OSCAR SYMPOSIUM
with
your host Nathaniel
and five very special guests
February 2010
INTRO |
Day One page 1| page 2 | page 3
Day Two page 4 | page 5 | page 6
Day Three page 7 | page 8 | page 9 | page 10
NATHANIEL R. : Welcome to the 5th annual Oscar Symposium. Each year I invite a handful of smart movie types into my virtual home to decipher, debate and occassionally defenstrate the choices made by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. This year's illustrious panel unintentionally mimics the general geography of AMPAS (Los Angeles / New York / London) if not, one feels free to assume, their psychology. Please welcome: Peter Knegt, Guy Lodge, Karina Longworth, Tim Robey and Sasha Stone.
But remember, we aren't hear to predict. Who doesn't know that Jeff Bridges, Mo'Nique, Kathryn Bigelow, and Christoph Waltz are taking Oscar to bed on March 7th? The Academy received its Bachelor of Arts And Sciences from The School of Redundancy School.
We're here to gab.
Here's a kick off. Adam Shankman of Hairspray, So You Think You Can Dance and Bringing Down the House fame, who is producing the show this year, has promised to play up the horse race aspect of the show, declaring that the Oscars are really "the best dressed reality show competition on the air". Never mind my distaste for the ubiquity of reality television... if we're really going to play it like that, let's play it like that. Shouldn't they have started filming the potential nominees months before the show, sending cameras to invade their every private moment (er, wait. that's called "paparazzi") and watch the triumph or heartbreak when they do or don't make the finals? A So You Think You Can
DanceAct? face/off might be the only way Meryl Streep can ever win a third Oscar, so let's do it. And if we're playing it like this, why can't we vote people off? You're the judging panel... so who are you jettisoning in the first episode, and who gets a "raise your game or go home" stern warning?
GUY LODGE: You break my heart with your talk of sure things, Mr. Rogers. Does this mean that I should withdraw my bet on a Lovely Bones write-in sweep of every category, including a Gordon E. Sawyer Award for the technological achievement of Susan Sarandon’s wig collection? Clearly, I haven’t been keeping up. It’s hard, after all, what with the dearth of film awards reporting on the web. Someone should really create a site for it. I’m sure it’d do quite well.
On that note, hello all, and thank you, Nathaniel, for inviting me onto this rather intimidating panel. My editor was here last year, but clearly scandalized himself sufficiently that you had to settle for the B-team this year. Ah, the cutthroat world of Oscar blogging.
As for your opening gambit, I kind of wish you hadn’t started with Adam Shankman, since the very mention of his name puts me in a sour mood from the get-go. As if his unhinged Twitter missives and pre-Hairspray filmography hadn’t made it clear enough, almost any statement he makes about the upcoming ceremony (whether along the lines of “thank God for The Blind Side” or “Robert Pattz ZOMG LOL”) confirms the cretin within.
The reality-show analogy is probably his most fearsomely stupid quote to date, revealing as it does a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Oscars are about – celebrating the extraordinary, as opposed to the magnification of the ordinary that reality TV stands for. I don’t want to relate to the Oscars; I want to gawk at the beautiful people.
But if we must go down that road, let’s have the nominees in each category lining up on stage, while the current American Idol judging panel offers feedback. Whoever Kara DioGuardi likes is disqualified instantly, and the others have to make their case based on how much abuse and disability they endured as children. It seems as fair a way of determining winners as the current system.
Anyway, the first nominees I’m voting off my island would include Stanley Tucci, Helen Mirren and Lee Daniels; I do so with a heavy heart, since I’m sure they’d be super-fun company, but the work can’t go unpunished. Let off with a warning are Maggie Gyllenhaal, Vera Farmiga and Michael Haneke – glad as I am that they’re in the club at last, I wish they hadn’t sanded off their edges to get there.I really should have added Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon to my first round of evictees, but totally forgot they were even there -- appropriately enough, since, while filming Invictus, I think they did too.
SASHA STONE: First off, thank you Nat for inviting me along. These symposiums you do are, I think, among the highlights of Oscar season. I couldn't tell whether to be charmed or horrified by Adam Shankman's declaration that the Oscars were a reality competition but in his own odd way he was kind of on to something there. The Oscar race itself, where the contenders have to puff themselves up with confidence, wear the right clothes, be seen at the right parties, gab in front of a mic at every opportunity and withstand the constant stream of criticism does seem to count for something.
The biggest difference, of course, is that there is an element one can't control. They may be winning over the public, but somewhere out in Santa Fe Springs, Montecito or Laguna Beach there is an Academy member pulling themselves away from their tennis game and finally getting to that ballot sitting on the kitchen counter. They will have not been paying attention to the blather and they will sit down and it will go something like this, "Avatar - no, that one made me nauseous and dizzy. The Hurt Locker. What's the Hurt Locker? What IS a Hurt Locker? Who's in it? Who? Oh. Who's he? It won all of those awards, that's right. I remember seeing an ad about it last night. Huh.
Up in the Air, I did see that. It has George Clooney in it. It wasn't bad. Kind of depressing. The Blind Side - that was a really good movie. And Sandra is so beautiful. She was going to star in that film I almost made. Anyway, It was so nice to see someone do something positive. I think I'm going to vote for that one. Precious comes next because I did see that cast on Oprah.
And so it goes.
The main difference between So You Think You Can Dance and the Oscars are the voters themselves. On one hand, you have the public voting for the ones they "like" best. And it usually isn't the best dancer, but the best looking, most charismatic best dancer. And there are judges. Please don't tell me the Oscar blogs are the judges (self-appointed) because I may have to vomit what is left of last night's dinner. I'm classy, don't forget it.
