So it’s done.
After hour upon hour of preparation (and that was just watching War Horse), yet another year’s worth of goody bags, gushing compliments and Kim Jong-il’s ashes have been distributed amongst the great and good (and Octavia Spencer) of the movie industry.
Predictability, the most predictable thing about this year’s Academy Awards were their predictability.
By the time the big night rolls around and the Golden Globe, Bafta and SAG/PGA/DGA prizes have been dished out, the Oscar engravers can gather around their TV sets with the rest of us, sipping on a glass of imitation champagne, toasting themselves for a job done, hoping that nobody clocks the spelling mistakes on Michel Hazanavicius’s statues and thanking the Hollywood Gods that Arnie never had a chance of picking up a Best Actor nod for Kindergarten Cop.
On the flip side of Anton Chigurh’s coin though, this also means that when the shocks come, no matter how minor or insignificant they seem, they’re impact is amplified as if they’ve been putting it up their whole life. I call the top five of this year’s Oscar ceremony shockeroons as follows:
i) Woody Allen is ‘win absentia’
Despite Midnight in Paris having bagged the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay, I didn’t see this coming. With The Artist looking likely to sweep all before it and Midnight in Paris having a cat in Hull’s chance of picking up the big one, I was reluctantly imagining Allen sitting at home in his jim-jams, yodeling away on his clarinet, safe in the neurotic knowledge that the world’s spotlight would home in on gallic Europe.
So it was a genuine treat to hear Angelina Jolie (complete with realistic moving limbs) call out his name.
Furthermore, it added a slight frisson of excitement as we pressed on towards the finale. It is a rare year when the Best Picture winner doesn’t pick up one of the Screenplay statues and it hasn’t happened since Alexander Payne was last on the stage, literally beating off Paul Haggis as Sideways was rightly deemed a better piece of writing than Million Dollar Baby.
It’s rather a big ruddy shame that Woody thinks the whole concept of awards is so silly. It means we regularly miss out on gems like this:
ii) Emma Stone is the funniest thing on the broadcast
Emma Stone’s perky star is growing as quickly as, concluding from the way she was towering over Ben “He’s surely not that small is he” Stiller, she is.
After a generally good reception in Superbad and Zombieland, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association honoured her for comfortably carrying Easy A and she looked perfectly at home as a big film lead while finally solving that whole ‘racism’ thing in The Help. She was extremely promising and incredibly cute.
I think that the Academy would like to think that their funny little awards show helps to cement the reputation of movie stars by validating performers’ ‘gifts’. But it was Stone’s turn as presenter that will leave a lasting memory among Academy members.
On a night where comic highlights were scant (amongst Billy Crystal’s grating tendency to appear smugly amused by his own weak one-liners, he did muster a seemingly off the cuff zinger immediately following Tom Sherak, Academy president’s, anodyne speech: “Thanks Tom, for whipping this crowd into a frenzy”), Stone portrayed a giggling teenager, carried away with the excitement of the occasion. Waving at friends in the audience and unsuccessfully beseeching Jonah Hill to join her on stage for a dance.
Before mocking Ben Stiller’s habit of going mad in the dressing-up box when presenting at the Oscars (i.e. dressing as an Avatar character, wearing a unitard as if acting for a green screen, pretending to be that mad old crank Joaquin Phoenix, etc), she roared out a show number to announce the nominees (“Real Steel and Hugo; They’re the real deal and you know” she hollered).
It was only a three minute stint, but it took Stone from capable actress with a bright future and put her on the map as a huge star.
“This is my first time presenting an award”, she said as she took the stage. I have a feeling that next time she’s up there, it will be to collect a little gold shiny man (an Academy Award that is, not Ben Stiller donning another ridiculous costume).
Let’s just hope she wears a less offensive dress when she does.
iii) Sacha Baron Cohen is not funny enough
From time to time, even I can be one of those hideously sanctimonious people who make a song and dance over being among the pioneers who first ‘discovered’ something before its rise to mainstream popularity. Being ahead of the curve is to be savoured, until the elation of prurient self-satisfaction is deflated by the gauche thud of bandwagon jumpers.
On occasions its remains a boastworthy endeavour (Spaced before Shaun, basil before pesto, Gareth Barry before the big money move, England caps and speedy degeneration). And, on occasions, not so much (I recoilingly recall a lengthy debate with a ‘friend’ over who exactly first recognised the genius of Razorlight).
