Misstropolis

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Oscar Redux

by Tom Meek

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With the writers’ strike over, the Academy Awards were a welcome finale to a very short awards season. The rain fell on the red carpet scene and seemed to drench some of the celebs in the slow procession with weirdness. Ryan Seacrest brought dolls for Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey and a china plate for Katherine Heigl. And in the weirdest moment, Gary Busey lunged at a flustered Jennifer Garner mid-interview – was he channeling Sean Young?

John Stewart, the show’s host, held his own in the notoriously difficult job; he was at his best when in Daily Show mode. Sure his crack about Helen Mirren getting “served” fell flat, but all in all the night was more entertaining and sincere than those in the recent past, thanks mostly to the honesty and graciousness of some of the newcomers to the podium.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night was Tilda Swinton’s Best Supporting Actress win for her role as a nefarious corporate exec in Michael Clayton. Her witty speech, complete with a reference to the nipples in George Clooney’s Batman suit, delivered in relatively informal and unrehearsed manner, and her appearance, porcelain skin and red hair oddly reminiscent of David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth made the mini-upset quite worthwhile. The field was strong, with favorites Cate Blanchett (I’m Not There) and Ruby Dee (American Gangster), and newcomers Amy Ryan (Gone, Baby Gone) and Saoirse Ronan (Atonement).

As expected, Javier Bardem picked up the golden man for Best Supporting Actor for his bizarrely coiffed psychopath in No Country for Old Men, and Daniel Day Lewis scored the Best Actor goods for his role as a turn-of-the-century oil tycoon in There Will Be Blood.

Bardem’s shout-out en espanol to his mother was gracious and touching, as were the emotional flutterings of Best Actress winner Marion Cotillard for her astounding performance as the French chanteuse Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose. If you’re amazed at how such a beautiful and shapely siren like Cotillard was transformed into the bird-like singer, you’ll understand why the film also won for Achievement in Costume Design.

Of course the evening belonged to No Country for Old Men. Beyond Bardem’s win and the Best Film crown, the quirky Coen brothers picked up statues for Best Adapted Screenplay and direction. And though the material played very close to Cormac McCarthy’s laconic, yet eerily poetic 2003 novel (in some instances scene by scene) it was dark, edgy and thought provoking, in sum a more all encompassing effort than Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.

Given the list of this year’s nominees and last year’s big winner, The Departed, the case could be made that Hollywood is on a mean streak. With the exception of the big-hearted love epic, Atonement, and Juno, the films revolved around dark and violent themes, most all putting gun and greed before romance and hope.

I was secretly happy to see Juno come up short. Not shut out completely, Juno did pick up Best Screeplay. Stripper/writer Diablo Cody’s acceptance speech was more than humble, but the dress – it’s hard not to wonder whether she was she angling for an show of skin a la Britney.

My favorite, and the most sincere, moments came from 98-year-old art director Robert Boyle receiving the Lifetime Achievement award for his work in such films as Fiddler on the Roof, The Shootist and North by Northwest. He cemented the Hollywood of old with the Hollywood of today. Also touching and poetic were the performances of “Falling Slowly” by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova from the little Irish gem Once and their subsequent, earnest speeches.

The most political moment of the evening came from Alex Gibney, winner of the Best Documentary Feature award, denouncing the treatment of detainees.The film, about an innocent Afghani driver who was tortured and killed, was a bit of a surprise, beating out docu-king Michael Moore’s Sicko and Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight. Perhaps the world has tired of Moore’s smug muggings, and while Ferguson’s Iraq War expose was brilliantly crafted, its conclusions seem to be obvious and five years too late.

If there were any regrets it was that the excellent Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Julie Christie, cinematographer Roger Deakins, nominated twice, for No Country for Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,and the empyrean Blanchett all came up blank. Blanchett has been nominated five times in the past 10 years and won for her re-envisioning of Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator (2004). Deakins shares the same distinction (ok, it’s 13 years) and has no wins. That’s how talented the field was last year and, we hope, how future Academy Awards will be.