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Oscar Redux 2002 By: Carly Berard (Lawrencerock.com writer) |
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Much like Ryan O'Neal (and this recap) the Oscars are back and more bloated than ever. This year's record-breaking broadcast was four hours and 21 minutes long and yet it felt like only three hours and 59 minutes! Overall I thought this was one of the better shows in recent years that served up a delightful mixed bag of offerings including upsets, surprise presenters, contortionists, Gorbachev and Uma Thurman's breasts! The
theme of this year's Oscars seemed to be "Justifying our existence
in these uncertain times when the intrinsic value of consumer pop culture
has been called into question and seems to have perhaps loosened its
death grip on our hearts and minds and wallets." To combat this
uncertainty, luminaries such as Al Sharpton, Donald Trump and Brittany
Spears were trotted out to tell us all what movies mean to them. To
further aid us in swallowing this sweet pill the academy dispatched
none other than the Mayor of Fameopolis himself, the honorable Tom Cruise.
In a very transparent effort to steal a little of Nicole's thunder (
and why cruel Gods did ye not see fit to give us a Kidman reaction shot???),
Cruise embarked on a long self-important monologue about all the movies
that played a pivotal role in his life, ultimately posing that question
on everyone's mind, "so are movies still important?" To which
he answered with all the histrionic posturing he could muster, "Dare
I Say It?? More Than EVER!" Mm-hmm. So run out and rent Top Gun
right now or else the terrorists will win! I
give this year's fashions a resounding "Meh." The clothes
were really just unspectacular in every way. It seems to me that as
the entertainment industry becomes oversaturated with splashy premieres
and countless awards shows, a starlet's good dress karma is just about
spent by the time March roles around. This year both Halle and Jennifer
wasted their pinnacle gowns at the Globes and sadly, the Oscars have
come to function as a clearinghouse for every rejected table scrap and
sloppy second choice a designer has left to offer. Jennifer Connely
looked totally washed out in her beige multi layers, and more than that
just tired. Cameron Diaz looked like Hell, Faith Hill was wearing a
gown dipped in rainbow sorbet and Lopez as usual had to draw attention
to herself, this time with an unwieldy valley of the dolls lion's mane.
On that front, I get the feeling that maybe J-Lo's hairdresser was going
for some kind of snarky "statement" but I don't think Hollywood
is quite ready for ironic hair. But
the worst dressed, by FAR was Gwenyth Paltrow. Jesus Chrysler, she looked
bad. Now it may be true that even on her worst day Gwen still looks
better than most of the population on their best, but when Vanity Fair
proclaims you the epitome of "IT," when Karl Lagerfeld sends
you Chanel in the mail, when you appear on the cover of the much vaunted
Spring fashion issue of Vogue in which the likes of Plum Sykes writes
an ego stroking profile wherein she proclaims you a fashion icon for
the ages, extolling your effortless beauty and keen sense of style and
falls on her knees in praise of you for not employing a personal stylist,
well then, you need to look good, damn good, not like a sleepy, slouchy,
goth-awful raccoon with eighties hair in one smoldering train wreck
of a dress that some how takes your small breasts and manages to make
them sag, resembling (in the words of my mother) two little fried eggs.
She failed on three fronts: hair, dress and make-up AND she should know
better AND her mother is Blythe Danner. For shame Gwenyth, for shame. The
best? Who knows? Who cares? Kate & Jodie looked good. I suppose
I'll give Halle the increasingly meaningless mantle of Best-Dressed
but really if Gwen & Jen's dresses got drunk, went into the woods
and had a baby and Halle wore that, she'd still look pretty good. As
for the guys...well there was that one dude who wore the fringe jacket
but for the most part the men looked pretty tame. Almost everyone this
year was doing the long tie thing. Now I don't mind this look, it's
a good look...if you're going to a board meeting, or it's your third
marriage and the ceremony is taking place during the day at the Justice
of the Peace with your collective children from previous marriages as
witnesses but NOT AT A *FORMAL* EVENT. People! Come on. I'll give Denzel
Best Dressed since at least he wore a bow tie, even though a close-up
led me to suspect it was a clip-on... Whoopi
as usual did her dressing in the costumes of the nominated movies thing.
That gag was funny once when she took the stage as Queen Elizabeth I
the year that Shakespeare in Love won best picture. It was unexpected
so yeah, ha ha. Your money's on the dresser Whoop. At least her screen
time was dramatically cut down by the announcers, your very own Glen
Close and Donald Sutherland. Shouldn't these two be winning Oscars?
How hard up are they? Peter Coyote was one thing, but this just didn't
make sense. That
said, the presenter banter this year wasn’t nearly as awful as
it has been. Reese and Ryan were cute, Sharon & John seemed to have
both taken a hit off the peace pipe and that Owen Wilson-Ben Stiller
bit was actually really funny. Can they host next year? Please? I think
the more like the MTV movie awards the Oscars become, the better. The
best presenter of all however, was the totally perfect, completely unexpected
Woody Allen doing the tribute to New York. Everyone gave him a standing
O and I was so happy nobody pulled any Kazan bullshit. He's been nominated
20 times (won twice) and this was the first time he's ever attended
and footnote joke notwithstanding, he was funny! Once again the broadcast was filled to the gills with montages aplenty. I enjoyed the one featuring New York movies and it seemed like less people died this year in the recent passing bit but what was up with that documentary montage? Goose-stepping Nazis juxtaposed to a flower blooming in slow motion all to the tune of Let It Be? Wha? Let...Nazis be? I think maybe a little more thought could have gone into that one... This
year the show came to us from a brand new venue that in the grand tradition
of PSI Net stadium and The Staples Center was named after its generous
corporate sponsor. I guess this isn't soo bad because Kodak makes film
and movies are put on film but I still think it's cheap corporate whoring
and while I'm at it let me get in a quick "is nothing sacred?"
