Shorter Oscars Review
"Crash" will not be remembered a year from now (I had already forgotten it).
Stewart sucked.
Best line of the evening (paraphrased): "For those of you keeping score at home: Martin Scorsese, zero. 3-6 Mafia, one." -- Jon Stewart
March 5th, 2006 at 9:40 pm
“Crash†will not be remembered a year from now
Don’t be so sure. People still love Titanic, arguably the worst written film to ever win Best Picture (the screenplay wasn’t even nominated and that may make it one of a kind).
March 5th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Second best line
“it just got easier to be a pimp”
-Jon stewart
March 5th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
Brokeback Mountain Crashes At The Oscars…
Brokeback Mountain loses at the Oscars! Crash has been named the “best” picture in tonightÂ’s Academy Awards. We will now see what the reaction from GLAAD will be. They have been pushing for this film to win ever since it came out. Will this be viewe…
March 5th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
Sour grapes….
March 5th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
Reg,
No, that was when Sideways lost
March 5th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
I think it’s time to go pull out the beloved timeless classics such as The Last Emperor or The English Patient.
Crash what?
March 5th, 2006 at 10:30 pm
Yeah. Well Sideways was totally unfair and one-sided in its characterization of Merlot.
I was looking forward to Stewart and so far as I’m concerned he delivered. He got off a bunch of lines that nailed the attitude of the current crop of rightwing assholes toward Hollywood without kissing Hollywood’s ass. I would have given best pic to Capote, simply because it was the only one of the films that still held surprises for me after the first 30-40 minutes. And it wasn’t asking me to like it for it’s earnestness. That said, this was the best bunch of pictures, averaged, that I can remember dominating this category. And while I found Brokeback a bit boring along with all of the moving stuff, I was very happy to see Ang Lee rewarded. He’s a genius. Incredible range across cultures. My favorite - and one of the best films ever done on the civil war - Ride With the Devil. Great American historical film. And it turns out the director’s this humble, softspoken guy from Taiwan. I’m in awe.
March 5th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
How are people going to forget a movie they’ve never seen?
March 5th, 2006 at 11:02 pm
Reg.. I have to say I was quite taken as well by Ang Lee. I knew a lot about his movies and very little about him but — you’re right, he sure came off as a mensch.
I generally like Jon Stewart and I liked him tonight as well. But he sucked anyway. I think it was just a bad mix — oil and water. To make it as an Oscars host you HAVE to buy in, at least partially, to the whole kitschy shtick. Stewart clearly didn’t and it all came off as an uncomfortble mismatch — which it was.
I wasn’t crazy about any of the nominated films, but I think Crash was truly a lesser choice. And I want someone who knows more about all of this to please explain to me what the Three-6 Mafia award was all about. As it was being announced my wife said: “At least we have captured of the official death of culture on the TiVo.”
March 5th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
Marc - go see Hustle and Flow and I’m pretty sure you’ll get it. They deserved the Oscar for best movie song, hands down. I’m not a fan of rap but I loved Hustle and Flow. Actually enjoyed it more than any of the Best Picture nominees, although I doubt I would have nominated it as “Best” in any of those films’ place. But the “Hard Out Here For a Pimp” song was one of the most memorable and integral songs in the context of a film’s narrative I’ve ever heard, aside from songs in full-on musicals. The performance on the Oscars sucked, but the way the song was constructed and performed in the film was just wonderful. That it won was the biggest surprise for me of the night and I applauded it. The film’s entire soundtrack was great, but unfortunately it doesn’t exist on CD - the producers eliminated the great cross-genre mix of Memphis music, old and new, that was actually in the film itself and produced a pure rap album as the alleged soundtrack in order to pump up sales.
March 5th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
The Academy Awards use the guise of popular liberals and concepts (John Stewart, Brokeback Mountain) to sell their white trash award show. In having John Stewart host, knowing that he is solely a political commentator, and telling him not to say anything political is ridiculous. Capitalizing on the controversy of the most popular gay-themed movie, Brokeback Mountain, The Academy has nominated this movie it in almost every category, but with no surprise had rejected it in one of the biggest upsets in Academy history. With regards to the overwhelming votes across the board that Brokeback should have been the winner, as with the overwhelming votes for Reese Witherspoon, as with the overwhelming votes for Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Academy has proven once more that it suffers from an old fashioned homophobia, and isn’t ready to come out of the closet entirely yet. It’s just fun for them to use gays and liberals to sell their show, as long as they just don’t get too close.
