Awards Season 2008

[Barmy]

When a Madea film sweeps next year, you will regret your Slumdog dissage.

[knives]

There was a teevee show called wings? Maybe I need to actually get cable or whatnot.

[Noiretirc]

You all watched it didn't you? LOL. Why?

Was that ELO I just heard?

"Mr. Blue Sky"!

Er....I love ELO. Fuck. What did I miss?

[flyonthewall2983]

It was playing when the sound editor walked off after his speech.

[lacritfan]

Damn you Oscars, you did it again. Kate Winslet is one of my favorites but The Reader is NOT the role she should win the Oscar for. Just like Pacino winning for Scent of a Woman over...shit, anything in the 70's...or...fuck it, you all know what I'm talkin' about...

[Grand Illusion]

Thoughts:

Will Smith's praise of action movies as the movies that have "fans" was dead-on. So instead of awarding the big blockbuster asinine populist movies, the Academy awards the small, low-budget asinine populist movie.

The five presenter idea made me uncomfortable. It's just awkward to watch one person stand on stage and directly address the nominee to lavish them with praise.

Ben Stiller wandering around during the announcement of the cinematographers was obnoxious.

Anne Hathaway is just ridiculously hot.

Janusz Kaminski completely saved the horrible Judd Apatow short. Suck on it, Dod Mantle.

The animatronic Sophia Loren looked almost lifelike.

I like Bill Maher, but his presentation was brutal. Terrible and forced.

Splicing in footage of older films with the Best Pic nominees was an interesting idea, but ultimately it was probably more fun for the show editors than for the viewer. That said, intercutting Harvey Milk's cry for equal rights with Mel Gibson's Braveheart cry for freedom was a lovely slap in the face.

As Slumdog Millionaire went on its inevitable path towards winning, I found myself hoping, however unlikely, that the Holocaust Effect would somehow save the day and award Best Pic to The Reader.

[Noiretirc]

I watched Masculin Feminin instead. Did I lose? Discuss.

[Cde.]

Joaquin Phoenix should have been a presenter.

[Polybius]

Ben Stiller wandering around during the announcement of the cinematographers was obnoxious.

As is his continued presence in the industry.

Anne Hathaway is just ridiculously hot.

Which served as a welcome and very urgent corrective to Jennifer Aniston being inflicted on my eyes.

[exte]

No, because last year was easily one of the best ever

Because of the films or because of the show itself? My only real complaint is that they showed all the screenwriters for about a split second as the winner was called.

[nsps]

Thoughts:
The five presenter idea made me uncomfortable. It's just awkward to watch one person stand on stage and directly address the nominee to lavish them with praise.

Yeah, my friend and my sister spontaneously started live-blogging live-blogging to keep ourselves entertained through the tedium, and we all complained at-length about the awkward five-presenter thing. I can see how it seemed like a good idea, but it was ridiculous.

[exte]

I nominate Tina Fey to host next year's Oscars.

[JonathanM]

No, because last year was easily one of the best ever

Definitely. Any year in which best picture goes to an existentialist examination of the inevitable decay of all morals and the meaninglessness of existence is a good year.

In the UK all the Oscar winners essentially came out on top of each other and this has only served to make it abundantly clear how utterly meretricious all of these award-pandering, actor-lead, light-weight productions really were. Ugh,

[Antoine Doinel]

I watched Masculin Feminin instead. Did I lose? Discuss.

You didn't lose, but Contempt would've been more appropriate.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

From the Departures post-ceremony press conference:

At last, [actor Masahiro] Motoki closed the conference with a comment about the winning factor, "U.S. distributor told me that Academy prefers live action."

This doesn't seem like a very nice thing to say. It's one step above "your movie won on a technicality."

[mfunk9786]

Psst... Academy - George Carlin died in 2008.

[colinr0380]

I think the problem was not only the generally ho-hum feel to most of the nominated films this year but that everything seemed a foregone conclusion, not least in the Ledger win which, unless The Dark Knight had been a bomb of Batman and Robin proportions (and not the vaguely creepy cult it seemed to become), had been pencilled in since February 2008! I kind of feel sorry for the actors nominated against him, since there was little hope of winning, but at the same time a little annoyed at the Academy for not using that inevitability in order to have a more eclectic selection of choices against Ledger - after all if you are going to have a shoe-in surely that frees you up to cast your net wider and celebrate really left field performances?

