? ]
Best fauxhemian
Even though Sean knows that real outsiders simply wouldn't show for the Oscars, he agreed to present best actress, and used the occasion of someone else's big moment to announce, "I never became an official member of the academy" (...) Still, while Sean is only a country member of the academy, fans of Team America will recall that he is a leading light of FAG, the Film Actors' Guild – a powerful lobby coincidentally led by Oscars co-host Alec Bardwin.
Most awkward staging
As a tribute to the various 12-step programmes with which so many attendees are familiar, the best actor and best actress nominees are now bigged up in a segment that resembles an AA sponsors' meeting. Julianne Moore eulogised Colin Firth, making it clear they had "only worked together for three days", while Colin Farrell recommended Jeremy Renner with a reminiscence about "that trip to Mexico, which I wish I could remember more of", while saying "man" and "brother" a lot.
Best lecture
Courtesy of best supporting actress Mo'nique, who thanked her husband for advising her that "sometime you have to forego doing what's popular to do what's right". Blithely undermining her fellow nominees, the Precious star praised the academy for rewarding "the performance not the politics", apparently under the impression that Oprah's campaign juggernaut for the movie is about as far away from power-player politicking as you can get.
[finally, somebody says it, campaign juggernaut indeed]
[the horror, the horror]
Worst definition of horror
No-time Academy Award-winners Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart introduced a tribute to the horror movie genre, which took some bizarre detours. Movies you never realised were horror flicks include Marathon Man, Edward Scissorhands, Little Shop of Horrors, Jaws, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Beetlejuice and, um, Twilight, which was really flattered by being interspliced with The Shining. Do adjust your records accordingly.
Most self-regardingly graceless hosts
The academy, which banned The Hurt Locker's producer Nicolas Chartier for sending the most innocuous email to a circle of acquaintance, in which he asked them to vote for The Hurt Locker "and not a $500m film".(...) Yet Zac Efron is given pride of place up front near Meryl. Where's the justice?
Worst fact-checking
Demi Moore introduced the "in memoriam" section to people we've lost, in a montage that failed to include her pre-2003 bodywork. Rather more glaring, however, was the omission of Farrah Fawcett, whose failure to make the cut an academy spokesman would have you believe was totally intentional. "Major fail" is Roger Ebert's view on the matter.
[Do follow Roger on Twitter, you'll know everything there is to know about cinephilia ;)]
This was The Guardian
[let's repeat - I mean, emphasize - some views]
BIGGEST SNUB
Notice anyone missing from the In Memorium montage? No, Patrick Swayze was in there. You just couldn't see him because some genius in the director's booth decided to go with a wide shot. At least the first two of the deceased could barely be made out on TV. But somewhere on the cutting room floor was Farrah Fawcett. She passed away the same day as Michael Jackson and yet the star of Captain EO and Thriller was honored while an iconic actress from Charlie's Angels, not to mention The Burning Bed, Extremities, and films directed by Robert Duvall and Robert Altman -- is forgotten. (And what of the great screenwriter Dan O'Bannon?)
Notice anyone missing from the In Memorium montage? No, Patrick Swayze was in there. You just couldn't see him because some genius in the director's booth decided to go with a wide shot. At least the first two of the deceased could barely be made out on TV. But somewhere on the cutting room floor was Farrah Fawcett. She passed away the same day as Michael Jackson and yet the star of Captain EO and Thriller was honored while an iconic actress from Charlie's Angels, not to mention The Burning Bed, Extremities, and films directed by Robert Duvall and Robert Altman -- is forgotten. (And what of the great screenwriter Dan O'Bannon?)
[THE HORROR, THE HORROR]
MOST MISMATCHED PRESENTERS
Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner introducing a montage about horror films? First off, calling Twilight horror is like calling Transformers a documentary. Second, why are the Oscars dedicating a chunk of time to a genre that they have never embraced as a serious competitor outside of The Exorcist and/or The Silence of the Lambs? Wasn't this the year of Science Fiction with Avatar, District 9 and Star Trek? Salute that if you must, but don't come out with a half-assed collection of the most obvious horror clips imaginable. Did anyone count more than one brief moment for John Carpenter and George Romero? No Argento, Bava or Stuart Gordon? No Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fly or The Stepfather, but we saw Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands? I'm sorry, was this not the night of Kathryn Bigelow and you couldn't find room for one cut to Near Dark? I mean ... LEPRECHAUN was in there!
Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner introducing a montage about horror films? First off, calling Twilight horror is like calling Transformers a documentary. Second, why are the Oscars dedicating a chunk of time to a genre that they have never embraced as a serious competitor outside of The Exorcist and/or The Silence of the Lambs? Wasn't this the year of Science Fiction with Avatar, District 9 and Star Trek? Salute that if you must, but don't come out with a half-assed collection of the most obvious horror clips imaginable. Did anyone count more than one brief moment for John Carpenter and George Romero? No Argento, Bava or Stuart Gordon? No Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fly or The Stepfather, but we saw Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands? I'm sorry, was this not the night of Kathryn Bigelow and you couldn't find room for one cut to Near Dark? I mean ... LEPRECHAUN was in there!
HOW DO YOU KNOW THE PRODUCERS KNOW WHO IS GOING TO WIN?
When they invite someone to be the presenter of said category that has some form of connection to the eventual winner. Remember a few years back when Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola all presented the Best Director award? Who won? Their buddy, Martin Scorsese. Tonight, Danny Boyle was sidelined so they could trot out Barbara Streisand to present the award. The infamously-snubbed Babs was now about to hand over an Oscar to the first female director in history. Why wasn't the camera directly on Cameron to catch his reaction when Streisand first appeared? Classy move, Barbara, in asking Kathryn if you could keep the Oscar.
When they invite someone to be the presenter of said category that has some form of connection to the eventual winner. Remember a few years back when Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola all presented the Best Director award? Who won? Their buddy, Martin Scorsese. Tonight, Danny Boyle was sidelined so they could trot out Barbara Streisand to present the award. The infamously-snubbed Babs was now about to hand over an Oscar to the first female director in history. Why wasn't the camera directly on Cameron to catch his reaction when Streisand first appeared? Classy move, Barbara, in asking Kathryn if you could keep the Oscar.
WOULDN'T IT HAVE BEEN GREAT?
If before the presentation of the Best Actress award, Sylvester Stallone came out to talk up Sandra Bullock about how great she was on the set of Demolition Man?
If before the presentation of the Best Actress award, Sylvester Stallone came out to talk up Sandra Bullock about how great she was on the set of Demolition Man?
YES, I WILL ALWAYS LOVE JEFF BRIDGES. BUT WILL THE ACADEMY?
Just as the Oscars might have jumped the gun on giving Russell Crowe the award for Gladiator instead of a year later for A Beautiful Mind (perhaps apologizing for snubbing him in The Insider), were they so eager to finally give Bridges a career achievement that they couldn't wait to see how he reinvents Rooster Cogburn in the Coen Bros.' remake of True Grit? Then again, they seem to love him as much as Tom Hanks. Could we be seeing a repeat? No complaints here.
WHO WOULDA THUNK IT?
That 17 years after the remake of The Vanishing that the guy playing the weirdo Barney and the victim of his kidnapping plot would win Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress on the same night?
Just as the Oscars might have jumped the gun on giving Russell Crowe the award for Gladiator instead of a year later for A Beautiful Mind (perhaps apologizing for snubbing him in The Insider), were they so eager to finally give Bridges a career achievement that they couldn't wait to see how he reinvents Rooster Cogburn in the Coen Bros.' remake of True Grit? Then again, they seem to love him as much as Tom Hanks. Could we be seeing a repeat? No complaints here.
WHO WOULDA THUNK IT?
That 17 years after the remake of The Vanishing that the guy playing the weirdo Barney and the victim of his kidnapping plot would win Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress on the same night?
POETIC JUSTICE OF THE NIGHT
All the talk from Harvey Weinstein and James Cameron pleading with voters to throw Kathryn Bigelow a bone with the Best Director Oscar as long as they won Best Picture turned out to be just that. Talk. So let us celebrate The Hurt Locker as more than just a footnote in Oscar history, but as a brilliant military thriller crafted by a virtuoso filmmaker. Congratulations, Kathryn and to everyone involved in the film. You deserved it.
All the talk from Harvey Weinstein and James Cameron pleading with voters to throw Kathryn Bigelow a bone with the Best Director Oscar as long as they won Best Picture turned out to be just that. Talk. So let us celebrate The Hurt Locker as more than just a footnote in Oscar history, but as a brilliant military thriller crafted by a virtuoso filmmaker. Congratulations, Kathryn and to everyone involved in the film. You deserved it.
[my bold here... oh yeah ;]
This was Cinematical
And now for something completely serious:
The Anxiety of Age
The overwhelming question that arises from the 82nd Annual Academy Awards goes like this: what level of respect should we accord to an industry that finds a place onstage for Miley Cyrus, but not for Lauren Bacall? Cyrus, who wore a perfectly respectable bustier but had inadvertently forgotten to put anything over it, came on to present an award in the company of Amanda Seyfried, and, in so doing, fluffed her lines. “We’re both kinda nervous, it’s our first time.” So saying, she tried to corral Seyfried into the fluff, inviting her to share the pain, but Seyfried, wisely, was having none of it, and shied backward, as if to say, “Enough with the both, sister.” This was only one of many blips and stumbles in the presentation, as a number of presenters developed one of those halting, on-off relationships with the teleprompter that tend to bedevil the green, the flustered, the myopic, and the under-rehearsed.
And there, meanwhile, resplendent and omniscient, sat Ms. Bacall, long since blessed with a place among the gods, on the empyrean heights of movie history, yet consigned, for the purposes of Sunday night, with a lowly place in the stalls. When her name was announced, she stood and waved, like the Queen, and was pleased to note that her subjects rose to pay appropriate homage; but she was forbidden, nonetheless, to mount the sacred stairs, where Miley had gone before. It transpired that Bacall, Roger Corman, John Calley, and Gordon Willis were being denied the chance to shine on Oscar night, having accepted their honorary statuettes at the Governors Awards, way back on November 14th. Between them, they know quite a bit about filmmaking, and the lustre that it can bestow. Perhaps it was thought impolitic, or unwise, to showcase their collective works, in case too tasty a slice of “The Big Sleep,” or too gorgeous a memory of Willis’s cinematography on “Manhattan,” might make a film like “Precious,” a noisy affair to begin with, look about as subtle as a road-drill. Or maybe the producers of the show, acutely aware of a ratings decline in recent years, and all the more desperate, therefore, not to let slip the kinds of audience for whom advertisers thirst, had issued a gentle nostrum: Don’t listen to “Up.” Skip the aged. Hold the old.
This time-clash, among what was, what is right now, and what’s coming up fast, is always there on Oscar night, but yesterday evening it felt more pervasive than ever, and more compelling, in its way, than the face-off between James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow, which had been thrashed into inanition over preceding weeks, and which felt definitively settled from the moment that “The Hurt Locker” picked up Best Original Screenplay. So many of the gags wielded by Steve Martin, especially, seemed designed to probe this generational discomfort: “Two young actresses who have no idea who we are,” was his description of Cyrus and Seyfried. To Zac Efron and Taylor Lautner (who looks more like a “Twilight” action figure than a verifiable human), Martin gave a specific warning: “Take a good look at us, guys: this is you in five years.” Nice, though not as devastating, in its mortal fretfulness, as the line that he fired off a few years ago, when he was the solo host. Pointing out Kate Hudson and her coevals, Martin said how refreshing it was to see so many young stars in attendance, adding, “It reminds me of my own death.”
And there, meanwhile, resplendent and omniscient, sat Ms. Bacall, long since blessed with a place among the gods, on the empyrean heights of movie history, yet consigned, for the purposes of Sunday night, with a lowly place in the stalls. When her name was announced, she stood and waved, like the Queen, and was pleased to note that her subjects rose to pay appropriate homage; but she was forbidden, nonetheless, to mount the sacred stairs, where Miley had gone before. It transpired that Bacall, Roger Corman, John Calley, and Gordon Willis were being denied the chance to shine on Oscar night, having accepted their honorary statuettes at the Governors Awards, way back on November 14th. Between them, they know quite a bit about filmmaking, and the lustre that it can bestow. Perhaps it was thought impolitic, or unwise, to showcase their collective works, in case too tasty a slice of “The Big Sleep,” or too gorgeous a memory of Willis’s cinematography on “Manhattan,” might make a film like “Precious,” a noisy affair to begin with, look about as subtle as a road-drill. Or maybe the producers of the show, acutely aware of a ratings decline in recent years, and all the more desperate, therefore, not to let slip the kinds of audience for whom advertisers thirst, had issued a gentle nostrum: Don’t listen to “Up.” Skip the aged. Hold the old.