Can we not keep one last bastion free from the tropes of "money"
and "politics" so that the esteemed acolytes of the academy
may honor art in its purest form? Can we please make an effort to keep
the Oscars respectable and dignified and free from any of the baser
elements of our society so that winners such as Cher and Kim Basinger
and Ben Affleck can maintain the respect they deserve? No? The
Kodak Theater reminded me of the theater from the Muppet Show. All that
was missing were those two old guys in the balcony. I guess the high
ceilings do make for a lot of dramatic camera angles and, I thought,
added a little bit of art to all those plunging reaction shots we got
of Uma flashing her high-beams. Sweet Georgia Brown! Did she just have
a baby? Um...anyway, I thought the speeches this year were kinda spotty.
Jennifer Connely seemed totally nonplussed and read off a piece of paper
like she was Todd in Dead Poet's Society being forced to read his poem
in front of the class. Of all the nominees this year, Jen's Oscar was
money in the bank so I don't think it would have killed her to have
memorized a little something. Jim Broadbent was sweet and humble in
reaction to his "surprise" win. He won the Globe so it's not
like this came out of left field but I think everyone expected Sir Ian
to win. I think Sir Ian expected to win. When they didn't call his name
he looked momentarily deflated but he had his (ahem) Socratic relationship
to perk him up. In both of those cases I suppose justice was served. Both Jen & Jim actually had lead roles so I think all "supporting" means is "not the headliner." Jen's made a lot of restrained choices over the years and deserves something for all the compromising positions Requiem For a Dream put her in. And Jim supported three of this year's best actress nominees (Judy, Nicole & Renee) so I guess that's worth an Oscar. Justice
really got to shine, however, with the best acting awards. Nicole made
a lot of headlines this year but two good performances don't equal one
great. Judy was up to her same old tricks and Renee gained weight like
a blond, Southern Comfort De Niro but I don't think anyone thought it
was actually Oscar-worthy. The real battle royale here was between Halle
and Sissy and in my mind the best performance won. Sissy was great but
her restrained, silently suffering WASP mother just didn't stand up
to Halle's loud, drunken, desperate, abusive waitress. She pushed herself
harder and further and in more directions than Sissy and she absolutely
deserved to win. And I really liked her speech...at first. She seemed
completely surprised and overwhelmed and maybe it's not Halle "B*A*P*S"
Berry's place to position herself as the voice of all black women, everywhere
but the sentiment was real and this Oscar was a long time coming then
she thanked her lawyers and she lost the audience. Maybe in between
thanking her publicist and her gardener she could have at least mentioned
Billy Bob Thornton. He gave two great performances this year and didn't
get nominated for either so forget about your dog walker and throw the
man a bone! Jada Pinkett Smith?? Please! You only said her name because
you saw her sitting in the audience. On the male side Tom Wilkinson may have actually given the best male performance of the year but Denzel's been owed since Malcolm X and he seems like such a genuinely kind and decent person, I don't think anyone can begrudge him this win. His speech was funny and classy and his double soul-fisting Oscar salute with Sidney in the John Wilkes Booth balcony was a nice moment. This was also something of an upset win since many had been predicting Russell Crowe for a repeat. I
know what you're thinking. He's loud, he's insufferable, he's stopped
combing his hair but as I once again assume the thankless position of
Russell Crowe's apologist, travel back with me if you will, to the year
2000. Bill Clinton was in the White House, American Beauty was sweeping
the Oscars and a fresh-faced Russell Crowe stood poised at the gates
of Hollywood. He was wearing a white tie and tails, his hair was short,
his face was shaven and Americans had never heard the words "thirty
odd foot of grunts" strung together in a single sentence. Russell
had been nominated for his excellent performance in The Insider and
it is at this point that I like to remember him. Before the Oscar, before
the affair, the glowering, the yelling, the ego band, the public fights
with strippers, the quoting his own movie's trailer in a Globe acceptance
speech (What's that you say? Extraordinary things are possible?), the
go to Hell beard, the I don't care hair and the fact that he hit on
J.C. so much during the filming of Beautiful Mind that her current squeeze,
Josh Charles (of Sports Night/ Dead Poet's fame) refused to escort her
to ANY awards show because he can't stand to be in the same room with
him. And okay, maaaybe Russ went a bridge too far with the whole BAFTA
kerfuffle but he's one of the few big stars who's actually a gifted
actor. He's not perfect but he could have easily gone the sex-symbol/action
hero route and mercifully, has chosen not to. Unlike certain other Oscar
winners whose credibility was gone in 60 seconds, Russ has taken the
high road and what can I say? He's Australian. He can't be tamed. Cest la vie!
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