Oscars - a final look back
Sweeping up Sunday night's Oscar party, a few things peek out from the dustpan:
1) I believe history will look back on this year's Oscars and declare "Brokeback Mountain" was robbed. The victory of "Crash" - a good but not great movie, and certainly the least of the five Best Picture nominees - reflects Hollywood's timidity in embracing a gay-themed film, without being bigoted about it. As the esteemed critic Kenneth Turan wrote in Monday's Los Angeles Times, "for people who were discomfited by 'Brokeback Mountain' but wanted to be able to look themselves in the mirror and feel like they were good, productive liberals, 'Crash' provided the perfect safe harbor."
2) Jon Stewart did fine Sunday night. He was a bit nervous and outside his element, but he was funny and just irreverent enough to tweak the Academy's stuffiness without poking them in the eye. The fake political-style attack ads of the Best Actress nominees (some narrated by Stewart's former "Daily Show" colleague Stephen Colbert) were, however, as close as the Oscars got to Stewart's brand of cutting humor.
3) Other things in the ceremony could have been improved. For starters, enough with the montages! Also, Ben Stiller's green-suit bit and the Will Ferrell/Steve Carell bad-makeup jokes were both funny for about 30 seconds - except they were onstage for two minutes.
4) My favorite Oscar presenters were Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep, in their tribute to Robert Altman - both mocking the ceremony's stilted teleprompter readings and illustrating Altman's overlapping-dialogue style. If the whole ceremony could be done like an Altman movie, it would be the most entertaining Oscar Night ever. (It also would have been done a half-hour sooner.)
5) Get to the Tower Theatre this Friday to see the four documentary-short nominees, especially the deserving winner "A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin." And the Broadway on Friday is bringing back "Crash," so you can judge for yourself whether it rates Best Picture.
6) FYI, I scored 19 correct predictions out of 24. I missed out on the "Crash" Best Picture win, the "Hustle & Flow" song, cinematography for "Memoirs of a Geisha," George Clooney's supporting-actor win (I predicted Matt Dillon in an upset), and the documentary-short winner.
1) I believe history will look back on this year's Oscars and declare "Brokeback Mountain" was robbed. The victory of "Crash" - a good but not great movie, and certainly the least of the five Best Picture nominees - reflects Hollywood's timidity in embracing a gay-themed film, without being bigoted about it. As the esteemed critic Kenneth Turan wrote in Monday's Los Angeles Times, "for people who were discomfited by 'Brokeback Mountain' but wanted to be able to look themselves in the mirror and feel like they were good, productive liberals, 'Crash' provided the perfect safe harbor."
2) Jon Stewart did fine Sunday night. He was a bit nervous and outside his element, but he was funny and just irreverent enough to tweak the Academy's stuffiness without poking them in the eye. The fake political-style attack ads of the Best Actress nominees (some narrated by Stewart's former "Daily Show" colleague Stephen Colbert) were, however, as close as the Oscars got to Stewart's brand of cutting humor.
3) Other things in the ceremony could have been improved. For starters, enough with the montages! Also, Ben Stiller's green-suit bit and the Will Ferrell/Steve Carell bad-makeup jokes were both funny for about 30 seconds - except they were onstage for two minutes.
4) My favorite Oscar presenters were Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep, in their tribute to Robert Altman - both mocking the ceremony's stilted teleprompter readings and illustrating Altman's overlapping-dialogue style. If the whole ceremony could be done like an Altman movie, it would be the most entertaining Oscar Night ever. (It also would have been done a half-hour sooner.)
5) Get to the Tower Theatre this Friday to see the four documentary-short nominees, especially the deserving winner "A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin." And the Broadway on Friday is bringing back "Crash," so you can judge for yourself whether it rates Best Picture.
6) FYI, I scored 19 correct predictions out of 24. I missed out on the "Crash" Best Picture win, the "Hustle & Flow" song, cinematography for "Memoirs of a Geisha," George Clooney's supporting-actor win (I predicted Matt Dillon in an upset), and the documentary-short winner.
1:16 PM
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