The Inquiring Manatee

Negative Emotions About 10 Best-Picture Oscar Nominees

     

I'm wrestling with my reactions to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' announcement Wednesday that they are expanding the iconic Best Picture category from five to 10 nominees -- a return to a practice of the 1930s and 1940s.
      The Academy's motives in making the change were hardly artistic. In fact, they were pretty crass: Seeking higher TV ratings for the ABC broadcast, and thus higher license fees from the network that are the financial lifeblood of the Hollywood organization. The clear implication of the move is that big-budget summer popcorn movies like "The Dark Knight" will have a better shot at getting nominated, drawing TV viewers who identify with the mass-market blockbusters and not at all with excellent little independent or foreign films like "La Vie En Rose." It's a populist ploy.
       I've got to admit that I generally avoid the big-studio summer blockbusters, finding these comic-book action films (and most animated features) pitched to an audience about 50 years younger than I am, and to a double-digit IQ level. I'm a snob about movies like "The Dark Knight." Maybe they're better than average for the kind of films they are, but I find it hard to believe that they're Best Picture material except by accident.
       It might have been a better idea to keep the Best Picture category at five while adding a new category for mass-market, youth-oriented films. Maybe it could be called Best Lowest Common Denominator Picture.
       I told you I was an elitist pig.
      

Don't Listen to the Critics: It Was a Good Oscar Show

    

I don't know about you, but I thought the new producers of Sunday night's Oscarcast did a good job for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and for ABC. Two Los Angeles Times writers the next day trashed the show -- they hated Hugh Jackman, they hated the musical numbers, they hated the dearth of surprise winners and the relative lack of emotion from winners -- but my wife and I must be dummies. We are avid moviegoers, seing more than 50 films a year. And we enjoyed the telecast, which recorded an uptick in ratings.
      I have some background in all this, having covered the Oscars for years for Newsweek and Newsday, mostly when it was at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown L.A. or the massive Shrine Auditorium. Sunday's show stacked up well against those shows I watched from a seat in the theater. "Slumdog Millionaire" director Danny Boyle was right to laud the show -- and he knows theatricality.
      The set and staging were imaginative. Jackman was talented and suave; there should have been more of him. I liked the lowering of the stage nearly to the level of the first-row seats (kind of like John McCain giving his acceptance speech at last summer's GOP convention), though it produced an awkward moment between presenter Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in the first row. Real troupers, they were.
       There were a lot of theatrical touches. The musical numbers weren't as bad as the critics made them out to be. True, the show could have done with a few more clips from nominated films, but the show ran more than three and a half hours as it was. I liked the surprise of bringing on five previous winners in the leading and supporting actor and actress categories to praise the nominees.
       It's not the producers' fault that there were few surprise winners (Japan's "Departures" winning for best foreign language film was the only surprise I can think of, in fact; the film doesn't hit the States until May.) And the snarky sniping about how arty and low-budget most of the key nominated films were is hardly worth commenting on. The Academy Awards honor excellence, not box-office grosses. If the mass audience out there knew only "The Black Knight," which wasn't recognized, that's tough. The object is to encourage people to see meritorious pictures like "Slumdog Millionaire," not to reward studio executives for their lowbrow catering to teenagers with comic-book sequels.
     And then there was the red carpet and all that glamor and decolletage. Best hair, Kate Winslet. Best dress, Anne Hathaway. Best million-dollar emerald earrings, Jolie. Worst outfit and accessories, the unfortunate Amy Adams. Coolest woman there, Heidi Klum.
    What did you think?

Nonpolitical Thoughts on the Oscar Nominations

       

On the basis of having reported on the motion picture industry for 24 years for Newsweek and Newsday, and having seen all five of the Best Picture nominees and most of the other films nominated in the major categories, my impressions are:
    -- Too many nominations for "Benjamin Button," which was good but not that good. The Academy voters were swayed by big-studio hype.
    -- Sally Hawkins wuz robbed of a Best Actress nomination for "Happy-Go-Lucky."
    -- Robbed in the Best Supporting Actor category was Eddie Marsan, who played Hawkins' neurotic driving instructor in that Mike Leigh movie, which did get a Best Original Screenplay nomination.
    -- Just as I knew the first time I heard Barack Obama speak as a Senate candidate in 2004 that he would be president someday, I knew as soon as I saw Penelope Cruz in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" that she would be nominated for Best Supporting Actress. A wonderfully peppery, psychotic-Latina performance at Woody Allen's direction. The Academy has done justice.
    -- Practically the whole cast of "Doubt" was nominated. Expectable, considering the cast's quality. A tribute to playwright/screenwriter John Patrick Shanley, too. I saw the play but not the movie.
    -- The Academy properly nominated Kate Winslet as Best Actress for "The Reader." Those Golden Globe morons called her Best Supporting Actress, bowing to the studio politics that dubbed her a Best Actress contender only for "Revolutionary Road" (that ploy didn't work with the Oscar people) so that she could win as many as two awards. Obviously she was the female lead in "The Reader."
    -- The Best Actor category is hardest to call. I'd set the choice among Frank Langella (Nixon in "Frost/Nixon"), Sean Penn ("Milk") and probably Mickey Rourke ("The Wrestler," though I haven't yet seen that one).
    -- What the heck is "Frozen River," for which Melissa Leo was nominated as Best Actress? Maybe 13 people saw it. If it's not in theaters, I hope they bring it back so we can see what the fuss is all about. The Oscars can be a godsend for ignored, low-budget, independent films like this.
    -- Five excellent contenders for Best Foreign Film. I'll bet "Waltz With Bashir" wins, though "The Class" was considered extremely classy by the critics.
    -- If "Slumdog Millionaire" doesn't win Best Picture, I'll be surprised and disappointed. I saw many enjoyable pictures in 2008, but "Slumdog" topped the list; other favorites were "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," "Happy-Go-Lucky," "Milk" and "Frost/Nixon." I didn't see "The Wrestler." I considered "Gran Torino" overrated and badly scripted (and, except for director-star Clint Eastwood, badly acted), so I'm not surprised that the Academy ignored it.

