Monday, February 26, 2007
Oscar, Oscar, Oscar
For about the past three or four years, the Oscars have been on Sunday nights, and not during spring break. Time was, they were during the March spring break… and on a weeknight. I’d go to my hometown, and Oscar was our version of the Superbowl. We’d gather around a television, eat, drink, cheer, argue, and be merry. But golden lads and girls all must, as chimneysweepers, come to dust. So, I haven’t really watched the Oscars for years. I honor how important they are to Hollywood history, culture, and the future of the industry. But, more often than not, they get it wrong, and those losses really sting. It would be easy to say, “Oh, the Oscars don’t matter.”
But they kinda-sorta do.
And yet, they’ve always been a joke. HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY over CITIZEN KANE… or THE MALTESE FALCON? THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH over HIGH NOON? MY FAIR LADY over DR. STRANGELOVE? OLIVER over THE LION IN WINTER? ROCKY over ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, NETWORK, and TAXI DRIVER? KRAMER VS. KRAMER over ALL THAT JAZZ and APOCALYPSE NOW? CHARIOTS OF FIRE over REDS? TERMS OF ENDEARMENT over THE RIGHT STUFF? DANCES WITH WOLVES over GOODFELLAS? FORREST GUMP over PULP FICTION and SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION? TITANIC over LA CONFIDENTIAL… and BOOGIE NIGHTS, which wasn’t even nominated? GLADIATOR over… well, there had to be something better that year. RETURN OF THE KING over LOST IN TRANSLATION? MILLION DOLLAR BABY over SIDEWAYS or the non-nominated ETERNAL SUNSHINE?
But, I keep coming back, anyway.
Having said that, this year’s nominees were so dreary-looking that I only saw two of them – the magnificent LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and THE DEPARTED. I wanted to see THE QUEEN, but had zero interest in BABEL (looked too much like CRASH, which I enjoyed… once) and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (Clint lost me with the lugubrious, dull MYSTIC RIVER – never again).
Again, this was a year where several outstanding films came out which were stung by the Academy’s short memory. You’re telling me that V FOR VENDETTA didn’t get a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination? You’re kidding me. Elitist assholes. And what about the constantly-shafted Robert Altman’s final film (and the best movie I saw, last year), A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION. Not only did it get great reviews, it was thickly layered with complexities that will keep film students pondering it for decades.
Nothing?
Nothing?
Yeah, which pretty much summed up my interest in the awards, this year.
Criswell predicts that, fifty years from now, Garrison Keillor will finally be recognized as one of the darkest and most deliciously passive-aggressive writers of our time. This film may very well reveal a lot more than people currently recognize.
So, chalk it up to another year of, well, another year.
And let it be said that I'm glad Scorsese won. Not his best film, but as Ebert noted, he hasn't made a bad one. Finally, he has his Oscar. Fair enough.
For about the past three or four years, the Oscars have been on Sunday nights, and not during spring break. Time was, they were during the March spring break… and on a weeknight. I’d go to my hometown, and Oscar was our version of the Superbowl. We’d gather around a television, eat, drink, cheer, argue, and be merry. But golden lads and girls all must, as chimneysweepers, come to dust. So, I haven’t really watched the Oscars for years. I honor how important they are to Hollywood history, culture, and the future of the industry. But, more often than not, they get it wrong, and those losses really sting. It would be easy to say, “Oh, the Oscars don’t matter.”
But they kinda-sorta do.
And yet, they’ve always been a joke. HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY over CITIZEN KANE… or THE MALTESE FALCON? THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH over HIGH NOON? MY FAIR LADY over DR. STRANGELOVE? OLIVER over THE LION IN WINTER? ROCKY over ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, NETWORK, and TAXI DRIVER? KRAMER VS. KRAMER over ALL THAT JAZZ and APOCALYPSE NOW? CHARIOTS OF FIRE over REDS? TERMS OF ENDEARMENT over THE RIGHT STUFF? DANCES WITH WOLVES over GOODFELLAS? FORREST GUMP over PULP FICTION and SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION? TITANIC over LA CONFIDENTIAL… and BOOGIE NIGHTS, which wasn’t even nominated? GLADIATOR over… well, there had to be something better that year. RETURN OF THE KING over LOST IN TRANSLATION? MILLION DOLLAR BABY over SIDEWAYS or the non-nominated ETERNAL SUNSHINE?
But, I keep coming back, anyway.
Having said that, this year’s nominees were so dreary-looking that I only saw two of them – the magnificent LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and THE DEPARTED. I wanted to see THE QUEEN, but had zero interest in BABEL (looked too much like CRASH, which I enjoyed… once) and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (Clint lost me with the lugubrious, dull MYSTIC RIVER – never again).
Again, this was a year where several outstanding films came out which were stung by the Academy’s short memory. You’re telling me that V FOR VENDETTA didn’t get a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination? You’re kidding me. Elitist assholes. And what about the constantly-shafted Robert Altman’s final film (and the best movie I saw, last year), A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION. Not only did it get great reviews, it was thickly layered with complexities that will keep film students pondering it for decades.
Nothing?
Nothing?
Yeah, which pretty much summed up my interest in the awards, this year.
Criswell predicts that, fifty years from now, Garrison Keillor will finally be recognized as one of the darkest and most deliciously passive-aggressive writers of our time. This film may very well reveal a lot more than people currently recognize.
