Oscars Follow-Up

Now that everyone else has posted their thoughts about the Oscars, here are some of mine, randomly assembled.

As I suspected, Zero Dark Thirty was robbed. I didn’t expect it to be quite as robbed as it was, though, coming up with (I think) only one Oscar.

Jennifer Lawrence and Adele should always win stuff. I can’t say I’m a real fan of Adele’s music, though I always find myself singing along, but she’s a delight. And Jennifer Lawrence is also as refreshing as they come. Her slip on the way up the stairs to receive her Best Actress Oscar was more charming than clumsy and made, I thought, a lovely parallel to her seeming wardrobe malfunction when she got up to get her Screen Actors Guild award. (Ring a bell? Her dress appeared to come undone, baring a slice of her thighs, as she hitched it to rise; turns out it was purposely designed that way, but still, it was endearing and “real” to see her mishandle it.) And I don’t think the standing ovation she received was an act of sympathy because she fell; I think it was in recognition of her truly stellar performance in Silver Linings Playbook, possibly a warm welcome to stardom by her peers who recognize her potential as well as her past work. I recently realized that what I like about her now is my impression that she may not freak out later in life if she gains 15 pounds or develops a wrinkle across her brow or at the corner of an eye. Her wit crackles; the descriptor “salty” seems to apply. I’ve already tired of hearing her called Hollywood’s new “it” girl, but I’d have to agree. I’ll have an eye out for her future choices.

Barbra Streisand. I’d wondered why she was appearing and what she would sing. While I didn’t find her performance jaw-droppingly amazing, I can’t help but burst with love for her and trace nearly 35 years of memories of my own as her devotee.

Again this year, Jessica Chastain tops my best-dressed list. She was certainly ready to win her Oscar and had dressed to match. It showed off her figure perfectly, and its rosy-champagne-beige-crystal color and beveled lines were magnificent; she and her dress got better every time I saw them. Others who made my best-dressed list include Naomi Watts, Jennifer Lawrence, Octavia Spencer, and Jane Fonda.

While I prefer to “accentuate the positive,” I do have to give a nod to the worst-dressed, Quentin Tarantino, who specializes in making a tuxedo look like warm-up sweats.

The biggest curiosity of the night was Renee Zelwegger, who stood between Richard Gere and Catherine Zeta-Jones to present an award. No, wait, she wobbled between them. She never stopped wobbling. I had a run of thoughts about her wobbling. They were these: Perhaps she’d had four drinks too many. Perhaps she shouldn’t have taken whatever drugs. Perhaps she’d mixed four drinks too many with drugs. Perhaps she was seriously ill. I couldn’t see her shoes to see whether they contributed to that bad case of the wobbles.

Seth McFarlane. Whatever. He did neither a poor nor a great job as host. But he was absolutely right on one point: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler should host next year’s Oscars; they should host everything ever, at least for the next ten years!

Argo, Not: Sentiments and Opinions Before the 2012 Oscars Broadcast

A few things are certain about tonight’s Oscar ceremony. First, no single film is going to sweep all the categories; some all-in-all really good films will split the major awards. Second, Daniel Day-Lewis will win Best Actor. Third, Anne Hathaway will win Best Supporting Actress. Fourth, the Best Director of the year won’t win because the two best directors, Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck, weren’t nominated. Fifth, the broadcast will be overly long and boring for a lot of people, but Oscar night remains my favorite TV night. (By the way, the weather forecast here tonight includes rain and snow, which often knock out my satellite reception, and I promise to be fussy and disturbed if such a thing occurs for even an instant.)

Beyond those few certainties, I am uncertain. Argo has been snatching up all sorts of Best Picture awards, and before I go further, I’d like to admit that it was a doggone fine film. Jessica Chastain looked to be the shoe-in for Best Actress for a while, but Jennifer Lawrence rightly picked up steam and a big award. Philip Seymour Hoffman has won numerous Best Supporting Actor awards for The Master, but I’m just not feeling it for the Oscars. Evidently, there’s a sad little Oscar campaign going on in support of Robert DeNiro’s performance in Silver Linings Playbook; he excelled, as he almost always does, in that role, and his name might well be called. I also thought Tommy Lee Jones was strong in Lincoln, but my wish to see him win went away when I saw the unpleasant mug he gave at the Golden Globe ceremonies.

All of that aside, what I most want to talk about concerns the nominees for Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Director.

I have seen many of the nominees for Best Picture this year, and the first thing I’d like to note is that they are better by far than anything released in 2011. 2011 was a downright dismal year in moviemaking. This past year more than made up for 2011’s drought of good films.

I went to see Lincoln on its opening day in November. The main reason I enjoyed it was for its fine acting across the board. Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance was nothing short of miraculous; the actor disappeared and never came into view; he was entirely subsumed by Abraham Lincoln. There are very few roles I can say that about: Meryl Streep’s Sophie in Sophie’s Choice comes to mind first, Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter next. But the rest of Lincoln, while entertaining and educational, struck me as too “by the white people, for the white people.” (A recent poster signifying Black History Month featured a likeness of Abraham Lincoln as its only image, and despite the way his beard darkened his countenance, I thought it was wrong, wrong, wrong to select him as the representative. Believe it or not, white folks, lots of black people have had a big hand in black history.) I felt conscious of Stephen Spielberg’s direction and Tony Kuschner’s script the whole time I watched; both stole from my ability to become fully ensconced in the drama.