This time-clash, among what was, what is right now, and what’s coming up fast, is always there on Oscar night, but yesterday evening it felt more pervasive than ever, and more compelling, in its way, than the face-off between James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow, which had been thrashed into inanition over preceding weeks, and which felt definitively settled from the moment that “The Hurt Locker” picked up Best Original Screenplay. So many of the gags wielded by Steve Martin, especially, seemed designed to probe this generational discomfort: “Two young actresses who have no idea who we are,” was his description of Cyrus and Seyfried. To Zac Efron and Taylor Lautner (who looks more like a “Twilight” action figure than a verifiable human), Martin gave a specific warning: “Take a good look at us, guys: this is you in five years.” Nice, though not as devastating, in its mortal fretfulness, as the line that he fired off a few years ago, when he was the solo host. Pointing out Kate Hudson and her coevals, Martin said how refreshing it was to see so many young stars in attendance, adding, “It reminds me of my own death.”
Is every actor blighted by the same anxiety of age? The frost of fashion will, of course, nip half the hopefuls in the bud, and yet, as one scanned the arrivals last night, it was cheering to alight on some who would, one feels, have flourished at almost any point in the long seasons of Hollywood. Cameron Diaz is one (how Billy Wilder would have hastened to hire her, for that mix of the unearthly and the downright wicked), which makes it all the more lamentable that nobody, but nobody, is able to supply her with a screenplay that doesn’t stink. George Clooney is another, of course, but so, I happen to think, is his co-star from “Up in the Air,” Vera Farmiga, whose drawling smartness would have earned her an easy spot in “Stage Door,” with Ginger Rogers and Katharine Hepburn. Last night she managed to keep that wit about her, despite losing out to Mo’nique, despite wearing something that was not so much a dress as a crimson fan-dance that had ambitions to become a dress, and despite—above all—having to stand next to other luminaries and churn out a sweet love-crush to expectant nominees. This was something I had not expected to find: a human granita machine.
What was going on? Farmiga, Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore, Michelle Pfeiffer, Stanley Tucci, Forest Whitaker, and others, all of them asked to hold still, without so much as a podium to lean on, an envelope to finger, or a little gold man to squeeze, and hymn their respective friends. Even Oprah had to do it; needless to say, she did it with bullet-point briskness and efficacy, but still, it must the first time she has found herself in a lineup. It was like a Celebrity “Usual Suspects.” Again and again, throughout the show, the producers decided to make rich, famous people strike a pose, in tricky isolation, just long enough to bead their hairlines with imperceptible sweat. My guess is that the Academy could be hearing from a whole lot of lawyers over breakfast. Each of the ten nominees for Best Picture was touted by a lonely figure on a platform; Colin Firth did it for “An Education,” and he had already endured, poor fellow, the horror of the opening minutes, when he, Morgan Freeman, Carey Mulligan, and others had been paraded, for our delectation, under the pitiless lights. Given that Englishmen imbibe embarrassment with their mother’s milk (that, indeed, is precisely where the problem begins), and given that Firth is one of the most undilutedly English stars since Robert Donat, his aplomb, under the circumstances, was miraculous to behold.
For a dizzying instant, I thought that all ten of that initial group—nominated for their performances in leading roles—were about to whirr, grow fuzzy, and beam themselves off the bridge of the U.S.S. Kodak Theatre. I was hoping, in short, for a “Star Trek” moment. What became apparent, however, with dispiriting speed, was that this would not be science fiction’s night. Science, yes, for those who want to know how to defuse a trunkful of bombs or power their houses with balloons, and plenty of fiction, too, for those who dream of slaughtering Nazis or getting laid on the strength of their air-miles; but not science and fiction in the same package. “Avatar” slunk away with three minor prizes, and “District 9,” an exemplary piece of low-budget inventiveness, with none. Even “Star Trek” lost its two awards, for sound mixing and editing, to “The Hurt Locker,” although at least both of those were collected, back-to-back, by a frail and splendid figure with flowing ginger-blond tresses, milky complexion, and unplaceable accent, whose very presence gave comfort to connoisseurs of the extraterrestrial. (For the record, his name is Paul N. J. Ottoson, and he claims to come from Sweden. Yeah, right.)
