OSCAR THOUGHTS FROM A DUDE WHO MATTERS

A lot of people will be chiming in with their thoughts on the 80th Academy Awards, so I thought I'd better join their ranks in case there's a party or a club. Normally I don't enjoy the Oscars, but this time around I was a little psyched because it was a great year for "mainstream" Hollywood movies, and I felt that, by and large, the best were nominated. It's easier to write a bunch of bullet points than to pen a cohesive piece, so here we go... *Armed with a tube of cookie dough and a six-pack of Dogfish Head "Raison D'Etre" beer, ("Reason For Being" - a great name for alcohol), I settled in at 7:30 to catch some of the pre-show hoopla. Fifteen minutes later, my step-dad called, and we yelled and cursed about Duke basketball right up to the broadcast. Summary: Nolan Smith should replace Slow Whitey, aka Greg Paulus, at the point. *Jon Stewart is a great host. My favorite one-liner came when he noted that even Norbit had earned a nomination. "I think it's great. Too often, the Academy ignores movies that aren't good." *I caught snippets of Barbara Walters' pre-show interviews. She is a smug, preaching, self-satisfied woman. I hope I spelled her first name wrong. *Going in to the show, I thought the Most Obvious award was Daniel Day-Lewis for best actor. But as the musical nominees were performed over the course of three hours, that honor was transferred to Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova for "Falling Slowly" from Once. It was so clearly superior to the other four songs that I would have been irrationally angry if they'd lost. At that point, I was on Raison D'Etre number four. Also, they couldn't find anything better than the three, count 'em three, songs from Enchanted? Each one was a lame-o 1950s cookie cutter show tune. And I like Amy Adams- she's beautiful and apparently talented- but it's got to be embarrassing to sing that "Happy Working Song" in front of anything but a room full of five year-olds. That performance narrowly beat out the adoring gaze of Cormac McCarthy's son for "Most Uncomfortable Moment." When the folks from Once won the Oscar, though, it was one of the night's best moments. Gotta love seeing the Irish take a prize, and they seemed genuinely thrilled to be there. My Gaelic heart thumped with pride to hear the brogue-ish "Tanks" on film's biggest stage. It also led to one of Stewart's funniest quips of the night- "Man, that guy was so arrogant"- and a classy gesture when he brought Marketa back out after the break to say her thank-yous. *Nice to see Javier Bardem take the inevitable Supporting Actor prize. I'm not quite sure how the role of Anton Chigurh is considered a supporting actor and not one of the two male leads, but so be it. I got a few goosebumps when he spoke to his mother in Spanish. Then I wiped some cookie dough off my shirt. *The best non-Oscar moment of the night came from an unlikely source- a JCPenney's commercial. The ad was introducing a new line of clothing for dudes who forget to take the tag off their jeans, but the song caught my attention immediately. It was a beautiful folk-ish tune with great harmony between male and female voices. I looked it up online, and it turned out to be a cover of a song called "Killing the Blues" by country-music legend John Prine. The collaborating artists are Allison Krauss of Union Station fame, whose voice I've loved since O Brother Where Art Thou, and former Led Zeppelin (edit for KQE: LEGENDARY) front man Robert Plant. Apparently these two released an album together in October. Who knew? Anyway, I downloaded the song and it lives up to its billing and then some. I hate to describe music, since you can't experience it any way but the right way, so I'll just say that if you want the song, leave a comment with your e-mail and I can send it to you. On first listen, the rest of the album sounds pretty good too. *Anybody else sick of movies about rich people, past or present, in England? How much mileage can we get from the make-emotions-seem-more-profound-since-they're-coming -from-an-obnoxiously-repressed-culture formula? And on that note, what the hell is Woody Allen's problem? His bread and butter is making movies about neurotic Jewish people in New York. I'm not saying an artist shouldn't branch out, but it's hard to watch the ongoing train wreck of his murder-obsessed British period. The ghost scene in Match Point, to take one example, is one of the worst ham-fisted moments in cinema, and it's hard to imagine the guy who made Annie Hall and Manhattan stooping to that level. *Tilda Swinton is weird. I want to have tea at her home. I want her to silently judge me from across a table littered with controversial objects she dares me to comment on. I want to kiss her and have