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THE OSCARS
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Oscar is losing his edge,
but it was a good year
of TheColumnists.com
The Academy Awards--once the most anticipated of all televised awards spectacles and the most coveted of all show business honors--may be facing a turning point this year.
Next Sunday night's telecast--check your local ABC station guide for the exact time and channel--will have a lot riding on it as the Academy of Motion PIcture Arts & Sciences struggles to keep its awards package relevant at a time when several rival awards shows are stealing its thunder and the moviegoing audience is rapidly changing. thanks to the pressures of new technology.
How does the Academy keep the Oscar show suspenseful when the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild awards already have picked most of the winners we're likely to see hailed this Sunday night? How do viewers get into the mood to cheer for their favorites when most of us haven't seen them yet because the nominees are not yet available on home video, quickly becoming the favored way to see movies for most American families?
In my opinion, the answer isn't to drag out a couple of young stars (James Franco and Anne Hathaway this year) and try to turn them into entertaining hosts on the assumption that young viewers want to see young stars, even if they're not suited for the job they're asked to do. Gone are the days of Bob Hope and Johnny Carson, but couldn't they have offered Billy Crystal a million or so to come back and host the show one more time?
Reform is needed. Some simple things are obvious: Change the Best Foreign-Language Film rules so that the nominated movies are more widely seen in America before being eligible. Something's wrong when the big popular attractions in that category--such as Sweden's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and its two sequels--don't even get nominated.
And the time is overdue to dump the Best Song category. Has anybody heard any of the songs competing this year? Gone are the days when the likes of Jerome Kern, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin were composing songs for movies. The fact that time-wasters like "It's Hard Out There For A Pimp" or Eminem's "Lose Yourself" can win Oscars as "songs" is an insult to human intelligence.
For the second year in a row, the list of nominees for the Best Picture award has been allowed to swell to 10. The Academy ditched that idea in the 1940s for good reason--it dilutes the suspense and is a naked attempt to round up some box office hits to mix in with the really good movies. It diminishes the quality of the award.
After saying that, I'll have to admit that this year's collection of Best Picturer nominees is pretty good. By some miracle, I've actually seen all 10 of them and only one of them struck me as unworthy.
The nominees: "Black Swan," a dark psyhological drama starring Natalie Portman as a sexually-repressed young ballerina who comes apart at the seams just as she's about to star in a production of "Swan Lake."; "The Fighter," a fact-based drama about a prizefighter trying to forge his own destiny in the shadow of his drug-addicted ex-fighter brother; "Inception," an effects-heavy sci-fi film about agents who can invade your mind and plant ideas; "The Kids Are All Right," a comical, but credible story of a lesbian couple coping with their kids' urge to meet their sperm-donor father; "The King's Speech," the story of how King George VI of England overcame his terrible speech impediment with the help of a plucky speech therapist; "127 Hours," the fact-based story of a hiker, pinned to a canyon wall by an immovable boulder, who must amputate his own arm to survive; "The Social Network," the story behind the creation of the online Facebook enterprise and all the legal warfare that accompanied it; "Toy Story 3," third in the Disney/Pixar animated film series, in which the toys we all love are donated to a day care center when their owner goes off to college; "True Grit," the Coen Brothers' eneregetic remake of the classic western that brought John Wayne his only acting Oscar, and "Winter's Bone," a harrowing film about a 17-year-old girl who must prove her felonious runaway dad is dead in order to stave off financial ruin for her family.
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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in "The Social Network" |
I admired all these films except "Inception," which did not involve me with any of its unpleasant characters and seemed more concerned with show-offy special effects than a credible storyline.
My favorite is "The King's Speech," which I found deeply-absorbing and brilliantly acted, especially by lead actors Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. But I wouldn't be disappointed if "The Social Network" took the prize because it's more unconventional in style and does a masterful job of examining a whole new generation of techno-geeks who seem to be evolving without ethics or a shred of humanity.
But I also found "The Kids Are All Right" extremely genial and "127 Hours" quite fascinating even though we all knew how it was going to turn out. As for "True Grit," I found it more faithful to the engaging Charles Portis novel than the original and yet quite respectful to the first film version. "Toy Story 3," which should have a lock on the Best Animated Film Oscar, brought me to tears on several occasions and really won me over bigtime.
