Oscars Redux

Word on the street is that the 2010 Academy Awards, aka this year's Oscars, was at best a snoozefest and at worst, well, the worst.  Viewership was down, one of the "young, hip" co-hosts that the Academy put forth in an attempt to capture a younger demographic appeared to be heavily sedated or suffering from boredom, and it took a Billy Crystal cameo to resuscitate the show at its midpoint.  The only good part of the whole show was the first 5 minutes, which ABC is milking here.

Can someone explain to me how James Franco got the reputation of being this deep, brooding, intelligent guy, when he wears that goofy, clueless look at all times? I spent the evening wanting to smack the smirk off his face.  Anne Hathaway meanwhile, was beautiful in dress after dress, but she looked like a deer in the headlights throughout the show.  Is this the same woman who was so hilarious on Saturday Night Live in November?

As I predicted in my previous post, the stuffy film about the royal family ran away with the big prizes.  Again, I wasn't the only one who felt that The King's Speech was good, but maybe overrated.  Comedian Bill Maher tweeted "Great movie, but of all the problems in the world, stuttering is about the millionth on my list."

Speaking of Twitter, this was my first year being online during the Oscars, unless you count last year's abc.com fiasco where the site crashed on me about two dozen times in the 10 minutes I tried to use it.   Reading tweets, commenting, and watching requires going back to those old school times when we watched shows live, rather than zip-zipping through the ads Tivo-style; but the atmosphere was fun and decidedly more hip than what was happening onscreen, despite ABC's valiant attempts.  In the Twitter world, many cracks were made about Franco's apparent intoxication on something or other, Gwynneth Paltrow's subpar vocal skills, and how incredibly unfunny the entire show was.

After much too long, the clips for the nominees for Best Picture finally rolled,  and I took a moment to check myself.  Was my adoration for The Fighter due to the fact that His Royal Markyness is naked from the waist up in about 60% of his screen time? No. It's Christian Bale and Melissa Leo who make the movie, along with a generous sprinkling of Amy Adams.  And those sisters!

If Christian Bale hadn't won the best supporting actor award, it would have been nothing short of robbery.  Melissa Leo's supporting actress award was also well-deserved, even if she was shamelessly campaigning for it. Although she whined in a Fresh Air interview that she had to play the mother to someone who was less than 10 years her junior ("There's not ten years between us!"), that statement was a stretch.  The truth thanks to IMDB: Melissa Leo, b1960; Mark Wahlberg, b1971; Christian Bale (who plays the much older brother to Wahlberg), b1974. It's also worth noting that she was closer to her character's true age than the two gentlemen. While Ms. Leo did manage to escape the Fresh Air interview without dropping an F-bomb, the same couldn't have been said about her appearance on live television.  The Fighter is still in theaters.

My predictions were right in 8 of my 10 favorite categories, which means that the winners were by definition predictable.  Though I knew it would turn out this way, it didn't diminish my disappointment that Winter's Bone walked away empty-handed. The story was fresh, and Jennifer Lawrence shone in the lead role which is most accurately described as gritty.  Winter's Bone is available on DVD.

The two winners I didn't accurately predict were the awards for my two favorite movie genres: foreign and documentary, and I'm still stinging from that.

Note: In a Better World, the foreign language film winner, was not released here in time for the awards, and there wasn't much buzz. Due to what I can only assume must have been a mixup, my invitation to the Cannes premiere never arrived, and so I still haven't had a chance to screen it yet. For those of you who aren't members of the Academy, it's due out in US theaters in April. Who knows when it will be available for rent, assuming we even remember to put it in our queues. . .

Finally, a big thank you to Luke Matheny, who won for best Short Film, but more importantly, gave a shout out to the First State, Home of Tax Free Shopping, Small Wonder: Delaware.  To those of you who don't realize this is a big deal, the total population of Delaware is still under one million; and the only state shout out that would have been more shocking would have been to North Dakota. Just try to find some Delaware plates on the road once you've gone west of Virginia.  Seriously, just try.  I have seen fewer than 5 since I left almost 9 years ago, and I live in a military town.  Matheny's film God of Love is available on iTunes.