It was a shame to see The Wrestler lose out (more than say Frost/Nixon not receiving any awards), especially as it might have dispelled any lingering doubts about Marisa Tomei's previous award and given Mickey Rourke a well deserved Oscar, but then I cannot say I was too disappointed by Penelope Cruz or Sean Penn taking those awards instead.

I would have bet that Waltz With Bashir was a cert to win best Foreign Film. Perhaps even this vague acknowledgement of war crimes was too much to take?

I'm just aghast at Slumdog Millionaire's sweep, which I worry says more about Hollywood trying to crack the Bollywood market through celebrating it (and its safeness in using a UK gameshow format and trendy Brit filmmaker) than anything about its greater worth. For all its flaws, I'd have rather had Boyle's previous film Sunshine win over this! The thing that concerns me most in the short term though is what Boyle's next films will be like now he's had enormous success. Remember that after Shallow Grave and Trainspotting he made The Beach and (shudder!) A Life Less Ordinary and it took a Soderbergh-style back to basics approach with the two BBC films to start building his reputation up again with 28 Days Later (which I still see as an extended apology to Alex Garland!)

In the long term, I'm still waiting for Boyle to make a fully satisfying film and am worried that this award might be the legitimisation that prevents him from fulfilling the sporadic promise he has shown during what has been, from this viewer's perspective, an incredibly frustrating career.

I certainly agree the Oscars were disappointing, and especially compared to the fantastic range and relatively daring subject matter of all the best film nominations from last year (even the issue-tastic Juno and superficially conventional Atonement), this year felt a return to old themes and well trodden subject matter with a slight twist - Forrest Gump in reverse, Rocky with wrestlers, City of God in Mumbai, political drama but with a gay theme or a retreading of interviews with a well known politician (Frost/Nixon struck me as being this year's Quiz Show - excited about 'revealing the past' to modern audiences, with a fair dose of dramatic licence), holocaust drama, comic book shenanigans (while managing to ignore Hellboy II), a Pixar film with the same plot mechanics that drive all their films but with slightly different and darker plot trimmings added, and so on.

I suppose however it could have been much worse. At least there were no Crash-style jawdroppers this time around - and the Academy even gave a major award to a gay-themed film, albeit one where the main character is murdered (assassinated?) by the end.

[knives]

You have to die to win as a gay character. I think AV said that.

[arsonfilms]

You have to die to win as a gay character. I think AV said that.

I'm pretty sure you also need to be straight. Movies with gay characters that live happily ever after, played by openly gay actors is the sure-fire formula for direct to DVD.

[domino harvey]

I don't recall Capote dying in Capote

[arsonfilms]

I don't recall Capote dying in Capote

I don't remember there being much focus on Capote's sexuality, plus Phil Hoffman is straight.

[JonathanM]

You have to die to win as a gay character. I think AV said that.

I'm pretty sure you also need to be straight. Movies with gay characters that live happily ever after, played by openly gay actors is the sure-fire formula for direct to DVD.

To be fair a) that set up doesn't make for much drama and b) it's not much of a stretch even for the most hopeless of actors.

Asking a straight guy to kiss another man is, in Hollywood terms, the equivalent of playing someone with extreme physical disabilities; it's a humiliation and evidence of 'suffering for one's art' in a way that screams out for official recognition.

[knives]

Then, by that logic, Hudson should've won every year. I don't even pretend it makes sense.

[domino harvey]

I don't recall Capote dying in Capote

I don't remember there being much focus on Capote's sexuality, plus Phil Hoffman is straight.

If "you have to die to win as a gay character" and the last actor who won for playing a gay character did not die in the film, I don't see how there could be any further consideration of this hypothesis

[swo17]

I think the rule is: You have to really want an Oscar while playing a gay character in order to win an Oscar for playing a gay character.