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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I think that Jon Stewart did the best he could and I enjoyed him, but the audience did seem curiously lifeless. Maybe they were just tense. Whatever was going on with them didn't feel good.
Something that I missed, which I didn't realize until I saw the wonderful interplay of Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin, was nominees in their age category. Judy Dench was our token female elder and she just seemed ignored. The rest of the female nominees and presenters (except Felicity Huffman) were young. It was clear that Hollywood movies feature and cater to very youthful women. That bothers me because there's tremendous talent that spans the age spectrum and there's a very apparent lack of wise women represented.
It also bothered me that we couldn't hear all the words of the award-winning song. How really insane to give the award to a song that we couldn't listen to in its entirety.
I did like having Dolly Parton sing, as well as the unknown writer/singer of the Crash song. And I have to say that I'm really tired of people like Beyonce Knowles and other assorted twits who are usually the featured performers at these events. So not having them at this award show is a thumbs up.
What really annoyed me was the orchestra playing while the winners did their acceptance speeches. How totally rude! I felt tense and rushed for the winner having that music playing the whole time they talked. Better would have been to keep Robert Altman's boring speech to 38 seconds.
It was a travesty that Grizzly Man and Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill were not nominated in the documentary category.
The saving grace of this year's awards was that we didn't have to be subjected to Tom Cruise and the antics of his mental illness even though War of the Worlds had some nominations.
My biggest beef with the broadcast was the playing of music at the beginning of each speech (for everyone except for Altman). It was rude and completely destroyed any semblance of spontaneity during the broadcast.
It's not the awards that we remember after the broadcast has ended - it's these tiny moments of humanity. Where were the Sally Fields, the Jack Palances, even the Susan Sarandons and Tim Robbins?
For a community that prides itself on pushing social boundaries, the Oscars stayed clear of the outer bounds.
Sarah
PS: No plunging necklines? Hello...Felicity Huffman.
Did you write this on Friday? If I'm not mistaken the Oscars Award Show was last night, March 5, 2006. Your story was filed March 3, 2006:
"Oscar castrates himself
The Academy celebrates niceness, bleeps out "bitch" and pats itself on the back for good behavior. And what did they do to poor Jon Stewart?
By Cintra Wilson
March 3, 2006 | Just when you thought it couldn't possibly get any more wrist-slashingly boring, the boringness collapsed in on itself and became a deadly howling void of terrible sucking from which the light of no star could escape. These Oscars were so hideously uptight...."
Jon Stewart was wonderful - a little restrained but he got in a few good ones... perhaps if you had actually watched the show ON MARCH 5, you would have known this...
:)
Bleep-outs are bummers. Thank you, Cintra Wilson, for singing that note. But did you leave after that? What did you eat for dinner? Raw meat and vinegar martinis? Did you grow up in one of those painfully smart families where everyone sits around the dinner table night after night fingering the serrated edges of their steak knives while desperately trying to one-up one another?
Your review of the proceedings makes me feel like I've just spent a kalpa in Leonard Michaels' The Men's Club. It makes me crave a scalding shower. Cintra, why so mean? What's really going on with you that makes you such a hisser? America, snoring in its long sleep, may not want to know, but I sure do. I'll welcome you beside me later when I perform my prostrations.
What's so bad about Hollywood wanting to demonstrate, self-consciously or otherwise, that it has a conscience? How much does it cost us to grant that? Oscar is always about celebrating the past and backslapping. It's a party, not a political convention. How about celebrating the fact that oscars were spread around this year, that we weren't subjected to the monotonous sweep of a year ago? I know that some of the good movie expert at Salon are weepy because Brokeback didn't win Best Picture, but the best film did. Richard Roeper's claim that "Crash" will be the movie most identified with this era is dead on. It breaks ground (and maybe some backs), and we're better off for it. It's bold for Hollywood to honor a film in which all the characters do their best and worst and a lot of in between. It's not a comfortable film to watch. It doesn't pander to our smug self-awareness. It doesn't celebrate our expansive tolerance, but it shows us as we really are, warty and angelic and oh too often sound asleep.
And what's with the Jon Stewart bashing? He conducted himself with class, charm, and wit. Perhaps these qualities are so rare we just don't honor them as we should. It's amusing, somehow, to think of him at 52 as a "golden boy," but it's more approprate to see him as the erudite, understated comedian he in fact is. An oscar host with no slapstick and no mugging in his bag of tricks. How refreshing! Audience members weren't cackling in the aisles because they were actually thinking about what Stewart was saying. How's that for a breakthrough? Star faces furrowed with contemplation! That alone was worth the price of being anchored to my couch for four hours.
While we're at it, let us praise George Clooney, a good guy who tries hard, Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep, the superb, humble and generous Robert Altman, the goofy Ben Stiller, the evening's sweet homage to cosmetic surgery, Dolly Parton, and let us pray for the incomparable Lauren Bacall, who looked more lost than she has ever appeared in public.
Cindra, the sharper our criticism, the more cracked is the mirror we stare at. Oscar night is about having a good time and recognizing good work. Hollywood did well. Now let's get back to more important things.
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