March 5th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
Your sort of right in your point about Stewart, which is why Billy Crystal is the quintessential Oscar host (who’s still alive). He’s got show bizness shtick and schmaltz coming out of every pore. That’s why I liked Stewart. He doesn’t. Not even a little bit. My favorite Oscar hosts to date have been Letterman, Rock and Stewart because they are essentially outside of the Hollywood paradigm. Most of the rest of the hosts have seemed like they were hired for fellatio. Stewart left that to the presenters. I found him refreshing. I loved his bit delineating all of the stereotypical evils of Hollywood and then just letting it lie there without a flip punch line.
March 6th, 2006 at 12:01 am
Reg i didnt see hustle and flow, thus i felt the same sort of bewiilderment as marc when the 36 mafia collected their awards. Thanks for the explanation and passionate defence. now if i could only get that “its hard out here for a pimp” thing out of my head
March 6th, 2006 at 12:03 am
I might be biased, since I am such a huge fan of his, but I was SO EXCITED for writer Larry McMurtry (Terms of Endearment, Lonesome Dove, Last Picture Show) for getting his first career Oscar for best adapted screenplay for Brokeback Mountain. McMurtry is in my top ten of favorite writer of all time, and his recognition by the academy is so overdue (he should have won back in the early 70’s for The Last Picture Show). I was leaping in the air when he won, even though I found Brokeback a little bit too sentimental and somewhat sappy for my tastes. If you haven’t read “All of my Friends are Going to be Strangers” by McMurtry, you might defin. consider it. Although it is not as known as some of his other writings, it’s my favorite work by him.
Congrats, Larry.
My top ten fave writers, in order: 1) Louis-Ferdinand Celine, 2) Henry Miller, 3) Charles Bukowski, 4) John Fante, 5) John Irving (who also has an Oscar for adapted scr. play for his Ciderhouse Rules, 6) Carson McCullers, 7) Fyador Dostoevsky,
Joan Didion, 9) Larry McMurtry, 10)
March 6th, 2006 at 12:05 am
Um, that should be number eight next to Didion, instead of a happy face…..though I do smile from ear to ear whenever I read her essays and novels.
March 6th, 2006 at 12:07 am
Oh, and number #10 is Knut Hamsun (smile). I left that out.
March 6th, 2006 at 12:16 am
…..and for those progressives out there who were as steamed as me with the Reagan and Johnson/Nixon years, you should check out “A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving. Besides being entertaining and funny as hell, it is one of the best anti-Reagan, anti-Vietnam War novels I have ever read.
March 6th, 2006 at 12:33 am
I agree with Reg: Jon Stewart was great. He in fact is one of the few television personalities that I would call a genius.
Like Reg said, he didn’t take up time by making himself the focal point. Billy Crystal, on the other hand, always spent what seemed like a quarter of the shows doing these putzy schtick gags (like coming out as Hannibal Lector with that mask thing). I often found myself reaching for the controller to surf when he would start one of his unfunny bits.
Stewart did what all good hosts do: don’t run off at the mouth, just stick and jab. He was superb.
March 6th, 2006 at 1:06 am
Joel said,
“With regards to the overwhelming votes across the board that Brokeback should have been the winner, as with the overwhelming votes for Reese Witherspoon, as with the overwhelming votes for Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Academy has proven once more that it suffers from an old fashioned homophobia”
Joel, three things should be pointed out: (1) Philip Seymour Hoffman won the best actor award for his role as an openly gay author….(2) Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance in “Capote” was FAR superior to fellow nominee Heath Ledger’s performance in “Brokeback Mountain”, and (3) and even though I never cared much for Truman Capote’s work, “Capote” was, in my opinion, the one film that really got robbed out of best picture….and I am someone who thinks that Hollywood puts out too many bio-pics. Capote should have nabbed best picture, in a just world.