her bite me hard on the lower lip, and when I step back and say "wha-", she is already walking away. I want to try in vain to decipher her poetic non-sequiturs at a fountain in the middle of America. She will only smile and twirl in the wind, and when I least expect it, she will push me into the fountain and leap in after me. Her striking red hair will splay out in the water, and she will whisper "I am a Naiad." She will leave me at a Greyhound bus station in Cleveland, wearing a white dress she bought from a runaway bride in Toledo. Tilda Swinton is weird. *I think Marion Cotillard won by default this year. I'm not saying she wasn't great. I didn't see La Vie en Rose, but I heard excellent things. It's just that I can't imagine a French actress winning the award for a French movie in a year where there was a legitimate American contender. Who was her competition this year? Nobody was going to pick Ellen Page, good as she was. Too young. Laura Linney played herself, as usual, in The Savages. Effective, but not Best Actress material. Elizabeth: The Golden Age was a bad movie, so forget Cate Blanchett. I was hoping Julie Christie, one of my favorite actresses from the golden decade (70s) of American film, would win, but her movie was a low-profile Canadian affair that didn't stand much of a chance. Good for Marion and all, but I'd say she's the beneficiary of a bad year for leading ladies. *Diablo Cody. Jesus. How could this award happen? I'm not even someone who hates Juno. I thought Jason Reitman, the director, had an amazingly deft touch. I liked the music. I liked the acting. I'll even admit that after a while, parts affected me. But the movie's weakness, which everybody knew, was the too-hip-for-its-own-good writing. It makes you cringe at times with its smarmy, pop-intellectual tone. Like I said, the story is good, the film ended up being okay, and its possible to get over the dialogue if you come in with an open mind and stick it out. But an Oscar for Best Screenplay? Come on. Tony Gilroy wrote one of the best suspense thrillers I've ever seen in Michael Clayton. It was smart, topical, compelling, etc. It had terrific characters. It was a showcase in superb film writing. He was in a different class, and this was the worst screw-job of the night. I like Diablo, and it was cool to see someone so unconventional win an award, but I can't say it was deserved. *Daniel Day-Lewis. What more can you say? To think that the guy who accepted that award, the soft-spoken Englishman with two earrings and a gentle bearing, was the guy who played Daniel Plainview...unbelievable. It's one of the best performances we'll ever see in a film. *And to cap off the night, in the long-standing Oscar tradition, a filmmaker (or in this case two) gets rewarded for work they've done in the past. No Country For Old Men was a strong movie. There's no denying it. Chigurh is one of the best eerie characters ever, and the Coens stuck to their guns with Cormac's death-morality metaphor. I saw it twice in theaters, and liked it even better the second time. But There Will Be Blood is a classic, a once-in-a-lifetime effort that combines an excellent script, excellent directing, and excellent performances. Watching it on the big screen was like a revelation. Hollywood films are inundated with hype, and sometimes, as a moviegoer, it's impossible not to feel numb to the whole process. Then you see a phenomenal work of art like this, and, corny as it sounds, the idea of film's potential hits you like a hammer. P.T. Anderson made a movie that defied the various diseases plaguing American cinema, and rose to a level that can't be called anything but stunning. It's something that Joel and Ethan Coen have done before, but it's not something they did this year. When they announced Best Director, I watched P.T. Anderson in the split screen. To his credit, he kept his smile, but there was a slight grimace, and you could see the hurt, subtle as it was, pervading his expression. Here's a guy, a true talent, who went out and made the movie of his life. Anyone who's ever tried to put together something as small as a five-minute short knows how challenging filmmaking can be, how many problems you have to overcome, and how improbable it is to have any kind of result at all. But P.T. Anderson did it. From nothing but an old book by Upton Sinclair, he wrote, directed, and produced the best picture of the year. For his troubles, he went home empty-handed. In three or five or eight or ten years, he'll probably win Best Director or Best Picture for a film that doesn't reach the same plateau. That's just how it works. But he wasn't recognized this year, and it's a shame. So them's the Oscars. I had a good time, I must say. I hope you did too. Have a nice week. Be safe.