OSCAR RACE 2007
commentary
by Nathaniel
R
days since OSCAR NIGHT!
Previous Articles
I Survived Live Blogging the Oscars
Part 1 -Arrivals / Part 2 -First Half of Show/ Part 3 -Second Half
My Final Predictions
I knew No Country would kill. 100% correct in the big eight categories
Symposium -Talking 'bout the Nominations
With six fine film writers and special guests
"Oscar Hangover"
It began with a hangover. Don't judge. Last night was Oscar night, who didn't have one too many? Something had to keep me going through the most conservative fashion show I can recall ever seeing on Hollywood's High Holy Night. The theme was either 'risk free" or they were all wearing black in mourning for Heath Ledger. But if so, I think it a poor tribute. He would have liked a spot of color. I mean, you saw the socks he wore to the Berlin Festival last year, right? You saw Michelle Williams dress on Brokeback night. This was not a conservative star and color is good. So, I frantically typed for 5 hours straight. What's wrong with me? I can't win an award for doing this. No shiny gold men for me. Why these enormous tasks I set myself? The hangover proved short lived and I trotted off to the other job... running a little late due to things like ironing, trying to find my keys, obsessing about the color of Tilda Swinton's eyes; you know, daily routines.
For what it's worth, they're very very green.
Speaking of green (no, not the fashion --will get to that in a bit) On the subway to midtown I see the big splashy headlines on the NY Post or the daily news or one of those trashy cheap papers everyone reads. "Dull Show to Honor Movies No One Sees" and I feel a little thumpy again. Now obviously these dailies are slow working gray matter poison for New Yorkers but sadly this attitude is widespread. There is never any context to these arguments about Oscar honoring "unpopular" movies. It's just knee-jerk bitching. Is it really Oscars fault that the studios won't even release half of these movies until after Oscar is honoring them? No. Do we really want the Oscars to be based on box office. If we did last night ceremony would have contained the following nominees.Best Picture -Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Shrek 3, Spider-Man 3 and Transformers.
13 year old boys might believe those are the five best pictures of the year but do you? And do you think they're better than No Country For Old Men?
Best Director -Michael Bay (Transformers)... he'd be a three time winner by now or something. I don't even need to mention the rest. That's a terrifying prospect and the top five still doesn't make room for someone really talented who made a popular movie like Paul Greengrass's The Bourne Ultimatum
Best Actress -Amy Adams (Enchanted), Nikki Blonsky (Hairspray), Katharine Heigl (Knocked Up), Ellen Page (Juno) and Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean at world's end)
Best Actor -Tobey Maguire (Spider-Man 3), Matt Damon (Bourne Ultimatum), Will Smith (I am Legend) Shia LaBeouf (Transformers) and Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)
Best Supporting Actor -Thomas Haden Church (Spider-Man 3), Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean) , Rodrigo Santoro (300), Stellan Skarsgaard (Pirates of the Caribbean) David Straithairn (The Bourne Ultimatum)
Best Supporting Actress -Joan Allen (The Bourne Ultimatum), Lena Headey (300), Lesley Mann (Knocked Up), Imelda Staunton (Harry Potter) and Julia Stiles (The Bourne Ultimatum)
You get the picture (though actually those actress lists aren't bad, right?)
Javier Bardem. He's from another country (gasp!)There will be more articles and from better publications about the Oscar's low ratings this year, the lowest ever, and more misleading attacks on how they've lost touch. And sure Oscar could use some lightening up. But Jesus, the public's taste lacks for variety. The public is even more narrowminded in their favoritism (CG laden franchises, animated films and low brow comedies fill out the top 20) than Oscar is in theirs. Oscar at least hops between prestige literary adaptations, biopics, musicals, war films and dramas. That's five genres to three from the public. And why does no one stop to consider that Oscar mostly honors movies made for adults and box office mostly honors movies made for kids. It's not really that complicated. For all the nitpicking any pundit may do, I think most of us could safely say that the Oscars annual shortlist is better than the annual "top grossers" list... even if both are a little blah sometimes.
But again... this whole "I've never heard of that!" complaint is silliness and its part of the widening problem of a press that wants to constantly butter up and infantilize the masses, feeding them the line that they're always right. Information is so easy to get now. Everything is literally a mouse click away. You haven't heard of that movie? Look it up you damn lazy fool. God forbid that people should seek out quality. It must come to them with commercials on their television. Don't be curious! Just watch Dancing With the Stars and vote for the president you'd most want to have a beer with. Whatever you do... DON'T THINK.
The real tragedy in the reinforcement of this "gap of perceived quality" is that many people actually like the Oscar nominees once they get to see them. Even though the press often tries to fool them into disregarding them because they're "unpopular" (exactly how can you be widely seen and widely popular when you're only playing on the coasts? That's what I'd like to know) To further damn the Academy, people like to bring up past years like the early to mid 80s when huge smashes like Kramer Vs. Kramer and Out of Africa were also smashes with the public. The argument is that the Oscars have left the public. This is misleading. The Oscars are still loving that type of film. It's the public who left dramas and epics behind for superheroes and CG animation. That's what the public loves now.