Memories of the Real Frost/Nixon

       

"Frost/Nixon," directed by Ken Howard, is an excellent film that I recommend strongly to moviegoers. Though playwright and screenwriter Peter Morgan took plenty of liberties with facts and left out some key participants, the movie is dramatically strong, as was Morgan's original play. The movie benefits from Frank Langella's fine performance as the exiled Richard Nixon, a repeat of Langella's theatrical role, and from sunny location shooting at Nixon's former San Clemente, Calif., estate, La Casa Pacifica.
    I was especially eager to see "Frost/Nixon" because I reported for Newsweek on Frost's original dealmaking with Nixon and agent Irving (Swifty) Lazar for the broadcast interviews, and again in the May 9, 1977 issue of Newsweek for a major, eight-page cover story on the production and the content of the broadcasts that were about to begin that week.
    I barely remember working on the 1977 story, but re-reading it makes it obvious that colleague Hal Bruno and I interviewed Frost, his key research aides and other insiders to give readers as many tips as possible on what would be in the widely awaited, syndicated telecasts. My files are long gone, except perhaps in Newsweek's New York archives, but the story with its revelations, headlined "Nixon Speaks," still speaks for itself.
    In return for Frost giving Newsweek some juicy leaks on the highlights of the shows, especially those relating to Watergate, the magazine splashed the Nixon/Frost story big and no doubt contributed to the broadcasts' high ratings and profits (profits shared with Nixon by contract). Newsweek on its own obtained some newsy Nixon Watergate tapes that had never been made public by Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski.
    I wouldn't be surprised if parts of the Newsweek package were used in the screenplay. For example, on leaving for the last time the Monarch Bay, Calif., home where the 11 days of interviews were taped, the socially inept Nixon is seen in the movie awkwardly asking a woman bystander with a dog if the animal was "called a dachshund," then stiffly petting the dog. Newsweek had that detail at the time.
    The script and Newsweek also track in their accounts of how the shrewd Nixon got the upper hand in early interviews, to the frustration of Frost's side, only to climactically melt down into a near-admission of wrongdoing and regret after Frost finally got more prosecutorial. That moment of sweaty candor gave Frost the TV moment he wanted, and Hollywood's Ron Howard does a good job of showing the triumph in Frost's eyes through actor Michael Sheen.
    While I have little recollection of my reporting, I do remember becoming acquainted later on with one figure in the movie, Frost's British girlfriend, Caroline Cushing, who is played by Rebecca Hall. After her five-year relationship with Frost broke up, the very bright and beautiful Ms Cushing eventually married Bill Graham, a son of my big boss, the late Newsweek and Washington Post publisher Katharine (Kay) Graham. The smashing Ms Cushing was even more impressive in real life than actress Hall is in the film.

Eastwood's "Gran Torino" is Overrated

   

Detroit muscle cars of the '70s were overrated, and so is iconic actor-director Clint Eastwood's latest film, "Gran Torino." Lauded by critics, it is billed as a brilliant first screenplay by Detroit newcomer Nicholas Schenck, an exploration of the growth as an involved human being of an isolated, embittered old Korean War veteran holding out in a once-white Detroit autoworkers' neighborhood now populated by Hmong, black and Mexican minorities and their gangs.
    First contemptuous of his Hmong neighbors, old Walt Kowalski is gradually drawn into their lives to the point of heroism and self-sacrifice.
    I was disappointed. As an actor in his own production, Eastwood plays the gravelly Kowalski as effectively as the critics say, and he is certain of an Oscar nomination. However, Eastwood is the only actor in this movie. The key role of a young Roman Catholic priest, for example, is played by the most wooden actor I ever saw; his line readings were pathetic. The young Asian actors meant well but also should have been more painstakingly cast to appear more professional, less obviously amateurish. Eastwood didn't direct them enough.
   Worst of all is the screenplay. It is unrealistic, cliched and stilted. It's also self-contradictory. Not long after making the point that Hmong never tell the police anything -- it's a cultural thing -- the movie's ending and meaning turn on the opposite assumption: we are asked to believe that Hmong eyewitnesses to what gangbangers do to Kowalski will inform on the violent and extremely threatening Hmong miscreants, who will presumably go to prison for years and free Kowalski's neighbor Hmong family from a life of terror. It's implausible, even by Hollywood standards.
    I respect Clint Eastwood and his work as much as anybody does, but in this case, don't believe every herding-instinct review you read. Skip this film.