The academy should also be taken to task for omitting David Cronenberg’s superb “A History of Violence” from the best picture nominations.
Speaking of which, if you ever have to choose between renting on DVD the 2005 “Crash” or the 1996 “Crash” (Directed by Cronenberg, and based on J.G. Ballard’s super book), go with the latter in a heartbeat…that particular crash is far more worthwhile, although you’ll want to make sure your kids are in bed. It’s an eye-opener.
March 6th, 2006 at 2:28 am
Marc…. half the people I watched the Oscars with felt as you did about Stewart. But, although he wasn’t as relaxed as usual, I thought him wonderful. The faux 527 Oscar contender attack ads alone……
I’m just so glad Philip Seymour Hoffman won—even though his frontrunner status made the moment of winning seem less dramatic than it deserved to be. And, like, Reg, I’m thrilled that Hustle and Flow’s Hard Out There for a Pimp” was recognized.
Speaking of Larry McMurtry…what was up with Diana Ossana…. ? All through their collective acceptance speech and beyond, she looked as if she’d just swallowed a rotting toad. (Okay, Larry didn’t thank her at the Golden Globes, but that’s a mighty long time to hold a grudge.)
March 6th, 2006 at 3:55 am
You seem to think Paul Haggis was trying to make some kind of straightforward social realist movie about race relations in LA, in the manner of, say, Ken Loach. For you, the whole story of the Iranian shopkeeper and the Latino locksmith was presumably just badly-executed naturalism; and since it fails on that level you didn’t bother to look for any other levels. All I can say is it never occurred to me to view any of the stories that way. They’re all mysterious, parable-like stories based on deliberately improbable coincidences. I think you went to the cinema in a prosaic, journalistic frame of mind, and that’s why the mysterious, magical elements of the movie passed you by.
March 6th, 2006 at 8:38 am
It’s the morning after and I’m still pissed that Crash won.
Hey Guy, I’ve tried to think about Crash in a non social realist way but I can’t shake it. If the film was based, as you say, on improbable coincidences why bother with the race issue at all?
That it kept coming up again, and again and again (and again) with all the subtlties of an Oliver Stone or Spike Lee joint… was this a coinky dink?
But hey, at least I can rest easy knowing that Los Angeles is teeming with racial animosity and that the ONLY force for tolerance are righteous Canadian film directors.
Blame Canada indeed.
March 6th, 2006 at 9:14 am
Blame Canada. You ever look and that guy’s credits? He’s been here writing for Televison since 1975, but to hear him tell it he was this struggling outsider, unemployed and hanging around the house when this Great Idea came to him. Give a break. What a contrived crock.
Ang Lee, the score, and McMurtry won big as they should have for real art.
March 6th, 2006 at 10:23 am
“It’s the morning after and I’m still pissed that Crash won.”
John, with all due respect, unless you’re on the board of GLAAD, that’s just weird.
“Hey Guy, I’ve tried to think about Crash in a non social realist way but I can’t shake it.”
Again, with all due respect, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone watching Crash and thinking it was “social realist”. It didn’t use story the way social realists do, it didn’t use characters the way social realists do - the whole thing, as Guy points out, was a fable in which no character has any possibility of autonomy from the construction of the narrative. I don’t know much about screenwriting - or any fiction writing - but I’m pretty sure that anyone writing social realism would have a completely different approach to the way they imagined characters than the way Crash was obviously constructed. As for it being “about L.A.”, worrying over that one is evidence that Haggis is on to something IMHO. Surely Raymond Chandler and Nathaniel West are at least as guilty as Haggis of selective detail and the accuracy of a funhouse mirror in portraying their fictional “L.A.s”. I’m not particularly familiar with L.A. - primarily because it’s one of the least magnetic cities on the planet as a destination for anything other than occasional work - but it seems like a ripe choice for a story that uses self-insulating auto culture, the interdependent urban diversity/neighborhood segregation polarity evident in almost any sprawling metro and snowballing racial/class stereotypes as its key narrative elements.
I wouldn’t have given Crash the Best Picture award, but it’s starting to remind me of Clinton - the more people attack it, the more I like it.
March 6th, 2006 at 7:30 pm
“Crash” was a fable. Period. And an excellent one, judging by the fury it still seems to stir up.
