I say give the hosting gig back to Billy Crystal, permanently!
(The Oscars, The iPINIONS Journal, March 6, 2006)
As this opening quote indicates, I’ve been arguing for years that producers should give up trying to make the Oscars into a comedy/variety show. And last night’s cringe-worthy offering proved yet again why they should.
But one would have thought that, after genuinely funnymen Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin bombed last year, no producer would have hired two straight actors, Anne Hathaway and James Franco, to follow them this year.
As it happened, it was immediately and painfully apparent that their canned opening bits (in which they recreated scenes from this year’s top contenders for Best Picture) would not compensate for their Ricky-and-Lucy shortcomings on stage throughout the show. They sucked!
In fact, though surely unwitting, it was an indication of how poorly Hathaway and Franco were doing that – when she introduced former host (nonpareil) Billy Crystal two hours into this snoozefest – the audience arose and gave him a rousing and clearly wistful standing ovation.
[A] three-hour show – only six minutes of which anyone really cares about (i.e., the time it takes to present Oscars for best supporting actor and actress, best actor and actress, best director and best picture). And, alas, the hosts do little to relieve the boredom of the interludes between these carefully spread-out moments.
(“2008 Oscars,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 25, 2008)
So, with due respect to all of the winners, I shall comment only on the few categories most people were interested in. Never mind that the outcome in each case was as surprising as the sun rising in the east.
But, to be fair, the director deserves praise for doing a slightly better job this year of spreading out the presentation of these key awards; i.e., instead of making us sit through three hours of awards for things like costume design before jamming them in at the end when most viewers had already dozed off from boredom.
My picks reflect who I think should win, not necessarily who I think will win. For example, I think Annette Bening should win but all of the critics seem to think Natalie Portman will win. So please be advised in case you’re planning to bet the farm on my picks.
(83rd Annual Academy Awards predictions, February 27, 2011)
With that, here are the winners, followed by my comparative predictions and the reasons for them:
And the Oscar goes to…
Actor in a Leading Role: Colin Firth in The King’s Speech
My pick is Colin Firth in The King’s Speech.
Not only did he give a truly riveting and technically precise performance, he really endeared himself to me by disclosing the terrific irony that he’s an avowed anti-monarchist who is winning all kinds of accolades for playing a British king.
Actor in a Supporting Role: Christian Bale in The Fighter
My pick is Christian Bale in The Fighter.
To be honest I don’t care too much for performances where actors losing or gaining tons of weight is half the gig. And this masochistic form of method acting is becoming Bale’s schtick.
Instead, I picked Bale to win for the same reason I picked Jeff Bridges to win last year: he has amassed a really impressive body of work and, like a Republican who has sought the presidential nomination many times to no avail, it was finally his due.
Best Acceptance Speech: David Seidler for The Social Network
Clearly not a prediction, but I think this highly-evolved stutterer and writer of The King’s Speech screenplay deserves an honorable mention for the classy, modest and articulate way he accepted his award and gave a shout out to stutterers everywhere saying, “We have a voice. We have been heard.”
A very close second in this category was Charles Ferguson who won for the Documentary Feature Inside Job, which chronicled the Wall Street shenanigans that led to the global financial crisis in 2008. I saw him being interviewed by Charlie Rose last year and found his righteous indignation towards Wall Street bankers quite refreshing. But I was even more impressed when he seized the world stage last night to announce that, as much as he appreciates his Oscar, he would be remiss not to decry the fact that none of the crooked bankers who perpetrated this “inside job” have been sent to jail.
Actress in a Leading Role: Natalie Portman in Black Swan
My pick is Annette Bening in The Kids Are All Right.
Perhaps this had more to do with my regard for the way she has managed to pussywhip Warren Beatty. But in truth she, like Bale, was more of a sentimental pick than anything else.
Actress in a Supporting Role: Melissa Leo in The Fighter
My pick is Hailee Stenfeld in True Grit.
Actually, this is one of four of the ten-nominated films that I did not see. But I just liked the idea of this young girl pulling a Tatum O’Neal by upsetting all of her adults competitors. Ah well….
But why they chose the stroke-ravaged Kurt Douglas to present this first of the six most-important awards is beyond me. Watching him was almost as sad (and anxiety-ridden) as watching Dick Clark host ABC’s New Year’s Eve countdown….
Anyway, nothing showed how important writers are to everything actors say quite like Leo standing utterly dumbstruck on stage and letting rip an F-bomb to begin what little she was finally able to get out.
Directing: Tom Hooper for The King’s Speech
My pick is Tom Hooper for The King’s Speech.
I apologize to readers who saw that I (initially) predicted Guy Hendrix Dyas for Inception. This clearly could not have been what I intended since Dyas was not even nominated in this category.
My only explanation for this Freudian slip is that I thought he was so deserving for entertaining us with such wonderfully surreal imagery – like nothing we’d ever seen on screen before.
Best Picture: The King’s Speech
My pick is The King’s Speech.
It helps that it presented a remarkably compelling true human story. But I was even more moved by the fact that the screen writer, David Seidler (who duly won for Screenplay), honored the Queen Mother’s request that he wait until she died (over 20 years later) to expose her husband’s agonizing struggles with stuttering on screen.
NOTE: The biggest fail of the night had to have been some lone-ranger street artist named Banksy losing the Documentary Feature Oscar after perpetrating more promotional hype than a WWE smackdown.
Oh, and one more thing, am I the only one who found Franco’s self-gratifying squint and smirk more staged and smug than “young and hip”…?
Related commentaries:
The Oscars 2006
The Oscars 2008
The Oscars 2010