Notes On The Oscars

There is almost always something about the Academy Awards show that gets my hackles up: last year it was the Best Picture larceny perpetrated by Crash; a couple of years before that it was when Chicago won Best Picture; a couple of years before that it was when Julia Roberts won Best Actress for Erin Brockovich; and the entire 1997 show was marred by Titanic, and by Ben Affleck winning an Oscar.

(Odd aside, concerning Affleck and the Oscar he and Matt Damon won for writing Good Will Hunting: I read a small piece by William Goldman in Premiere magazine once, that had him telling the world that he had done most of the work on the screenplay for Good Will Hunting and that the Weinsteins had asked him to keep it quiet until after the Oscars. Just now, I brought up the IMDb page for Good Will Hunting, and the first item mentioned under the heading of trivia has to do with a WGA seminar Goldman attended in 2003, at which, apparently, he denied what is referred to as the “persistent rumor” that he had written Good Will Hunting.)

This year, however, there was nothing that really got my hackles up. Had I been a fan of Dreamgirls, I probably would have been pissed. I don’t usually care for musicals, though, so I didn’t really care that it pretty much got shafted. Technically, it had the most nominations, with eight, but three of those were in the same category - no surprise that the category was Best Song. Dreamgirls won only two Oscars, for Best Supporting Actress and for Sound Mixing. Maybe this had something to do with the snafu surrounding the way the fictional film hit a little too close to home with Motown founder Berry Gordy. A slew of hits can be found if you Google the following search string: [MSNBC “smokey robinson” dreamgirls].

And there were plenty of things that I thought were just fine. Ellen DeGeneres as the host was funny, even if she did seem a bit nervous. She was better than Jon Stewart was last year, though not quite as good as Steve Martin; and all three put together don’t even come close to Billy Crystal. There should be a new rule stipulating that Billy Crystal is to be the permanent host of the Oscars - he’s never nervous when he’s up there, is not remotely intimidated by his surroundings, and has an easy patter that is both respectful of the ceremony and fun at the same time. To put it another way, he hosts the Oscars almost like he was born to do it, like it’s just one of those things that he is suited for better than most other people on the planet.

I was also pleased with the two Oscars awarded to Little Miss Sunshine, which was sort of the odd picture out among the other four, much heavier, Best Picture nominees. It won Best Original Screenplay, which was not much of a surprise, and Best Supporting Actor for Alan Arkin, which was a huge surprise. Of the twenty-four awards to be handed out during the televised ceremony, there were six that were thought to be locks:

Best Actress to Helen Mirren for The Queen
Best Actor to Forest Whitaker for The Last King Of Scotland
Best Supporting Actress to Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls
Best Supporting Actor to Eddie Murphy for Dreamgirls
Best Documentary Feature to An Inconvenient Truth
Best Director to Martin Scorsese for The Departed

Eddie Murphy was the only one of those six locks who did not come away with the supposedly preordained Oscar. I also thought that Dreamgirls was a lock for Best Song, as it had three of the five nominations in the category - but was pleasantly surprised that Melissa Etheridge won for “I Need To Wake Up,” from An Inconvenient Truth.

Actually, there is one thing that got my hackles up - that The Last King Of Scotland was not nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Little Children was nominated, but not The Last King Of Scotland?? Wilco Tango Foxtrot? Not that it would have won, of course, up against The Departed; but it should have been nominated. The stories in both the film and novel were the same, but told so differently that they could almost have been different stories. I dare anyone out there to read the novel and see the movie - or vice versa - and not come away thinking that the adaptation was quite excellent.