I’d never have given it Best Picture, had I been crowned Queen of All Things. While I loved Crash, it was ultimately too flawed, and Brokeback Mountain, for my money, was a near perfect movie, working on every level. Wonderful writing (based on underlying material, which knocked everyone’s sox off at the time), uniformly restrained and astonishingly nuanced performances (Heath Ledger was a wonder with his wounded and anguished repression), terrific direction, a musical theme that is memorable enough that it has already entered the national musical lexicon….and a genuine heartbreaker of a story, the ending of which still haunts.
But if it couldn’t be Brokeback, I’m glad it was Crash.
I’ll avoid going into my long defense of Crash, character by character, as it’s there in far too much detail already in Marc’s archives….but as reg said above, the more it’s attacked…..
March 6th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
As my friend described it, Crash was a good powerpoint presentation. The only time in recent memory that my favorite movie was even nominated was Being John Malkovich, so I don’t get too worked about the crappy academy selections. And just cause Tony Curtis is outspokenly homophobic (ah the irony – he will always be remembered in a dress) doesn’t mean the mean the Crash choice suggests that anti-gay sentiment runs throughout the academy. If the only point was to avoid Brokeback they could have gone with any of the other obviously superior films. The went with Crash because, as always, the academy went for the film with easy moral choices – that made the choice between Crash and Good Night and Good Luck.
Jon Stewart bombed if you cared about what the live audience thought and was great if you only cared if the jokes were good. Certainly those TV commercials were fantastic and he was as openly delighted with 3 6 Mafia winning as I. Besides, who would have predicted Steven Colbert would be blaspheming Dame Judy Dench.
March 6th, 2006 at 9:41 pm
Philip S. Hoffman’s portrayal was just brilliant…probably one of the greatest character portrayals ever. It would be a tough sell as Best Picture simply because it wasn’t at all pleasant and left me wondering whether the Character Capote, if not the real Truman Capote, was more or less of a sociopath than Perry Smith, the murderer. Such is not the stuff of an award that more often goes to Titanics and Lords of the Rings. But the acting, script and the direction in each scene just provided a very subtle implication–a tilt of the head, a clearing of the throat–of the essence of the character and his quest to write this story his way.
It will be interesting to see which film is retained in the collective consciousness, and which sort of fades away.
March 6th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
“Being John Malkovich” As I’ve noted before it was pretty damn strange from the inside.
March 7th, 2006 at 12:36 am
I thought Jon Stewart should have come out dressed in a camouflage suit and full hunting gear, carrying a shotgun—he could have aimed his gun in the air shot and landed an Oscar—and then said—you guys thought the Mafia only wore a three piece suit, well this is how the crooks in the Bush administration dress when they shoot their friends.
Jon Stewart was interviewed by Larry King, and King asked Jon if he was told to censor himself a bit, Stewart responded by saying he was NOT allowed to use adverbs—I think he also wasn’t allowed to use nouns, adjectives, verbs and pronouns.
It’s the nature of the beast—be a “little†political but not too much. That’s why “Crash†won—it was just enough politics for Hollywood—red, yellow, black and white we’re just a rainbow of colors tonight, don’t say anything that is too sharp, we’re here to sell movies and not to harp!
March 7th, 2006 at 12:43 am
Academy-members were happy to give the “Brokeback Mountain†its due, as long as the message was not legitimized in any way. Thank goodness, we can still offer gratuitous, contrived, button-pushers like ‘Crash’, otherwise all the closeted actors, producers, directors, managers, agents, and studio execs would have had to vote for Capote (’yeeccch’), and then come out. Safe and sound in the closet for one more year, phew.
March 7th, 2006 at 2:11 am
Hi Skippy.
March 7th, 2006 at 2:35 am
Has there ever been an Oscar Best Picture winner that was seen by fewer people in the theatre? I really have no idea how attendance at movies now compares to earlier in the 20th century.
I was told today that Crash is out on dvd. If so, is it the first to be out on video before receiving a Best Picture award? Now that, of course, is a test of more recent nature.