Imagine it. A Kramer Vs. Kramer equivalent opens today --a film about a marriage dissolving ... it's just as good and just as zeitgeisty in its picture of contemporary relationships. The acting is just as revelatory. My guess is $90 million tops ... Brokeback Mountain numbers. And people would be surprised. But if you look back over the past few decades of Oscar history the numbers have always fluctuated. These are adjusted for inflation to 2007 dollars.
Kramer Vs. Kramer was massive...$293 million adjusted for inflation. Transformers big. More popular in it's day than The Bourne Ultimatum is now. Tough to imagine, right? But totally true. You can look it up. Dramas don't get the public in as quick of a frenzy anymore. But that doesn't mean dramas shouldn't be rewarded with Oscars. Dramas just take more time to build now --there's more filmed competition, more home entertainment choices, and painfully slow
withholdingplatforming... but the films Oscar loves the public ends up loving too, don't they? I mean is there one picture in this group above that the public doesn't like? There's a few I don't like but generally the public loves them. No Country For Old Men is currently at $64 million which means it's the 2nd lowest grosser from this group but it's not close to obscure or unpopular.So why do so many articles try to widen the gap and reinforce the perception that people don't see aren't seeing the Best Picture nominees? Wouldn't the media at large benefit from a public that was more interested in exploring the arts and not just sitting there like lumps being force fed whichever movies had the highest ad budgets? Compounding the problem is that the media is so selective and hypocritical about how they bitch about this public/Oscar disconnect. When Crash won they kept talking about how it was a crowd favorite and the public liked it and yet it was Brokeback that was nearing $100 million at the box office ( a more typical Academy'ish number). This year Juno is a smash and No Country For Old Men has done very solid business. Michael Clayton was about as big of a hit as Crash was in its year and yet Michael Clayton is often referred to as a flop, go figure. Neither were quite as Oscar worthy as Resident Evil: Extinction mind you. Hey, that's sort of the argument isn't it? Look to the box office for what's worthy. All but one of the best picture nominees finished in the top 60 movies of the year. The only"low" grosser is There Will Be Blood which is just slightly less popular with the public than Good Luck Chuck. [...] So the dailies and any other outlet who wants to bitch about this mindlessly can bite it.
If you ask me There Will Be Blood has done terrific business for what it is. It's a truly challenging almost alien movie. I love Paul Thomas Anderson's movies and even I was freaked out by it. It took me two viewings to let it sink in. If you think $35 million is bad for a long bizarre auteurial epic than you just crazy. You crazy! You Tom Wilkinson with a bag of baguettes cuckoo.
But then I freely admit that I do live in the slightly skewed world of movie loving / movie discussing New York City. I know deep down --and I'd like to keep it that buried thank you -- that Are We Done Yet? and Saw IV are more popular with the public than Atonement.
Overheard at my other job this morning
"I went to an Oscar party. I didn't know any --they had these ballots. I just looked at supporting actress and thought. 'Yeah, I'll pick her. She's obscure enough to win'"
Tilda Swinton... obscure. Tilda Swinton with her brain face [src]. Tilda who sleeps behind glass for curious museum goers. Tilda Swinton, muse to legendary artists. Tilda Swinton, fashion icon. Tilda Swinton with her impossibly green eyes. Tilda Swinton, an obscurity. What a world!
We can bitch all we want about the Oscars choices from year to year but they're doing a great service by naming their favorites. If it weren't for them many people would never hear of any dramatic movie in this current movie climate, they'd never hear of any movie without a number in the title and unless Chronicles of Narnia was rereleased, they'd probably never think for a moment about the world wonder that is Ms. Swinton. And that would be a damn shame. Now she's all over the news for a week.
Oscars are what led me as a young kid to curiousity about the movies. Oscars led me to braving the waters of the local art house cinema when my parents had never heard of the movies I was dragging them to. [The arguments are always the same. The years just change.] I made my parents drag me to so many great movies. So what if the public doesn't care as much as they used to? Somewhere and probably thousands of somewheres in the world, young kids and even some sheltered adults are hearing about great movies that they might never have heard about otherwise if it weren't for this popularity contest that looks beyond superheroes and anthropomorphic animals.
So I can live with Oscar's blunders. I can live with their biopic fixation. Because the alternative, Oscars for huge hits only is a holy terror. Blockbusters are fun and the best ones go painfully unrewarded but I can live with that too. Can we get a little variety in the house?
FASHION? WINNERS? LOSERS? some gowns and my favorite thing in the world about the televised Oscars.