So, chalk it up to another year of, well, another year.
And let it be said that I'm glad Scorsese won. Not his best film, but as Ebert noted, he hasn't made a bad one. Finally, he has his Oscar. Fair enough.
# posted by Doctor Lao @ 7:17 PM 
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My pivotal betrayed-by-the-Oscars moment was when James Horner beat Philip Glass for best soundtrack. Granted, Kundun wasn't one of Phil's best, but it sure as hell was better than the godawful Titanic soundtrack, which followed me around for two years, torturing me. And last night, again, Phil didn't win. The soundtrack for The Illusionist wasn't nominated (I haven't heard that one that was, Notes on a Scandal). Speaking of which, I just saw The Illusionist, and liked it a lot, and not just the music. I thought that, in an age of CGI where pretty much any thing imagined can be transferred to celluloid, it did a good job of bringing the sense of wonder back to magic tricks. Couldn't they have at least nominated it for best costumes or lighting or something?
And yes, A Prairie Home Companion should have been nominated as well; I thought it was very uneven, and I've never been crazy about that who-needs-a-script quality that Altman loves, but there were so many great performances that there should have been some supporting actor awards passed around.
And I know I've raved about An Inconvenient Truth, and I was glad to see Al win something for once, but man, the Gore-love was reaching bukkake levels of excess. And I'm glad Melissa Ethridge is this proud lesbian and all that, but her music flat-out sucks.
Nice dress on Emily "Lighta" Blunt.
And yes, A Prairie Home Companion should have been nominated as well; I thought it was very uneven, and I've never been crazy about that who-needs-a-script quality that Altman loves, but there were so many great performances that there should have been some supporting actor awards passed around.
And I know I've raved about An Inconvenient Truth, and I was glad to see Al win something for once, but man, the Gore-love was reaching bukkake levels of excess. And I'm glad Melissa Ethridge is this proud lesbian and all that, but her music flat-out sucks.
Nice dress on Emily "Lighta" Blunt.
Hey, I just remembered something, Dr, Lao--you HATE Garrison Keilor. I distinctly recall when GK came to Louisville, listening to you go on for 20 minutes about how the guy was an unfunny hack who stole his schtick from Gene Shepard.
Yeah, Toner, that was about twenty years ago when I said that about Keillor. Are we really going to ground everything I say in the context of stuff I said when I was 15?
I change my mind every now and then. I reserve the right.
Yeah, I do think that, on a certain level, Keillor was similar to Saint Jean, but that was more due to the sound bites that publicists were using to sell Keillor at the time. And it does sadden me that Jean's work has fallen into unjust obscurity.
Keillor's obviously a more profound writer, but they both were radio stars who made a lot of money recounting semi-fictional, small-town childhoods and then publishing them in national periodicals and, eventually, books. And, yes, Jean did that first. Of course, he was a lot older than Keillor. But he was a counter-cultural figure around the time that Keillor was probably paying attention to the counter-culture.
You actually put it best (twenty years ago) when you said that you might laugh more with Jean, but you'd smile more with Keillor, and that might be on a deeper level.
Keillor also did two very interesting things since I shared that teenaged opinion. He put a footnote into LAKE WOBEGON DAYS that totally undercut the folksy bullshit with which he sugarcoats his stories. That was a Rosetta stone.
He also divorced his wife in 1990, briefly jettisoned his family-friendly shell, and published his (potentially) most puzzling, angry work, THE BOOK OF GUYS, in 1993. Its worth can be measured in how much it infuriated many of his more PC fans.
All I can say is that it's a very interesting collection, and shed a lot of new light (for me) on Keillor's work, before and after.
As for Glass, I'm with you. This man is one of our greatest, living composers. Give him an Oscar, for the love of Vaal!
I change my mind every now and then. I reserve the right.
Yeah, I do think that, on a certain level, Keillor was similar to Saint Jean, but that was more due to the sound bites that publicists were using to sell Keillor at the time. And it does sadden me that Jean's work has fallen into unjust obscurity.
Keillor's obviously a more profound writer, but they both were radio stars who made a lot of money recounting semi-fictional, small-town childhoods and then publishing them in national periodicals and, eventually, books. And, yes, Jean did that first. Of course, he was a lot older than Keillor. But he was a counter-cultural figure around the time that Keillor was probably paying attention to the counter-culture.
You actually put it best (twenty years ago) when you said that you might laugh more with Jean, but you'd smile more with Keillor, and that might be on a deeper level.
Keillor also did two very interesting things since I shared that teenaged opinion. He put a footnote into LAKE WOBEGON DAYS that totally undercut the folksy bullshit with which he sugarcoats his stories. That was a Rosetta stone.
He also divorced his wife in 1990, briefly jettisoned his family-friendly shell, and published his (potentially) most puzzling, angry work, THE BOOK OF GUYS, in 1993. Its worth can be measured in how much it infuriated many of his more PC fans.
All I can say is that it's a very interesting collection, and shed a lot of new light (for me) on Keillor's work, before and after.
As for Glass, I'm with you. This man is one of our greatest, living composers. Give him an Oscar, for the love of Vaal!
Good point. If we start dredging up things we said twenty years ago, I'll be in way more trouble than you.
But, please, don't make your oaths to Vaal; it offendeth Reagan.
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But, please, don't make your oaths to Vaal; it offendeth Reagan.
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