I haven’t seen Crash. When they were doing the Altman movie clips, I saw some of Nashville, including the wonderful scene of singer/songwriter Keith Carradine singing (Oscar-winning song) “I’m Easy,” to a room full of women who had slept with him and each appeared certain the song was dedicated to her. Except for Lily Tomlin who looked like she dreaded the idea that it might be. Anyway, I imagined for a moment that Crash was some sort of more aggressive, less-nuanced 21st century version of Nashville. Nashville was, among other things, very much about clashes of cultures and generations.
But probably not….
March 7th, 2006 at 4:31 am
As someone who actually votes in the Academy Awards (for too long), I hate to rain on anybody’s parade here, but the whole voting process is almost as dull as the awards themselves. The reason Brokeback probably lost is that the Academy finally woke up to the fact it was a fairly routine film and the only thing interesting about it, besides the score, was the gay theme - and even that is pretty hohum in 2006. This was a pretty dull bunch of best picutre nominees and, with the exception of Hoffman’s performance in Capote, will probably be forgotten by next Tuesday. The only movies of this year anybody will watch in the future will be Narnia and Wallace and Grommet (both for kids) and Walk the Line because Reese Witherspoon is the only real movie star of our time - like they had them in the old days - the kind woman who make you smile like Stanwyck and Claudette Colbert. And she can sing!
March 7th, 2006 at 4:39 am
Well that may be your opinion Roger, but if it’s all the same to you I’ll take McMurtry. He and Diana wrote a fine film that for once in Hollywood mirrored the literature from whence it came. Routine my ass. Crash will be forgotten. I guess we can take a stab at who in the academy didn’t vote for Brokeback.
March 7th, 2006 at 4:41 am
I’m sure this eminent person “who actually votes in the Academy Awards” is right because he’s had a lot of experience with pictures that are forgotten by the following Tuesday.
March 7th, 2006 at 4:44 am
And books ranking at the depth I live at. That’s a tough spot I’ll tell ya.
March 7th, 2006 at 5:00 am
You know Mark.. I HAVE to intervene here. The Amazon book rankings mean NOTHING after the first month or two. You can think what you will of Roger but his series of Moses Wine noir novels are considered classics by many a critic and, indeed, make wonderful reading. They have also been translated into several foreign editions and I can guarantee you that they have been sold in quantities that go far beyond your imagination. Cut out the petty stuff. It stinks.
March 7th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
Well I would say it means “something” but not the whole ballgame including the sales histories you mention, otherwise the books would still be riding the top tier like scammer James Frey, but I suppose it depends on whose books one is trashing. If they’re mine it’s OK. Members of the club, not. I get it it, but I suppose like reg’s dissing of his films it was meant to be a cheap shot. And I fully admit it was as intended.
March 8th, 2006 at 7:23 am
The three truely Great films directed by Robert Altman ( “The Long Goodbye” “California Split” and “McCabe and Mrs. Miller”), the lifetime achivement winner, drew one nommination between them (Julie Christie for “McCabe”). That should tell you something. Want the short list? It’s best Pictures that AREN’T terrible.
In fact, I’m tired of people beating up “The Greatest Show On Earth.” Sure it sucks, but also dreadful are “Chariots Of Fire” “Forest Gump” “Dances With Wolves” “The Deer Hunter” “Titanic” and “The Sting.”
Is a passible Horror film like “Silence Of the Lambs” really a great movie? Or dull fare like “Gandhi” or “The Last Emperor”?
A sleeping pill like “The English Patient?” Overblown and overrated: “Tom Jones” “Shakespeare In Love” “Shindler’s List” and even second rate Lean like “Bridge On The River Kwai.” Middlebrow good taste fests like “Mrs. Minever”, “The Best Years Of Our Lives” and “How Green Was My Valley” linger in the mind like the box scores of the 69 Padres. “Hamlet” is the least interesting of Olvier’s Shakespeare movies.
The Godfathers, Joe Buck, Terry Malloy , T. E. Lawrence and Rocky should blow this pop stand and go find a better party.
March 9th, 2006 at 11:27 am
Wall, I’d agree with all your movie assessments minus one: The Deer Hunter was an astounding movie, agree or not with its political assumptions. Your lumping it with those other stinkers definitely grabbed my eye.
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