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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Seriously.
The obnoxious award titles and panning of Jon Stewart are just another attempt to sound blase in a celebrity review where the author is trying to get in with them. Celebrities obviously don't want to hang out with screechy, star-struck fans. So why not act as if the Oscars are just some other show with just a bunch of actors?
And Jon Stewart had a terrible audience. He was funny, and going so far as to offer prayer for him is just a go-along-with-the-crowd review, because the dissenter is never popular, is she?
Is there some coincidence between this obnoxious attitude and this (http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2006/03/02/aniston/) Salon story? Hangers-on should respond.
Cintra, normally I agree with your eviscerations whole-heartedly, but I've gotta agree with the other comments here--Jon did a fine job. A little nervous at the outset, sure, but I really do think he helped instill the (still overly-long) ceremony with a bit more wit and light-heartedness. The cracks about Crowe, Scorcese, Theron, etc. were all spot-on without being cheap or cruel, the cowboy montage and attack ads were delightful, and in general it seemed like all the recipients and presenters felt a bit more license to joke and have a good time (the Penguin guys, the Wallace & Gromit guys, Ben Stiller, etc.). And Jon's comment about the unabashed joy of Three 6 Mafia highlighted the very real problem that the Oscars always face--everyone seems to feel pressure to be much more dignified than they are naturally inclined to be, which is why the whole evening so often seems to suffocate under its own stiffness and pomposity. The Oscars need to become a bit more like a high school graduation, where attendees celebrate honors and milestones, but still feel free to be a bit goofy and enjoy themselves.
I have not watched the Oscar show for more than 4 years.
The 12 friends and I who watched last nights Oscar show found it ot be very satisfying. None of us were disappointed that Brokeback Mountain did not do a sweep.
We loved Jon Steward and thought he did a great job.
I suggest Cintra Wilson stop watching the Oscar shows and try somethign else for a while.
What a pathetic article! Did Cintra Wilson actually watch the show before writing the article or did she hack it out in 20 minutes on Friday afternoon and then take the weekend off? What was the point of all the cutsy fake awards and then not giving them to anybody? Oh, yeah to show how cool you are.
It didn't work.
There is nothing so tiring as the knee-jerk "it sucked" school of pop culture criticism. Poor Cintra had the bad luck to type her article after the American public had endured three weeks of similar scribbling after the Winter Olympics and it made her lame effort look even worse. Maybe if she sneaks her poor excuse for wit in at another time a few souls might enjoy it. But probably not.
That article was not worth the time it took to click through the free ad. Salon, I want my money back!
Is this a joke? Is free speech really so narrowly defined? Wilson said it herself: "bitch" has been a television staple since the 1970s. It's not going anywhere. On a night when Hollywood gets to play mass dress-up, I'm not surprised that the means of discourse was maintained as strictly as the acceptance speech times.
Sometimes, free speech isn't seeing what words you can get away with on an awards show. Sometimes, it's really as simple as mainstream films taking a look at political censorship, underlying racialism, sexual orientation &c, even if some of the results were a mite heavy-handed. Jon Stewart, or George Clooney, or even Reese Witherspoon letting a "fuck" loose on live television is no victory at all, and the absence of such language (again, on an industry awards show) is not the indication that the thought police are on the beat. People dressed classy, and they mostly talked classy. Clooney's somewhat defensive acceptance speech still defended the concept of free speech better than any stray expletive that's lost its meaning from decades of "edgy" overuse.
Also, Wilson was really, really, Reed Richards-stretching with her Witherspoon critique. Would it have been better if she'd announced she was leaving Ryan Phillipe to adopt a baby with Brad and Angelina? For which are we to fault her: being from the South? A (fingers crossed) stable marriage? Nice kids? Morals? This digression had to be a joke, as did the tired "bleak states" put-down. Congratulations, 100 million Americans have been completely pegged. It's that kind of attitude Wilson decries when it comes from the likes of Clooney.
If every year were Sacheen Littlefeather, the Oscars would devolve into an MTV awards show, all hellbent on committee-stitching together another zany watercooler moment. Honestly, that's what this piece reeked of to me: passive viewership demanding a spectacle even more empty than industry back-patting. Wilson seems to want flash and smoke, some semblance of shock that she can connect tangentially to the pro- Roe camp. What she had to settle for was an earnestly expressed desire to depict social progress. A shame, really.
Also, I'm with nearly everyone else on Jon Stewart as host. His material was grade-A, bringing a Daily Show sensibility to the proceedings. Hell, even Ben Stiller worked for me. For what it was, it was a dynamite Oscars. And Three 6 Mafia's reactions were the highlight of my night.
Is the Paglia-Wilson Oscar podcast somewhere on the site? I can't find it.
What was the snarky put down of Reese, probably one of the strongest and most inventive actresses out there? This is a woman (not a girl!) who can do comedy, music, romance and drama, all qualities which she showed in her superb performance as June Carter. And all Cintra can say about her is that she is a;
"a very, very nice girl. A nice Southern sorority debutante with a nice marriage and nice children and nice morals. Nice. Upstanding. Proper. Acts like a decent lady. This reeks of some kind of subterranean, 1950s social conditioning to me."
Since when were any of those attributes seen as negative? Social Conditioning? It sounds like grace and maturity to me - she is 29, has been an acclaimed actress for almost a decade, managed to get to the A-list of box office with the minimum of compromising (Legally Blonde 2 notwithstanding), as well as get married, and have a child without grossly exploiting either for attention. She is one of the rare examples of talent, and not obnoxious media management, succeeding in Hollywood.
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