And that was pretty much it, for fans of the unfathomably strange. You might have reckoned that a quick zip back through a hundred years of sci-fi, in tribute to “Avatar” and to all that it excitably portends, would have been in order, instead of which, for no known reason, we got a gaggle of clips from random horror movies, some of them so random that they weren’t even horror movies at all. (Mind you, it was prefaced by the funniest skit in the show, a neatly judged spoof of “Paranormal Activity,” starring Steve Martin and his co-presenter Alec Baldwin, which presumably cost more than the original film.) In the end, the only object on show that forced me to speculate on life beyond our solar system was the dress worn by Sarah Jessica Parker, a lemon sheath topped with what appeared to be ironwork. Label-hunters tagged it as Chanel, cynics dismissed it as a nasty collision between the world’s cleanest shower curtain and the radiator grille of a Mack truck, but to me it was clearly the lightweight battle-dress worn by Ma’ami the She-Monarch from the third planet on the left past Pandora, already colonized by James Cameron as he prepares for his next adventure.
Will he wince at last night’s snub, and grind his teeth in his dreams, or do two and a half billion dollars sit more comfortably in the hand than a few square inches of gold plate? I think he will mind, a little, precisely because an Oscar is still, pace Harvey Weinstein, something that money can’t buy—because Hollywood itself remains stubbornly hard to conquer, with or without your dragon and your magic braid. Tom Ford dropped a hint of this, as he spoke to Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet beforehand: truly a meeting of rare species. Ford explained that the purpose of life, as dramatized in his film, “A Single Man,” was “not about money, cars, things—I mean, all of us are fortunate in this world—but it’s really about your connection to other people.” Seacrest didn’t miss a beat. “Tell me about this suit,” he said. “It’s a Tom Ford suit,” Tom Ford said. Talk about connection.
Both men looked chilled, pert, and primed for the ordeal ahead, though surely the realization that it would last more than three and a half hours would have been enough to take the edge off that chill. Did they foresee the bad robot dance? The pause that enabled Kristen Stewart to turn aside from the microphone, though not aside enough, and cough in spluttery fear over her shoulder? The way in which Tom Hanks, a pro at this palaver, clocked the overrun, marched on, skipped the final countdown, undid the envelope, and pronounced the words “The Hurt Locker” as if slipping his wife some plain, though not unwelcome, news about the size of their grocery bill? The one thing that none of us could have predicted was that our hearts, and our film-going habits of yore, should be stirred by a montage of old John Hughes movies. All of a sudden, folded and pasted together, as if in a yearbook or a photograph album, the clippings didn’t look dated, or tacky, or constrained by their setting. They looked like an authentic portrait of American teen-age yearning, both raucous and shy: “My God, are we going to be like our parents?” Emilio Estevez asked, in a line from “The Breakfast Club.” The question reverberated around the auditorium last night more searchingly than ever, as parent and grandparents, the elders and betters of their profession, gazed kindly, and with boundless apprehension, upon the next wave of kids. It seems impossible that Kate Winslet’s hair, the most beautiful arrangement since the heyday of Veronica Lake, could ever be outgleamed, and outbrushed, by other locks; but even perfect beauty, as Yeats was sorry to inform us, will grow old and gray and full of sleep. Just look at Antonio Banderas’s beard.
What was going on? Farmiga, Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore, Michelle Pfeiffer, Stanley Tucci, Forest Whitaker, and others, all of them asked to hold still, without so much as a podium to lean on, an envelope to finger, or a little gold man to squeeze, and hymn their respective friends. Even Oprah had to do it; needless to say, she did it with bullet-point briskness and efficacy, but still, it must the first time she has found herself in a lineup. It was like a Celebrity “Usual Suspects.” Again and again, throughout the show, the producers decided to make rich, famous people strike a pose, in tricky isolation, just long enough to bead their hairlines with imperceptible sweat. My guess is that the Academy could be hearing from a whole lot of lawyers over breakfast. Each of the ten nominees for Best Picture was touted by a lonely figure on a platform; Colin Firth did it for “An Education,” and he had already endured, poor fellow, the horror of the opening minutes, when he, Morgan Freeman, Carey Mulligan, and others had been paraded, for our delectation, under the pitiless lights. Given that Englishmen imbibe embarrassment with their mother’s milk (that, indeed, is precisely where the problem begins), and given that Firth is one of the most undilutedly English stars since Robert Donat, his aplomb, under the circumstances, was miraculous to behold.