In the Best Actor category, I really liked the four performances I've seen (Javier Bardem's "Biutiful" doesn't play in my area until after the Oscar show), but I don't think it will be possible to deny Colin Firth of "The King's Speech" the Oscar for his supremely successful effort to make King George VI a likeable character despite his temper tantrums and native stuffiness. I thought James Franco was also masterful as real-life hiker Aron Ralston, especially since he was alone on the screen for 90 percent of "127 Hours." And last year's Best Actor winner, Jeff Bridges, deserves extra praise for tackling Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit" and coming up with his own skillful version in the long shadow of John Wayne. The fifth nominee--Jesse Eisenberg, who plays real-life "Facebook" creator Mark Zuckerberg, is also quite good, but he has the liability of playing a character who doesn't engender much audience sympathy, which may have cost him some Oscar votes.
In the Best Actress category, I missed Nicole Kidman in "Rabbit Hole" and Michelle Williams in "Blue Valentine" because of an illness that befell me when those films opened in my area. I am a Kidman fan of long standing and have liked Williams ever since her days on TV's "Dawson's Creek." Nominee Jennifer Lawrence is very impressive as the plucky teenager in "Winter's Bone."
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in "Black Swan" |
But my money is on young Natalie Portman, who clearly landed the role of a lifetime in "Black Swan" and pulls out all the stops to inhabit that frighteningly ambitious, but deeply inhibited young lady. If there's an upset, I hope it's pulled off by Annette Bening, one of America's most gifted actresses, who plays the lesbian mom in "The Kids Are All Right" with just the right edge and humor. Bening has been cheated out of this Oscar before, so she may get it this time because of the cumulative force of her work in such films as "Being Julia," "American Beauty" and "Bugsy," dating back 20 years.
In the Best Supporting Actor category, I'll be happy if either Christian Bale or Geoffrey Rush takes home the Oscar. Bale goes completely outside himself to become juiced up ex-prizefighter Dicky Eklund in "The Fighter" and it's hard to ever imagine this is the same guy who played Batman in two films. And Rush is truly outstanding as the speech therapist in "The King's Speech," even better than co-star Colin Firth as stuttering King George. But the fact that Rush has won the Best Actor Oscar before may work against him and I expect Bale to win.
The other three contenders in the category--John Hawkes as the crusty uncle in "Winter's Bone," Jeremy Renner as Ben Affleck's underworld pal in "The Town" and Mark Ruffalo as the likeable sperm donor dad in "The Kids Are All Right"--all did excellent work, but not quite on a par with Bale and Rush.
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as the fight manager-mom in "The Fighter." |
In the Best Supporting Actress competition,
the standout is Melissa
Leo, who plays the hard-boiled mom in
"The Fighter." Leo, a former Best Actress contender
for "Frozen River," can play tough ladies like nobody
else and has been doing it way back to her days as Det. Sgt.
Kay Howard on TV's "Homicide: Life on the Streets"
in the 1990s. Her closest competitor may be young Hailee Steinfeld,
who plays the little heroine of "True Grit" and makes
you forget Kim Darby in the original.
Another standout in the category is Jacki Weaver, who plays another
domineering, morally-bankrupt mom in the Australian gangster
thriller "The Animal Kingdom." The other two nominees--Amy Adams as
Mickey Ward's girl friend in "The Fighter" and Helena Bonham Carter
as the Queen in "The King's Speech"--are quite good,
but not quite in the league with Leo's performance.
In the Best Director category, the nominees are Darren Aronofsky for "Black Swan," David O. Russell for "The Fighter," Tom Hooper for "The King's Speech," David Fincher for "The Social Network" and Joel and Ethan Coen for "True Grit." All are worthy, but I think Hooper will win for "The King's Speech," though my personal pick would be Aronofsky, who's establishing his own very unique style with last year's "The Wrestler" and this year's "Black Swan," He's great at evolving character and his films look and feel quite original.
I'm sure every effort is being made to turn this year's Oscar telecast into something that looks significantly different from the earlier awards telecasts that have worked the same territory with probably most of the same players. There's no easy solution to restoring the glory that once belonged exclusively to the Acadmy Awards. If this year's show dips sitgnificantly in the ratings, it could bring the price down considerably for the future telecasts and make it all the harder to put the sheen back on Mr. Oscar.
Let's hope for the best, shall we, Oscar fans?
©2011 by Ron Miller.
The photo from "Black Swan" is courtesy of Fpx Searchlight
films. The photo from "The King's Speech" is courtesy
of The Weinstein Company. The photo from "The Fighter"
is courtesy of Paramount Pictures. The photo from "The Social
Network" is courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing. The terms
Oscar and Academy Awards are the trademarks of The Academy of
Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. This column first posted
Feb. 21, 2011.
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