Craig's MovieBlog

Oscar Recap: What Everyone Else Thought

Before I get to my thoughts, here are a few links I've enjoyed since the end of the show last night.

• David Poland: I disagreed with him about Brokeback Mountain from the get-go, but his post-mortem is excellent today.  I also was thankful for his plea for "civil disagreement."  It's sad that on the internet, and through its anonymity, the hateful vituperation has hit an all time high.
• Jeffrey Wells does a play-by-play: I'm looking for more depth from him later.
• Time Magazine and Richard Corliss cover it as well, although he's ready to nominate George Clooney for President.
• A blistering, incendiary column from Ken Turan and the LA Times.  Wow - a must read.
• Can't go without Bill Simmons...  "Part of me still thinks Jack Nicholson saw "Brokeback Mountain on the winner card, took a deep breath, said to himself, 'Screw it, I hated that movie,' called an audible and said, 'And the Oscar goes to ... Crash!'"
• Box Office Prophets did a live blog, but you currently have to start at the bottom and read up.
• Better Than Fudge wrote a tremendously snarky photo blog with captions.  I'm loving this site more and more every day.

Notes for trivia dorks like me:

• Paul Haggis became the first person to write two consecutive Best Pictures (Million Dollar Baby and Crash).
• For the first time ever, the top 6 awards went to 6 different films.  (Crash, Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Walk the Line, Good Night and Good Luck, The Constant Gardener).

Manohla Dargis Oscar Q&A

She is just never one to hold her tongue.  Manohla Dargis had some choice soundbites in her Q&A that ran yesterday for The New York Times.  One was especially appropriate regarding Reese Witherspoon, and the other is a no-holds-barred slam of Los Angeles, Academy voters, and Crash.

Read the whole thing, but this chunk was my favorite:

Q. My friends and I seem to be asking each other the following two questions:

1. How did Reese Witherspoon become such a shoo-in when, as a lead actress, she doesn't have that much screen time, and worse, she seems to be playing Reese Witherspoon the whole time?

2. How did Crash a somewhat obvious, over-the-top, contrived drama, score so many nominations and now come to be considered as a possible dark horse for best picture?
—Danny, Austin, TX

A. Reese Witherspoon was nominated for Walk the Line because she’s beautiful, talented, has paid her dues (and I don’t mean by marrying Ryan Phillippe) and did a credible job in a big studio movie that made money and won kudos, if not across the board. (My pal A. O. Scott wasn’t wild about the movie, but he called her performance "lively" and "smart.") Her performance seems more supporting than not, true, but given the paucity of good female lead performances (see above) the Academy’s choice of Ms. Witherspoon this year was a no-brainer.

There are a few obvious reasons why Crash connected with the Academy. First, Los Angeles, where most of Academy members live, is a profoundly segregated city, so any movie that makes it seem like its white, black, Asian and Latino inhabitants are constantly tripping over one another has appeal. If nothing else it makes Los Angeles seem as cosmopolitan as, well, New York or at least the Upper West Side. Second, no matter how many times the camera picks out Oprah Winfrey on Oscar night, the Academy is super white. Third, the Academy is, at least in general terms, socially liberal. You see where I’m going, right? What could better soothe the troubled brow of the Academy’s collective white conscious than a movie that says sometimes black men really are muggers (so don’t worry if you engage in racial profiling); your Latina maid really, really loves you (so don’t worry about paying her less than minimum wage); even white racists (even white racist cops) can love their black brothers or at least their hot black sisters; and all answers are basically simple, so don’t even think about politics, policy, the lingering effects of Proposition 13 and Governor Arnold. This is a consummate Hollywood fantasy, no matter how nominally independent the financing and release. I also think it helped the film’s cause that its distributor sent out more than 130,000 DVD's to the industry, insuring easy viewing.

Updated Awards Scoreboard

I got back from a few days off, so I've updated the Academy Award scoreboard.  Here are the leaders so far:

• Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain (7 votes)
• Best Director: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain (8 votes)
• Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote (9 votes)
• Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line (5 votes)
• Best Supporting Actor: Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man (4 votes)
• Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, Junebug & Catherine Keener, Capote (4 votes) - tie

The Oscar Charts Have Launched

The kids over at Movie City News are starting their tracking from Oscar prognosticators.

Right now, the top 5 for Best Picture look like this:

• Walk the Line
• Brokeback Mountain
• Munich
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• Good Night, and Good Luck

Oscars 2006

It's November 7th, 2005, and it's very possible that we have not seen a single film that will be nominated for Best Picture.  Sure, there's been Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, A History of Violence, Crash, Jarhead, and Cinderella Man, but there's a good chance that none of those will hit their mark, and all five nominees will come from the remaining pool of movies that haven't yet been released (and there are only 8 weekends left in 2005) to qualify.

Frankly, I think this sucks.  We end up with crappy movies all year long, then the studios cram everything into November and December, but if those films don't get the boost of a nomination, they're gone... dead on the vine.  Good luck seeing them in a theater versus Blockbuster.

Anyway, here's a piece in the New York Daily News from Jack Mathews about the movies to come this year.  Also, I'm including Jack's top 10 hopefuls:

1. Munich, directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Eric Bana
2. Brokeback Mountain, directed by Ang Lee, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal
3. Memoirs of a Geisha, directed by Rob Marshall, starring Ziyi Zhang and Ken Watanabe
4. The New World, directed by Terrence Malick, starring Colin Farrell
5. The Producers, directed by Susan Stroman, starring Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Uma Thurman, and Will Ferrell
6. Mrs. Henderson Presents, directed by Stephen Frears, starring Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins
7. Walk the Line, directed by James Mangold, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon
8. King Kong, directed by Peter Jackson, starring Adrien Brody, Jack Black, and Naomi Watts
9. Syriana, directed by Stephen Gaghan, starring George Clooney and Matt Damon
10. Match Point, directed by Woody Allen, starring Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers