OSCAR RACE 2007/08
commentary by Nathaniel R

days since OSCAR NIGHT!

Split Screen Madness

There are many many things I love about the Oscars. The show has been a crucial part of my year for most of my life. Like Christmas or Thanksgiving, I can't imagine what a year would be like without it. But there's one part of the show that I love without pride. It's my guilty pleasure. And that's the split-screen effect which amps up the winner/losers factor that Oscar seems to want to mitigate what with the change in text to "and the Oscar goes to..."

I'm not proud of loving this. I regularly question why people love the relentless public humiliation that reality TV banks on... but the movie star version of hopes shattered for your viewing pleasure, dreams deferred, and winner takes all? I drink that milkshake. I drink it up.

God bless the VCR the DVR and whatever device they come up with in the future that allows the replay. A couple of years ago I had a lot of fun goofing on Kathleen Turner's loss in 1986 even though I deeply deeply love The Kathleen Turner, I crazy love Kathleen Turner, I would romance stoned Kathleen Turner... I'm still pissed she lost. (Tangent Confession: the only Oscar ceremony I have ever missed since I began watching as a kid was March 1990 when Michelle Pfeiffer lost for The Fabulous Baker Boys (I was overseas) but I think that's the one loss I couldn't physically sit through so perhaps I'm better off.]

Maybe I love the split screen for the same reasons that everybody else loves sports and reality TV. The thrill of victory (solitary) and the agony of defeat (multiplied)

I find the actors generally boring when it comes to the split screen box... and the DVR shut off before Best Actor so I couldn't look at the leading men again. Note to self: Always set the DVR to record the program AFTER the Oscars too. How could you forget? They always run over

In Supporting Actor Javier Bardem is the only one with any readable interesting emotion... so I'm not showing the whole box. Plus Jennifer Hudson killed the drama (it's because she's not really an actress) by reading the sentence like this

"and the Oscar goes to Jarvier Bardem"

WHERE WAS THE ELLIPSIS? There has to be one or you kill the tiny quintupled drama. Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer. Do-Over.

"And the Oscar goes to ... Javier Bardem"

See what a difference that makes. Make us wait. You have to have the ellipsis!

When I first watched the show Javier's exhale looked like surprise and I thought ...why are you shocked hombre? You've won everything. But watching it again, Mr. Bardem's exhale is total relief. Sweet relief for making it through the media circus and on to the podium for the highest honor in filmdom. It's not over till it's over and here, at long last, it was finally over. For whatever reason my mind jumped to Will Smith at the end of The Pursuit of Happyness. He's ecstatic sure but he's also immediately relieved and totally exhausted. But with Javier Bardem the adrenaline factor is there, too, as he half jogs up the stage.

I live in terror every year that they will drop the performance clips (time-saver... they never seem to get that it's the endless montages that throw off their schedule) or the five way split screen. I feel like they have dumped one or both before in an odd year leaving me a puddle of unfulfilled longing. This dampens Oscar night's peculiarly potent mix of controlled glamour, audience cheering or booing at home, vague schadenfreunde and barely concealed emotional stakes --this does affect careers, you know it's true. But I'm possibly just imagining it since the terror of going without is real.

A lesser thrill but still enjoyable is watching each actor react to their own performance clips. There's a delightful mix of arrogance, humility, shyness, sensible "look what I can do" pride, boredom and tension. The obvious keeper on the 24th was Cate Blanchett's crowd friendly grimace after her scenery chewing in Elizabeth the Golden Age. As if to say...

"Even I voted for Angelina Jolie. Sorry"

But what was most interesting to me about her (faux?) humility was that the face felt like a grotesque variation of her non-ashamed 'I'm just embarrassed to watch myself' reaction to the clip from her universally lauded turn in I'm Not There. So in some ways it was just a bigger face pulled. Maybe she was channeling the film again. Shekar is behind the curtain screaming "Make it BIG. Would you like a thunderous musical cue to go with that frown or sideways glance?"

Supporting Actress Showdown... (not to be confused with Smackdown)
This race ended in the most jubilant way as the best performance of the year won. But nobody really knew (even if many of us predicted correctly) that that would be the case.

Save for Saoirse Ronan who looks merely OK with being there and not expectant, the projecting viewer (I realize it's projection but that's the fun of all vicarious entertainments) can read true nerves into all four of the other possibles. Blanchett looks down. We'll see that tactic a little later on, too. It's a good way to mask your disappointment and/or dig out your acceptance speech.

"And the Oscar goes to ... Tilda Swinton"

Amy Ryan is the coolest of the hopefuls when she realizes it's not her. Cool as a cucumber. Her smile never wavers or overcompensates. If she's smart (and she seems to be) she knows that Gone Baby Gone has positioned her well to be here again. This is all gravy. Ruby Dee: Pissed. Eager to slap. Cate on the other hand, it rolls off quick "See you next year my closest 6,000 friends."

Best Actress
As a self proclaimed actressexual this is and always will be my favorite. but each and every and it has my stomach in knots. My favorite never wins... that's a handy statistic to know when predicting. And yet I always hold out hope. The last time Oscar and I saw eye to eye was 1996 when Frances McDormand took it home for her brilliant righteously comic turn in Fargo. Since that year, with the sole reasonable exception of Helen Mirren's inevitable coronation last year and the bewildering Helen Hunt moment, the award has gone to a princess type or someone in a biopic, often both. So I predicted Cotillard and didn't believe the favorable odds on Christie that people tried to sell me on.

My bad luck with Best Actress is partially due to simple irreconciable differences in preference. The Academy, for all the Euro love this year is very very American in their taste in women. They want them young, moldable, weepy and hot. I'm more European. I like my actresses accomplished, a little "difficult" and with a few years on them. In other words: I want them how Oscar wants the men. I love those grande dames of the cinema. Oscar and I don't see eye to eye which makes my eternal love for the annual Best Actress competition a volatile marriage indeed.

Here they all our when the clips are done. It's happiness times five except for possibly Linney --'yeah yeah, let's get to 2012 already. I'm up here every four years' -thanks for that reminder to the commenters) It gets serious real fast.

Nerves!

Blanchett hangs back like she's at home watching with us 'let's see who wins this gold man. It ain't me. I'm not there' Christie does the Blanchett from earlier (acceptance speech or hiding?), Laura gets all wistful... 'I'm never going to win -- consistent quality bores them. Gimmicks bore me.'

"And the Oscar goes to ... Marion Cotil

...lard!"

Julie is over it. She could've been farming! Crossed the Atlantic for this? She and many of us know that that's no way to treat a great lady. But Oscar is just as horny for women who are too young for him as your average Hollywood A Lister.

What's especially fun about Christie's quicksilver shift is that there's this brief uproar of 'you win some you lose some' in her unapologetic open arm shrug. It morphs almost imperceptibly fast into good sport cheering with oversold big arm movements. Yes, I watched it several times. I'm sorry but that's a way more exciting visual effect than a truck that morphs into a giant f***ing robot.

 

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