The Oscars are over
The
dresses are hung
The Xanax is shelved
The fat lady has sung.
Actually, there were A LOT
of singers at this year’s show, and surprisingly none of them overweight…hmmm…
Ok, let's discuss.
Let’s start with Best
Picture. Argo. Not a shocker.
The love affair that Hollywood has with any film that has elements of war and with the love affair that Hollywood has with itself made this film a shoe-in for Best Picture.
Set during the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979, a CIA expert suggests fooling those silly Iranians by masquerading the hostages as a fake film crew from Canada in order to get them on a plane and home safe. If the film wasn’t based on a true story, I’d probably have thought the plot to be a bit lame.
The love affair that Hollywood has with any film that has elements of war and with the love affair that Hollywood has with itself made this film a shoe-in for Best Picture.
Set during the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979, a CIA expert suggests fooling those silly Iranians by masquerading the hostages as a fake film crew from Canada in order to get them on a plane and home safe. If the film wasn’t based on a true story, I’d probably have thought the plot to be a bit lame.
Bottom line: Make a film
about war and add in a part about film making itself and those 6,000 members of
the Academy will predictably vote in your favor. I’d bet money that Zero Dark Thirty was a close second place.
Argo itself was fairly
good, but not Best Picture material.
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| Daniel Day Lewis accepting his award for Best Performance by a Lead Actor |
Now that that’s out of my
system, let’s talk Daniel Day Lewis. What a dreamboat. His joke involving Meryl
Streep was both hilarious and seemingly off-the-cuff. Though if it was
rehearsed, I couldn’t be mad at him. The thing about Lincoln was that it bored
me to tears, but it was still a great film. And that’s because of Daniel Day
Lewis. He is one of the best actors of this time and I enjoy listening to his
acceptance speeches almost as much as I enjoy watching him act. He is above all
a remarkable man of his craft.
Ok, I’m back to my
bitterness again. Jennifer Lawrence. Seriously I’m not happy. A half-baked
romantic comedy managed to fool everyone this year into thinking that it was
worth more than rom-coms of the past. And mind you, I love a good romantic comedy.
I even have trouble choosing which one to reference in this tirade because
there are so many that I love. But most (if not all) of them do not have a
place at the Oscars. They are often trite, predicable, and unimaginative. And
Silver Linings Playbook is no different.
Jennifer Lawrence plays a
recent widow who falls into a friendship with Bradley Cooper’s character who is
(gasp!) just returning from a mental hospital after he freaked out finding his
wife with another man. That’s it. That’s the plot. Oh, and Jennifer’s character
convinces Bradley’s character to help her with an upcoming dance competition
that will ultimately bring the two of them together. A dance competition.
And no, I don’t think
either of the parents’ characters contributed anything of value to this film so
please spare me the “What about DeNiro?” or “Jacki Weaver was great!”
Blah. They were beige. The whole film was beige.
Blah. They were beige. The whole film was beige.
 |
| Jennifer Lawrence's graceful fall |
Aside from all of that, I
do give Ms. Lawrence kudo’s for falling so gracefully up the stage that at first I thought it was on purpose. And during her speech, I just pretended she was
receiving the Oscar for her role in Winter’s Bone – A much, much better
performance that certainly deserved recognition over Silver Linings Playbook.
This is proof that the Academy votes politically, and not based on artistic
merit.
I’ve already spoken my adoration
for Beasts of the Southern Wild in a previous post so it’s no surprise that I
was favoring the film and its nominations to win. I had the opportunity to
watch each and every nominated film this year and I will report that Beasts of
The Southern Wild held steady as my number one choice.
But I have watched too
many Oscar shows to be naïve enough to think this film had a chance. Quvenzhane
Wallis may be one of the most talented 9-year-olds on the planet, but she
doesn’t play the Oscar game so she never stood a chance. I was really expecting
Jessica Chastain to win Best Actress. She seemed to have the politics thing
down and her performance was good. So it would have been a good fit both politically and artistically.
 |
| Quvenzhane Wallis on the Red Carpet |
Christophe Waltz and Anne
Hathaway were definites for me. Both played very affective and effective
characters so I was glad for both of their wins. And I’ll excuse the fact that
Anne Hathaway was only on screen for about twenty minutes in Les Miserables because
it was an unbelievable twenty minutes of character acting.
And the last category that
I’ll make comment of is Documentary Feature. I was pleased to see Searching for Sugarman win but I would have been ecstatic if the winner was How to Survive a Plague. In fact, this category was full of great submissions and I would
recommend most of them. Invisible War was high on my list as well as 5 Broken Cameras so the good news of this Oscar Season is that this category was full of
talent.
So that’s a wrap on this
years show, I’ll try next year to not expect The Academy to vote with their
brains – then perhaps I wont be disappointed. Until next year movie-lovers!
Here’s my official
list (in a very particular order) of nominated films that are a must-watch:
1.
Beasts of the
Southern Wild
2.
How to Survive
a Plague
3.
Django
Unchained
4.
Life of Pi
5.
Flight
6.
Amour
7.
Hitchcock
8.
The Master
9.
Mirror Mirror