Barely audible above the din of idiots parroting “Booyakasha”, “Aaaaaayyyyyyyeeeee” and “[insert name of town or city that I live here] Massive”, during the aftermath of the (figurative) explosion of Sacha Baron Cohen, you could just about identify my cries of “I WAS THERE FROM THE BEGINNING, MAN”.
Other than pervacious leering at Daisy Donovan, the 11 O’Clock Show was most notable for its exposure of Ali G to a youthhood hungry for a drug-taking, lazy, uneducated, yet highly quotable, voice of a generation.
But the beauty of Baron Cohen, whether as Ali G, Borat or Bruno was the ignorance of those that he interviewed. Whether prominent former left-wing MPs, posh sods at Henley or moronic American meatheads. As an unknown quantity, he could expose prejudices, backward views and culture clashes.
Now that he’s a star; now that he’s worked with Scorsese, Tim Burton and, to a lesser extent, Adam McKay; now that he’s Sacha Baron Cohen, pulling stunts like he did on Sunday simply can’t and don’t work. It’s no longer “Oh shit, who’s that guy with the beard and the hat and the funny accent and the urn he says is full of a dictator’s ashes and is being escorted from the red carpet”. It’s “Why does Sacha Baron Cohen think that tipping dust on to a man called Ryan Seacrest is a funny way to promote his new film”.
iv) The Iron Lady picks up gold
Having picked up the Bafta and Golden Globe, the general consensus among those in the know (and at the bookmakers) was that Streep had gone too hard, too fast (a concept, I’m sure, that many of us can relate to).
The steeplechase for the Best Actress in a Leading Role was, to my mind, the strongest category of the lot. Sure, it’s legitimacy was marred by the disclusion of the finest performance by anybody this year, Tilda Swinton in We Need To Talk About Kevin. But between Streep, Davis, Williams, Close and Mara, there were five very impressive performances by a stable of five talented fillies.
But while that old war horse Streep appeared to be a shoo-in for the majority of the Oscar race, coming around the final bend it seemed as though Viola Davis was ahead by a nose.
I suppose the first hurdle where Davis faltered was at the unwarranted announcement that Octavia Spencer was top dog (please excuse the confused animal metaphors) of the Best Supporting Actress nominees. Rewarding one black actress in a ‘race issues’ film is one thing, but two in the same year? No chance.
So it turned out that Viola Davis was a lame duck (oh dear) and Streep was left as king of the jungle (AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH).
On a side note, and although I thought that, in Swinton’s absence, Davis was the best shout, it’s interesting that Streep keeps ploughing on with excellent performances year after year. It begs the question that if the likes of she, Mirren, Dench and Keaton can keep turning in great roles in their twilight, why male equivalents like De Niro and Pacino can’t. But I guess that’s another issue for another dog day afternoon.
v) A silent, black and white French film winning Best Picture is not a surprise
If, this time last year, you’d told me that a SBAWF (it means: “silent, black and white French”, you know, to save time) film was going to win this year’s Best Picture Oscar, I would have been about as shocked as that time when I found out that doing Family Guy style jokes isn’t that amusing.
Of course there have been unlikely winners in the past, even in recent history. Slumdog Millionaire was a small independent film, set in India and with no big names attached. Chicago was a musical in a time when musicals were deeply unfashionable. The Silence of the Lambs was a horror/thriller. Crash was woeful.
But The Artist could easily be the most off-kilter film to win the top prize in the history of the Academy Awards and, on the night, nobody even raised a George Valentin style eyebrow.
I don’t imagine even for a moment that this will be a revolution for the Sbawf Film industry (I really think the phrase could and should catch on), but it is a true delight that a film this well conceptualised and crafted can be honoured in the appropriate way.
Well, this review seems to have gone on roughly as long as the Oscar broadcast and I can hear the band slowly raising the volume, so I’ll wrap this up.
Not before I give out a prize of my own though. There are 5 Bloscar Bonus Points for anybody who realised that the title of this post is a Radiohead lyric and that it’s absolutely and blatantly relevent because Jonny Greenwood from the band was famously and disgustingly snubbed by the Academy when his score for There Will Be Blood was disqualified from competition. Congratulations for your tenuously instigated success.
Kind regards
Bloscars
Bloscars 