I appreciate all the attention The Academy Awards give to good but relatively unseen films like The Tree of Life. Unfortunately, with all due respect to critics and members of the Academy (of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), how much a film makes, not whether the Academy awards it an Oscar, is the generally recognized measure of its success.
Indeed, it might surprise, if not disillusion, many of you to learn that studios covet an Oscar for Best Picture primarily because – as Sumner Redstone, the owner of Paramount, conceded in a moment of extraordinary candor – it guarantees millions more in box office receipts. And no studio head pursued this Holy Grail with more mercenary gusto this year than Harvey Weinstein – whose three films The Artist, My Week with Marilyn, and The Iron Lady are vying for 16 Oscars.
Anyway, The Academy Awards will be broadcast tomorrow night. Including the red-carpet foreplay, it will be a six-hour show. But trust me, only six minutes of it will be worth watching (i.e., the moments it takes to present awards in the six categories below).
And, remarkably enough, the host comedians do little to relieve the boredom of the interludes between these carefully spread-out moments.
(2008 Oscars, The iPINIONS Journal, February 25, 2008)
Oh, alright, I suppose many girls (and some “guys”) will be more interested in the foreplay – with its focus on the latest fashions – than in the spurts of excitement that come in those six minutes during the main event. I just have no interest in watching preening, pampered poseurs showing off their borrowed bling and frocks….
Although, apropos of boring hosts, I hope the return of Billy Crystal makes the rest of the show far more entertaining than it has been in recent years. Not least because I’ve been in the vanguard of critics calling for his return to center stage at The Academy Awards for years:
I say give the hosting gig back to Billy Crystal, permanently!
(2006 Oscars, The iPINIONS Journal, March 6, 2006)
I’m mindful of course that Crystal is hosting only because Eddie Murphy begged off after Brett Ratner, his pal and evidently his professional Siamese twin, blurted out an anti-gay slur and was summarily fired from directing this show.
And if playing second banana to Eddie weren’t dispiriting enough, the bone-headed producers are now raining on Billy’s parade by buying into the self-promotional hype Sacha Baron Cohen has been stoking for his film, The Dictator. Because instead of foiling Cohen’s obvious attempt to upstage The Academy Awards by walking the red carpet in his dictator’s garb, they themselves are building up more suspense around what antics he might pull than around Billy’s performance (or, God forbid, around which nominees might win).
Hell, for all we know this irreverent comic might be planning to storm the stage, pretend to behead Billy and take over as host. What’s more, Cohen, in character, is likely to blurt out slurs that make the one that got Ratner fired seem positively genteel. And they are indulging all of this distracting, self-promoting publicity for a yet-to-be-released film that is not even nominated for any awards?
Go figure … but that’s show business folks….
My picks
Actor in Leading Role: George Clooney in The Descendants
Because his play against type is not only inspiring artistically but damn so shrewd professionally.
Actor in Supporting Role: Christopher Plummer in Beginners
Because, as my Bibi would say, it’s about time!
Actress in Leading Role: Viola Davis in The Help
Because, for the almost all-white members of the all-boys club that is the (voting) Academy, this celebration of the Mammy iconography is not just perversely nostalgic but also as American as apple pie. According to the February 19, 2012 edition of the Los Angeles Times, the 5,765 members of the Academy are 94 percent white and 77 percent male.
But I can’t blame Viola for getting her Oscar any way she can – especially given all the perks and privileges it guarantees. I just pray she does not pull a Halle by acting as if she had just won a friggin Nobel Prize for doing something as meaningful as MLK did to win his. After all, she merely portrayed Blacks in the same stereotypical way Hattie McDaniel did to win her Mammy Oscar 73 years ago for Gone with the Wind.
(I refer you to my commentary on The Help to see how insidiously offensive I found this movie. And I hope the historical symmetry – in terms of nostalgia and surreal appeal – between The Help and The Artist is not lost on you.)
Actress in Supporting Role: Octavia Spencer in The Help
Because, well, see above.
Best Director: Michael Hazanavicius for The Artist
Because nothing represents the triumph of style over substance that defines modern culture quite like people acting as if this silent film is the best thing to happen to cinema, ironically, since talkies became all the rage in the 1930s.
Best Picture: The Artist
Because, well, see above.
Related commentaries:
2011 Oscars…
2008 Oscars…
2006 Oscars…
The Help