POISON SCOOTER

Academy Awards Recap

First, let me say that in my annual Oscar pool, 23 people participated and someone who took the genius approach of providing only the name Chris took home top honors by correctly predicting 15 of the 24 categories. Hmmm...Chris....not a very popular name...and certainly not a name that could be used for a boy or a girl. In any case, congrats to you on your victory whoever you may be.

I will say that Poison Scooter made a strong showing with a Joolie coming in a close second with 14 right and me rounding out the top 3 with a weaker than usual showing of 13. I'll try to justify my off year in a moment, but first let's review the show.

Ellen Degeneres: Was it just me or did some of her jokes seem to fall flat on the crowd? I've always liked her, even before she came out as a lesbian and a closet dancer, but her style is very different and I'm not certain that it worked completely.

Melting Pot: As Ellen pointed out in her opening monologue, this year's field of nominees was the most diverse in the history of the presentation. Two African American men nominated for Best Actor, many tech awards recognizing the three strong films by the Mexican Amigos (Babel, Children of Men and Pan's Labyrinth) and Penelope Cruz getting a nod for Best Actress in a Spanish speaking film. The only downside was that as a result of this melting pot kind of night, it made for shitty television. 75% of the acceptance speeches were incoherent, thick accents and in the case of Ennio Morricone's honorary trophy, the man spoke Italian and we had to have Clint Eastwood awkwardly translate. Yikes.

Predictable: Chris Connelly kept talking about surprises on his back stage camera, but come on know...Whitaker, Mirren and Hudson were guaranteed winners before the night even started. And you think someone had a hunch about Director and Best Picture? Spielberg, Coppola and Lucas giving out the Best Director trophy and joking about winning one right before they read Marty's name off the card. Jack Nicholson presenting with Diane Keaton giving out the trophy for his movie The Departed. Lame. I will agree with Connelly on two surprises, Melissa Etheridge taking down powerhouse Randy Newman (19 nominations) and three tunes from Dreamgirls in the Best Song category. And how the hell does Pan's Labyrinth lose Best Foreign Film to a German copycat of The Conversation? You can't say Pan's had the best Art Direction, Make Up and Art Direction in all of film and then let it lose out to The Lives of Others. You just can't.

Acting? Awards: As far as the acting awards went this year, I was 4-4 on my predictions. Why then do I feel completely disappointed? Well, I hate awards going to people who are impersonating a real person (Idi and the Queen), is that really acting? And Jennifer Hudson's win is just stupid, although Supporting awards sometimes are this silly. (See Marisa Tomei or Cuba Gooding, Jr. as examples)The only person I was happy to see win was Alan Arkin and that makes me sad.

Politics: Al Gore did take home his prize for putting out the best Documentary this year, and in the course of the show he and Leo Decaprio made some fuss about how the Oscars finally went green. (It's 2007 for christsake!! What took so long???) And in the course of his two times on stage, the vibe in the room just got odd. I don't think people really want him to run for office again, but they seem to be forced into faining interest for the sake of television.

No Frontrunner: What killed my predictions this year was that there was no real frontrunner film out there. As mentioned, the top acting prizes, director and you could even say the screenwriting awards were slam dunks and did well to reward five different films across 7 categories. Couple that with a strong sense that Pan's Labyrinth would lead the field with technical awards (eventually taking home 3) and you pretty much leave the Best Picture race wide open and the only really interesting award this year. All of the films nominated won at least one trophy, but none won more than three until The Departed took home the prize and collected it's leader of the pack fourth award of the night. I can't recall the last time the film that won the most awards only took home 4 statues?

Is it over yet?: The final nail in the coffin for me, after I live with the fact that I don't care for many of the acting choices, hate Marty Scorcese getting a trophy because of a great script and incredible acting and seeing Children of Men shut out; was that this show would never end. Maybe it's because I had to get up for work at 6 AM, but I can't recall a show going on as long as this one in the last 20 years. Maybe they should trim things up by dropping those little movies by Michael Mann and Nancy Myers; but even then you are gaining maybe 8 minutes. I have no idea where the time went, why did this show seem to last forever?

And so, the award season in film is officially over. In all fairness, I still have a few films to see before I make my final opinions about what I think were the best performances of the past year. I haven't seen The Queen, The Last King of Scotland or Dreamgirls...and a few others like Little Children and Notes on a Scandal. But, I think my top ten films of 2006 look a little like this:

1. Children of Men
2. Pan's Labyrinth
3. Half Nelson
4. Babel
5. Little Miss Sunshine
6. Borat
7. The Departed
8. United 93
9. The Devil Wears Prada
10. An Inconvenient Truth

...and all were at least nominated this year.

posted by Scooter @ 4:09 AM