For a dizzying instant, I thought that all ten of that initial group—nominated for their performances in leading roles—were about to whirr, grow fuzzy, and beam themselves off the bridge of the U.S.S. Kodak Theatre. I was hoping, in short, for a “Star Trek” moment. What became apparent, however, with dispiriting speed, was that this would not be science fiction’s night. Science, yes, for those who want to know how to defuse a trunkful of bombs or power their houses with balloons, and plenty of fiction, too, for those who dream of slaughtering Nazis or getting laid on the strength of their air-miles; but not science and fiction in the same package. “Avatar” slunk away with three minor prizes, and “District 9,” an exemplary piece of low-budget inventiveness, with none. Even “Star Trek” lost its two awards, for sound mixing and editing, to “The Hurt Locker,” although at least both of those were collected, back-to-back, by a frail and splendid figure with flowing ginger-blond tresses, milky complexion, and unplaceable accent, whose very presence gave comfort to connoisseurs of the extraterrestrial. (For the record, his name is Paul N. J. Ottoson, and he claims to come from Sweden. Yeah, right.)
And that was pretty much it, for fans of the unfathomably strange. You might have reckoned that a quick zip back through a hundred years of sci-fi, in tribute to “Avatar” and to all that it excitably portends, would have been in order, instead of which, for no known reason, we got a gaggle of clips from random horror movies, some of them so random that they weren’t even horror movies at all. (Mind you, it was prefaced by the funniest skit in the show, a neatly judged spoof of “Paranormal Activity,” starring Steve Martin and his co-presenter Alec Baldwin, which presumably cost more than the original film.) In the end, the only object on show that forced me to speculate on life beyond our solar system was the dress worn by Sarah Jessica Parker, a lemon sheath topped with what appeared to be ironwork. Label-hunters tagged it as Chanel, cynics dismissed it as a nasty collision between the world’s cleanest shower curtain and the radiator grille of a Mack truck, but to me it was clearly the lightweight battle-dress worn by Ma’ami the She-Monarch from the third planet on the left past Pandora, already colonized by James Cameron as he prepares for his next adventure.
Will he wince at last night’s snub, and grind his teeth in his dreams, or do two and a half billion dollars sit more comfortably in the hand than a few square inches of gold plate? I think he will mind, a little, precisely because an Oscar is still, pace Harvey Weinstein, something that money can’t buy—because Hollywood itself remains stubbornly hard to conquer, with or without your dragon and your magic braid. Tom Ford dropped a hint of this, as he spoke to Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet beforehand: truly a meeting of rare species. Ford explained that the purpose of life, as dramatized in his film, “A Single Man,” was “not about money, cars, things—I mean, all of us are fortunate in this world—but it’s really about your connection to other people.” Seacrest didn’t miss a beat. “Tell me about this suit,” he said. “It’s a Tom Ford suit,” Tom Ford said. Talk about connection.
Both men looked chilled, pert, and primed for the ordeal ahead, though surely the realization that it would last more than three and a half hours would have been enough to take the edge off that chill. Did they foresee the bad robot dance? The pause that enabled Kristen Stewart to turn aside from the microphone, though not aside enough, and cough in spluttery fear over her shoulder? The way in which Tom Hanks, a pro at this palaver, clocked the overrun, marched on, skipped the final countdown, undid the envelope, and pronounced the words “The Hurt Locker” as if slipping his wife some plain, though not unwelcome, news about the size of their grocery bill? The one thing that none of us could have predicted was that our hearts, and our film-going habits of yore, should be stirred by a montage of old John Hughes movies. All of a sudden, folded and pasted together, as if in a yearbook or a photograph album, the clippings didn’t look dated, or tacky, or constrained by their setting. They looked like an authentic portrait of American teen-age yearning, both raucous and shy: “My God, are we going to be like our parents?” Emilio Estevez asked, in a line from “The Breakfast Club.” The question reverberated around the auditorium last night more searchingly than ever, as parent and grandparents, the elders and betters of their profession, gazed kindly, and with boundless apprehension, upon the next wave of kids. It seems impossible that Kate Winslet’s hair, the most beautiful arrangement since the heyday of Veronica Lake, could ever be outgleamed, and outbrushed, by other locks; but even perfect beauty, as Yeats was sorry to inform us, will grow old and gray and full of sleep. Just look at Antonio Banderas’s beard.
This was The New Yorker
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