On another night I took myself out to the movies and decided to do what I used to when I was much younger: see two of them on the same night. I chose Argo and Silver Linings Playbook. Argo was one of the two movies I was most interested in seeing, Zero Dark Thirty being the other. Argo was excellent. Affleck showed a masterful touch in creating real and heightened suspense in a situation the viewer knew the outcome of. I enjoyed the levity Alan Arkin and John Goodman brought to the storyline. Affleck’s acting was flat, in my opinion, but I understood the accolades he was receiving for the direction. My gripe with the movie, however, had to do with its lack of complex characters, the result, no doubt, of the film’s gung-ho patriotism. Let me state for the record that yes, that hostage situation made bad guys of a number of Iranians, but Argo made heroes of almost all the Americans, villains of almost all the Iranians. It was clear (and I do mean crystal) who the good guys were and who the bad. To anyone who doesn’t know any better, brush up on the pre-Islamic Revolution political complexities between Iran and the Western world for a little more understanding. There’s more to the story — and oh, I don’t even know a hundredth of it, but I do know Argo reminded me of a well-told Western. And I did enjoy it, and I did root for the Americans. And one of my favorite things about the movie was a comment made by another viewer at its conclusion: “It’s so good to see a movie with a happy ending for a change.” It was a happy ending, and it wasn’t a false one, so kudos to Argo and its makers.

After I saw Argo, I didn’t know if I still wanted to see Silver Linings Playbook. As it happened, SLP wasn’t going to start for nearly an hour. To kill time, I popped in to see what was happening on the Les Miserables screen. I stayed for little more than a half-hour, didn’t see Anne Hathaway at all (her character must’ve died or something much earlier in the movie), and was glad not to have paid, even though the cinematography was outstanding and I seemed to recognize more of the music than I thought I would.

I didn’t necessarily want to see Silver Linings Playbook, but I made myself go because it had been nominated for so many awards and had gotten really good reviews. I was so happy I went. I enjoyed it from beginning to end; I enjoyed all the actors. I loved the wit in the very serious storyline, and most of all, I loved the varieties of love story and lack of easy answers. I left that theatre with a grasp of what all the fuss was about over Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. I decided I wanted Jennifer Lawrence to win the Best Actress Oscar, no matter how good this Jessica Chastain performance was purported to be.

As time has passed and I’ve been too busy to see Zero Dark Thirty, I’d come to that conclusion even more. I also decided that no matter how unlikely the odds, I wanted Silver Linings Playbook to take home the Best Picture Oscar. This year’s major award nominations are overrun with flag-waving, pro-USA movies — a sign of the times, but why? And lest I sound seditious and/or unpatriotic, I love my country too, but along with my love comes an awareness of its many deep- and far-reaching flaws, and frankly, I prefer to see a view of the United States that isn’t so one-sided (akin to the way I prefer to see characters portrayed). So up till last night, I was pulling for Silver Linings Playbook.

Last night I saw Zero Dark Thirty. I would like to begin by saying I’m torn about Best Actress but will find either Jessica Chastain or Jennifer Lawrence a worthy recipient. Going into tonight’s Oscars, I’m pulling slightly more for Jennifer Lawrence, but only slightly. I’m also pulling for Zero Dark Thirty to win Best Picture. Frankly, it was the best motion picture of 2012. It is a nearly perfect work of cinematographic storytelling, another masterpiece of suspense despite the audience’s knowledge of the outcome. The acting is excellent, the characters deeply complex, the story beautifully paced and directed. And it’s a damned shame that the hullaballoo over the depictions of torture has blinded viewers to the exquisiteness of this movie.

Folks, I have news for you. Anything claiming to be “based on a true story” and “actual events” is not always or ever the literal truth. The only true story is the one you’re living right now, in this moment. A story based on events that occurred over nearly a ten-year span has been condensed into two hours and thirty-seven minutes, so explain to me why anyone would have the assumption that he or she was seeing the truth. I hate to say it, but our beloved USofA has blood on its hands, more than we’ll ever know, and if Kathryn Bigelow chose to put some torture scenes in her movie to amplify its dramatic impact, so what. I was less appalled by the torture scenes — because I knew them to be a fabrication, like the rest of the movie, like Jessica Chastain’s “Maya,” like Jason Clarke’s “Dan,” and so on ad nauseam — than I was by my curiosity about the children in the compound who were left alive and must be facing a lifetime of surveillance after the death of “UBL.” I am livid about those viewers whose sanctimony and parsimony stand in the way of their ability to see a fine, near-flawless piece of filmmaking. I quote another movie that was based on actual events: “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!” We’d’ve been in that theatre for nine years and eight months if we wanted to see a more realistic version of the truth.

Kathryn Bigelow was 2012’s Best Director, but she wasn’t nominated for the award. Zero Dark Thirty deserves Best Picture, but it won’t win. (Even without the controversy, it might not have been recognized, seeing that Bigelow’s other gripping masterpiece, The Hurt Locker, took home the award just a few years ago.)

I think the Best Director Oscar will go to David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook.

Them’s my two cents.