Thoughts on things related to the Oscars:
-Impossibly boring ceremony. Ellen was dull, there were no fantastically awful outfits, and the silhouette tumblers were beneath notice. Plus
-The most angrifiying award: Best Animated Short Film. It's not just that the sublime "The Little Matchgirl" lost, it's that it had to lose to the poorly-written, poorly-animated "The Danish Poet."
-Most angrifying, non-tool edition: Best Cinematography. Not that Guillermo Navarro didn't deserve it, but he didn't deserve it as much as Emmanuel Lubezki, whose loss meant that the most exhilarating film of 2006, Children of Men, went home with not a single win.
-The Departed. Blah blah blah. If anyone reading this actually thinks it's the best film of the year - indeed, if anyone reading this has it in their top 10 - please explain why. To me, it's just a boilerplate cops-and-robbers movie propped up by Marty being perfunctory. Still, better than Babel.
-I actually wanted Marty to lose: he was in better company that way. But it made him happy, so okay.
-The look on Peter O'Toole's face when he lost Best Actor could have melted steel. Poor, poor man.
-Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt must never be permitted to appear on live television again.
-It's fine that Al Gore doesn't want to run for president, but that whole thing felt like such a mean "fuck you" to people like me. Well, fine! We don't WANT you anymore, Al!
-I don't know what Jack Nicholson did to Diane Keaton before they came out, but it left her in quite a state. I've never seen her so loopy
-Clint Eastwood translating for Ennio Morricone was the most agreeably surreal moment in an Oscar telecast since 1989:
-My prediction record: 13/24, not that far from my all-time worst. If I hadn't changed my Actor, Costume, Foreign Language and Song picks ten minutes before I posted them, I'd be a little bit prouder right now.
Two thoughts:
ReplyDelete1) I saw that clip for the first time when I got to work this morning. Painful only begins to describe it.
2) My favorite production detail of last night was the grid placed over the cinematography nomination clips. Because, really, there's nothing like watching a movie through a picket fence.
Can you please explain to me what made the Foreign films montage "impressionistic"? Was it the fact that all the cuts were short? Was it the cutting between common actions? It was probably one of the better montages though.
ReplyDeleteWeren't there 3 montages? America (or whatever? We couldn't hear the annoucement of what it was and spent the entire thing trying to figure out what it represented), Foreign, and Writing. And I *like* montages. But these were boring. They kept repeating the same movies.
ReplyDeleteAlso, there were some pretty bad dresses. None obviously awful, but we had several comments about why someone would choose the fringe or fluffy or poofy things that looked very strange.
Did like Ellen, though.