If you want to know what was wrong with this year’s Oscar telecast, just Google up “2013 Tony Awards: Neil Patrick Harris Opening Number HD.” Now that is a show. There’s singing. There’s dancing. There’s acrobatics. He leaps through a hoop. And there’s magic – literal magic. Harris steps into a box on stage and the side panels close, and when they open, he’s no longer inside. Instead, he’s making an entry from the other end of the hall. There’s clearly nothing he cannot do. Except liven up the annual Oscar show. He wasn’t bad, exactly. The opening number was pretty decent. But “pretty decent” from Neil Patrick Harris is a bit like finding out Meryl Streep won’t be nominated next year, even if she isn’t in any movie. It’s not supposed to happen. Something was oddly off. I never thought I’d use the word “diffident” when it comes to Harris, but that’s what he was. Even he couldn’t make the four hours any less boring.
But that’s perhaps because he was trying to keep it somewhat classy, the way this show always does. Why does Hollywood, in its annual rite of self-congratulation, strive to emulate a debutante ball rather than being the carnival it is? Every year, I emerge from the cloud of the previous year’s disappointment, hoping against hope, and there’s disappointment afresh. All that money. All that technology. All that star power. And this is the best they can do? All that screenwriting talent, and they still cannot find a way to write better opening lines for the people handing out the awards. These presenters don’t sound like they’re celebrating the wonderful weirdness and madness that surrounds creativity. They sound like they’re honouring cancer researchers. They sound like they’re handing out the Nobel Prize. The acceptance speeches, most times, are worse. The winners sound like they just won the Nobel Prize.
Every year, I come away thinking that there is a great Oscar show buried in there somewhere, and you just have to string together the most memorable moments. The first such moment, for me, this year was when Pawel Pawlikowski, the director of Ida, came on stage to receive the award for Best Foreign Language Film. He said, “Oh, God. How did I get here? We made a film about — as you saw, black and white — about the need for silence and withdrawal from the world and contemplation. And here we are at this epicentre of noise and world attention.” This is what a great acceptance speech is made of – the surprise of the win, and the gasping-for-air attempt to come to terms with that surprise. There was no doubt this was an artist far removed from this world, from this… carnival. He just wasn’t saying as much.
I had to leave the show for a while – I had to get to a class I teach – and I was there early. So I parked myself in front of the television set in a noisy cafeteria and continued watching for a while. Lady Gaga performed a medley from The Sound of Music. She was so good that she cut through the noise around me. She really belted it out, the way Shirley Bassey used to belt out those Bond numbers. Gollld-finggahhh! Maybe she knew she had a job to do, and it wasn’t just to perform but to shake awake a soporific evening.
About the winners themselves – the reason for this show – it’s hard to care one way or another. Everyone knows it’s all apples versus oranges, and there can’t be any real consensus – just a mild feeling of regret if your orange beat out my apple. I’ve been hearing some outrage about Michael Keaton losing to Eddie Redmayne (who nailed exactly what this was all about when he said “I’m fully aware that I am a lucky, lucky man”), but while I’d have liked Keaton to win, I wasn’t really crushed. Sometimes, it’s nice when an award goes to an up-and-comer who deserves it and won’t have to wait forty years before finally getting it for below-par work. That isn’t the Best Actor award. That’s the Best Actor Who’s Done A Lot Of Good Work And We Didn’t Recognise Him Then So We Might As Well Give It To Him Now Before He Kicks The Bucket award.
What crushed me, though, was the lack of love for Boyhood. It was the strangest film this year, neither all-out feature nor documentary, neither fully imagined nor fully real, neither apple nor orange. Alejandro González Iñárritu, whose thrilling Birdman beat out Boyhood for Best Picture, said, “For someone to win, someone has to lose, but the paradox is that true art… can’t be compared or labelled or defeated… and our work will only be judged by time.” He said, essentially, that the preceding four hours was a load of bull, that it meant nothing, that nothing they do is going to cure cancer, so we might as well have had a lot of fun. Hopefully the Academy got the message.
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Aran
February 23, 2015
I’m definitely not one of those persons that wanted Micheal Keaton to win… only because every time the camera turned on him, his maw was gaping open and he was chewing gum while moving his jaws open and around like some cow. Is it too much to ask that when you dress up in a tux, you at least act like you have some manners? On the other hand, Eddie Redmayne was so cute and adorable throughout. Yes, this has nothing the do with the movies or their performances, but dammit, uncouthness should pay a price!
