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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I'm sorry but where does Cintra get the idea that Jon Stewart bombed? He did a very good job in a venue that is usually comedy death. He fared far far better than previous hosts Chris Rock or David Letterman, and I found him much funnier than anything Billy Crystal has ever done. He started out slow, and I could see that he was a bit nervous when his first couple jokes bombed, but he picked up momentum halfway through the opening monolouge, and scored some very funny jokes. (Capote: smashing the sterotype that all gay men are rugged virile cowboys, and showing that some are actually effete New York intellectuals, Munich: trilogy!) He got better as the show progressed, the "hetro" western montage was quite funny as was the Colbert voiced attack ads for "best actress." Overall I enjoyed the Oscars this year, they're always too long and pretentious, but for what it was I thought it was fine. This was the first time since I can remember that all five of the best picture nominees could stand on their own as legitimately good films worthy of their recognition, and there were no real muggings in any of the big catergories. Personally I would have given Best Supporting Actor to William Hurt, for what I thought was a really tricky performance that could have been campy and over the top, but was a pitch perfect mix of humor and pure menace. However, Clooney saying that he was "proud to be out of touch" was worth him getting it, especially in light of all the repeated "heartland vs. hollywood" posturing on TV news last week. For my money, Capote was the best of the five.
Among the notable firsts:
This is probably the first time a lot of men would see Dolly Parton, and not want to bang her. I thought maybe Stewart might go there, Dolly has cancer, the good news is, it isn't breast cancer. Really I hope she's okay, but what happened to the rest of her?
Larry McMurtry got his first oscar for Brokeback Mountain, but not for The Last Picture Show. What would Sam the Lion think?
Brokebroke Mountain might have won, but when the academy figured out the men were sheepherders, and not cowboys they changed their vote. Woody Allen and Gene Wilder could have rescued a plot like that, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask,.
A couple heavy favorites ran out of the money. Munich was too grey, too ambigious. Good Night and Good Luck was too black and white.
Crash was the best picture, someone has to win.
Dear Editor,
Strange that in his absolute trashing of
Stewart, Cintra doesn't offer any evidence of his purported self-castration. The fact that the stars didn't laugh only means that they are the thin-skinned narcissists Paglia thinks have somehow disappeared. (The only exceptions seemed to be the preternaturally suave George Clooney and Meryl Streep, whose candid shots revealed one of the great American actresses of all time genuinely _enjoying_ Stewart's humor at her expense.) Stewart lampooned Hollywood's liberal self-congratulation after the montage of socially conscientious film clips by saying "And none of those social issues ever troubled America again." He made fun of Hollywood's implicitly facist ethic by comparing Oscar to Saddam Hussein, and he made fun of American journalism as another reader has already reminded us. What did you expect, Cintra, that he would start rapping the seven words you can't say on television with Three 6 Mafia? Stewart's humor is good because it is surgical and operates within its context (hence the success of the _Daily Show_); he did precisely the same thing as Oscar host. That's what a satiricist does.
The real problem at this year's Oscars was that while the academy spent the 4 hours wringing their hands and lecturing the TV audience on the superiority of the big screen, in-the-dark, theatre experience; they ultimately collapsed back into their own insular, narcissistic world. For its clear the actors, the largest group in the Academy, obviously overwhelming voted for the intimate, talky, TV-sized message film with a cast of a dozen of their best friends, _Crash_ over the only really larger-than-life picture in the running, _Brokeback Mountain_. Hollywood winced at Stewart's ironic quips even as they were serving up for themselves the biggest takedown of all--a Best Picture made for TV.
Cintra -
1. To vicariously revel in the debauch of creative freedom, you have to watch the Golden Globes.
2. I'm pretty sure there was some duct tape involved in Felicity Huffman's underwear. That was quite a display of mid-chest real estate for such a slender woman.
3. Yes, Reese is nice, but she has range - I suggest re-viewing Freeway.
4. Bleeping Joan Rivers as much as possible, even when profanity is not an issue, is a favor to us all. I would prefer watching a test pattern.
Oscars have always been a stilted effort at trying to put the best face on a pretty clueless, pretentious industry - one that tends to ignore the occasional flares of personal genius that do grind into being. The best you can hope for, as with last night's effort, is that it wasn't as stupid as some other times.
Gosh you guys! It was just an awards show! She had an opinion.
Jon wasn't great. So what?
I love Salon and will always read Cintra.
Wow, the oscars weren't thrilling. Oh my god, look out. The Tony awards were pretty dull too, I imagine. This is an awards show, what do you want them to do? Swear like sailors and scream "Down with government!"? Do people dream of some golden time when the Oscars were edgy and cool? If there has ever been such an Oscar night, I have never seen it. There is only so much you can do with reading lists of names and then listening to the winner quickly saying thank you to a long list of people.
Jon Stewart did better thna many hosts, and the negative advertising spoofs were dead on. Reese won afterall, with her good "American" name in these times of war.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
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