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OSCAR THE GROUCH
Sifting through cinematic garbage
I am here to present the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture. The nominees are: Pay It Forward, The Beach, The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Patriot, and Finding Forrester.
We laugh, but to their respective producers, all five of those stinkers portended major Oscar© attention. And couldn't you imagine, say, Denzel Washington's acceptance speech for his performance in Remember the Titans? Or Sandra Bullock's for 28 Days?
Perhaps the Hollywood collective was too busy planning millennial balls to concentrate on movemaking. Or maybe they all thought, "The world's gonna end anyway; might as well make a live-action Rocky and Bullwinkle movie." Whatever the reason, 2000 has been a lousy year for movies.
This past week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences® released its list of Oscar© nominees. Yes, Bjork was snubbed. Yes, Almost Famous is a better picture than half the Best Picture nominees. Overall, though, the Academy did a pretty good job with the list, given 2000's slim pickin's. For the first time in recent memory, the year's best picture (Traffic) is actually nominated for Best Picture. What a novel concept!
Before March 25 rolls around, with Steve Martin primed to be the best host since Bob Hope, I'd like to clear up a few misconceptions held by the Hollywood community.
Gladiator
I finally broke down and rented Gladiator this weekend. I was shocked and amazed to discover that it's not the overhyped, script-poor offering I was expecting. Other than the fact that it's complete B.S. (Commodus reigned for twelve years following the death of Marcus Aurelius) and some of the acting performances are suspect, the film has no egregious flaws. The story holds up, the visuals are great, it's entertaining.
Is it Best Picture material? No, although Las Vegas lists it as the odds-on favorite to win. But Gladiator is not a bad movie; it was nominated because 2000 was a bad year.
Ridley Scott's best movie since Thelma and Louise is better than Chocolat, better than Erin Brockovich, and certainly better than
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Ang Lee's kung-fu epic drew lavish praise from the Roger Eberts of the world as well as his counterparts at snottier publications. Call me picky, but when I see a Best Picture-calibre movie, I expect things like plot, character development, and good dialogue.
Friends of mine who love this movie -- and they are legion -- rave about how "fun" Crouching Tiger is. Chicken Run was fun. So was American Psycho. But that doesn't mean we should nominate them for Best Picture.
Apologists will tell you that the film is a fable -- which explains the characters jumping across rooftops like it's the surface of the moon and not China -- and therefore does not need to adhere to conventional storytelling techniques. They will extol the "brilliant visual effects" and "great action sequences."
These same people will tell you Gladiator is crap because its brilliant visual effects and great action sequences were "too Hollywood" and "relied too much on digital technology." Its story, they claim, is "hackneyed" and "overly simplistic." Perhaps. But I'd rather have realistic action sequences than girls leaping over houses. And I'd rather have a hackneyed story than none at all.
What fifth grader came up with this plot? Or is there something to Crouching Tiger, perhaps, that I'm missing? Any attempt to gain insight from the title is futile. The film's villain is the Jade Fox, who is neither tiger nor dragon (all though at times she crouches and hides). The original title is Wo Hu Zang Long, which is Chinese for "the Emperor is naked."
Kate Hudson
Kate Hudson would be just another pretty face were it not for her connections. Her performance in Almost Famous was solid, although her part (as the groupie Penny Lane) was not much of a stretch, seeing as she's married to a rock star in real life. Yet here she sits on the short list for Best Supporting Actress, and it's almost certain she will win.
I read in PAPER magazine where Kurt Russell wanted to use his influence to get her auditions, but she refused because she wanted to make it on her own. So we are to believe, then, that Kurt and Goldie had nothing to do with Kate's success, that her newfound fame is solely based on her acting ability. Right. And Goldie Hawn's never had plastic surgery.
It's appropriate that Hudson was cited for her work in Almost Famous. She's almost famous. After March 25, you can delete the qualifier.
The Best Supporting Actress category is usually won by young ingenues the studios want to upgrade to Paltrows. Last year's winner, Angelina Jolie, is a perfect example. She is now a leading lady, with her name over the title. Next year, expect the same of Kate.
Russell Crowe
His talents lie more in the field of homewrecking than acting. I didn't find his work in Gladiator markedly better than fellow Aussie Mel Gibson's in The Patriot. But dollars to donuts, Crowe takes the Best Actor prize. I would have nominated Billy Crudup (Almost Famous, Jesus's Son) instead.
Julia Roberts
Erin Brockovich was the worst of the five Best Picture nominees, but the first item on Julia's lackluster resume that is worthy (perhaps) of a Best Actress nod. And Hollywood needs her to win the award, to legitimize what remains a mediocre, if likeable, talent.
Why, pray, is Julia such a mega-star? Name me five movies she's starred in (not appeared in; starred in) that you really love. Someone of her stature, you should be able to come up with at least five. While you solve that conundrum, I'll move on to
David Mamet
I noticed he was not nominated for State and Main, which every reviewer in the free world was afraid to denounce. Just because David Mamet wrote it, folks, don't mean it's good. Kudos to the Academy for not rewarding the guy who penned that putrid third act of Hannibal.
Best in Show
Ask someone to name the three best Shakespeare plays, and chances are, they will list three of his tragedies. For some reason, people value tragedies more than comedies. I don't think this is fair.
Every year Hollywood provides us with at least half a dozen solid dramas, quality films that will be watched, analyzed, and enjoyed for years to come. But a good comedy -- not a gimme piece of shit like Scary Movie or American Pie, but a good comedy, one that gets better with multiple viewings -- comes along very seldom.
Take a comedian and have him or her do a dramatic role, and you get Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson, Steve Martin, Jim Carrey, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear. Take a "serious" actor and have him or her do comedy, and you have Ishtar. It's much more difficult to transition from drama to comedy, which suggests that the former is easier to do.
If comedies are so easy to make, and if comic actors are dime a dozen, why are there so few good comedies, and so few "serious" actors who can be funny? Perhaps we should re-evaluate our value system, and when a brilliant comedy like Best in Show comes along, nominate it for Best Picture. Joaquin Phoenix was good in Gladiator, but was his performance superior to Fred Willard's in Best in Show?
I'll be posting my Oscar picks the Tuesday before Oscar Sunday. By then, you might come up with five good Julia Roberts movies. Right. And they'll make a sequel to Battlefield Earth.
By Greg Olear
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