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Rajesh
February 23, 2015
For me, Pawlikowski should be the least surprised man. The moment Ida started getting attention in the US and it got nominated, it was clear to everyone, it had the Oscar’s favourite Jewish theme, that it would walk away with that award. Even the team behind Leviathan knew that. However, its just funny that the most beautiful and kind of revolutionary cinematography (attempt) in cinema – Ida – didnt win it.
For me though, two British movies, ‘Starred Up’ and ‘ ’71’ were brilliant than most of these nominated dramas – so was deux jours une nuit; and the Canadian movie ‘Enemy’ was even better if they wanted a more intelligent and complicated/confusing movie than Birdman.
And Cotillard’s performance in deux jourse. une.. is few levels above the other female nominees.
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Arun
February 23, 2015
BR, Have you written something on Birdman? Would love to read your thoughts on it.
PS: I for one was crushed Keaton didnt win it , the same way Rourke lost out. I’m just a sucker for comeback stories I suppose.
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Ddi
February 23, 2015
I saw NPH’s face after someone made a serious statement about race (or was it female pay equality or gay rights or ALS or whistle blowers or…)…it was dead pan. Artist after Artists were making “statements” not related to movies; so how the heck NPH gonna crack jokes in face of all that? Poor thing. He tried though. Walking in your tighty-whities in front of millions of viewers ain’t easy.
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Anamika
February 24, 2015
Interesting.
I for one always wonder what it is that people are expecting? Hosting, year after year, over the past decade has been lackluster so no surprise there. I wish the awards themselves would not remain so predictable. Its like the voting members look at BAFTA and Guild and decide to copy them as opposed to seeing all the movies and deciding for themselves. A surprise win for Rosamund Pike would have been an interesting twist and not that Julianne Moore didn’t deserve. A Best Picture nod to Grand Budapest, now that would require some gumption and guts and it ain’t happening anytime soon.
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Prasad
February 24, 2015
Hi BR,
While I agree that, there was lack of love for Boyhood but again I felt Best movie for Birdman little too much. Infact they could’ve surprised all of us by giving it to “Whiplash” to just encourage that one doesn’t need a big banner or star Casting to win an Oscar. And it was a out of the box musical thriller with an outstanding score and excellent technical aspects.
But yes, as many are saying, this time Academy is in a mood to celebrate art rather than biopics and thrillers.
I felt some of the other movies which needed some nominations:
1) Calvary- Amazing movie which portrays the conflicts of a Prient by Brendan Gleeson
2) Locke- It’s pure magic that with only one actor on screen for 90 mins you can provide a multi layered movie- Kudos to Tom Hardy and Director Steven Knight.
3) NightCrawler: Academy dislikes Jake for some reason I suppose.Excellent portrayal by Jake Gylenhall as a moden day monster and a fantastic screenplay by Dan Gilroy.
Is there any other movie which do you think should have made the list from your opinion?
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bart
February 24, 2015
Agree with your views on the event and the preparation overall. The event still acts as a spotlight thrower on all those good movies made on the previous year. I didn’t know of “Ida” before this.
My personal favorite was “Boyhood” again but wasn’t disappointed too much. “Two mexicans in a row is suspicious indeed”. Its all about movies and “who am I kidding, this is just great fun, thank you very much”..
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RT
February 24, 2015
The recent Oscar shows do come across as a bit too stiff and formal. Especially if you compare to something like the Golden Globes, where everybody’s having a few drinks and it seems a much more relaxed atmosphere. The Globes also took a risk a few years ago by going with Ricky Gervais as the host. I know he’s not to everone’s taste and his jokes can be a bit hit and miss but you can never call him boring :). Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have really done a great job for the last three years as well. I wonder if it would be better if the Oscars picked a host and let him/her have a run for a few years instead of changing every year – give them a chance to settle in a bit and not let nerves take over.
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venkatesh
February 27, 2015
I am with RT on this – ., The Golden Globes did the right thing by bringing in Ricky Gervais and shaking it up a bit , the Oscars should do something similar – shake it up a bit , keep it classy but fun and not pretend that the folks winning these shiny trophies are doing anything more than playing dress-up.
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Deepak
March 12, 2015
To be fair, the Oscars did try to shake it up a couple of years back. They just happened to pick the absolute worst person to do that in Seth McFarlane. The hosts after that debacle have reflected a conscious choice to go back to safer bets.
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