And there we have it folks, the 95th Academy Awards are in the books. We have spent more time discussing this Oscar race than the last couple for reasons I'm not entirely certain why (I've been more vested in this race unexpectedly), and we weirdly are not going to leave it behind for long. I always pick the next OVP contest we profile based on whichever one we finish last, and unless something really strange happens in the next 24 hours, 2022 is going to bizarrely be the next movie to hit that milestone (I've never finished a year this quickly), so we could be into it as early as a month from now. But as is our tradition here, let's close out the initial run with a peak at the good, bad, and the complicated of last night's Oscars.
I'm going to start with the good both because it makes sense and also because the internet seems incapable of celebrating anything these days, and I want to recognize-the Oscars did a good job last night. Putting on an Oscar ceremony is hard...there's an expectation that you have to do something different, that you will have to strive for new viewers & create an ambience or world that's at once respecting tradition but in the process completely unique (i.e. impossible expectations). In the process, the Oscars oftentimes have felt the need to emulate the Tonys, the Grammys, or in the last couple of years, something truly unforgivable like Jimmy Fallon. So Jimmy Kimmel was smart to go back to what made the last Oscars heyday (the 1990's and early 2000's) so good. He delivered a crisp, gimmick-free monologue, one with some solid jokes (maybe a little heavy on the slap jokes, but you can forgive him on that one given that it was inevitable), and stayed relatively safe. Even the edgier jokes (like the ones about the recently deceased Robert Blake) were at least funny. Kimmel has been my favorite host since at least Ellen Degeneres, maybe even since the Steve/Billy/Whoopi years, and I'd be happy if he got the same number of opportunities as Whoopi or Billy did before his Oscar career is finished.
In terms of wins, my favorite (by far) was Sarah Polley because at that point, based on the All Quiet on the Western Front stampede (more on that in a second), I was worried she'd go down in a sweep, but thankfully Oscar gave one of our most innovative filmmakers a statue for a wonderful movie. And while it was not my favorite movie of the year, it's hard to begrudge the Everyone Everywhere All at Once crowd their trophies. Yeoh & Quan were excellent in their films, and while Jamie Lee Curtis has been better, it's hard to begrudge her this. She should be on her third or fourth nomination by now, and the reason she isn't is because her best work (Halloween, A Fish Called Wanda, True Lies, Freaky Friday) is in genres like action, comedy, & horror that Oscar shies away from...if you're going to give a career trophy, give it to someone who is severely under-rewarded. Plus, like, she's good in the movie even if she's not as good as some of her costars...this is a win that will age perfectly well.
In the past couple of years, to try and stabilize my mood & not constantly drown in worry or negativity, I have given myself permission to not have opinions on some things. I'm going to highlight three spots that the internet was mad about (or at least passionate about) that I honestly...don't really care one way or the other.
The first was The Little Mermaid trailer. Did I think it was a little tacky that ABC (owned by Disney) gave the Mouse House's single most important property of 2023 an in-ceremony plug? Yes. Does the cinematography & visual effects in the trailer look actively bad to the point where it looks like the movie is not finished yet? Yes. Do I understand that in order to get viewers, you do need to entice clicks on the internet, and arguably one of the most on-theme ways to do that would be to highlight movies viewers at home are super excited to see as we embark on the next year of movies? Yes, yes I do. I think if we make this a thing there might be less tacky ways to do it, but I'm not opposed to major releases for the next year (hopefully not just for Disney if we do this again) getting incorporated into the show if that means more conversation online and more people buying movie tickets.
The musical performances I was also a bit blasé about (with one exception-more in a second). I liked Rihanna & RRR's performances, and found enough camp in the David Byrne & Diane Warren performances to not hate them even if I'm not a fan of those songs. But I don't understand why they never seem to maximize the stage & production numbers in the same way that the Tonys or Grammys always seem to pull off. I'm not mad about it because I don't really tune into the Oscars for the musical numbers (though as a Rihanna stan, I was thrilled to see her singing anything after such a long absence), but it flummoxes me why the world's most talented visual artists don't know how to stage a production number.
The final one I don't care that much about-the In Memoriam. I have to come to terms that people will ALWAYS be mad about this one, and while there are performers on occasion who probably warrant this sort of exclusion (this year, I think Anne Heche getting skipped was a bad look, and Tom Sizemore was a weird miss), the internet naming people like Leslie Jordan and Cindy Williams, both of whom were FAR more important on television, as a grave sin the show committed, shows that no one will ever be satisfied on this. And the beautiful, sad ode a crying John Travolta made to Olivia Newton-John was incredibly memorable. I think the answer here has always been to only feature Academy members, as well as former nominees & winners, but until then, I'm just kind of tapping out on this one.
I talked up front about how Jimmy Kimmel did well, but the rest of the presenters were a bust. Hugh Grant & Julia Louis-Dreyfus aside (I liked both of their jokes), none of the presenters were very funny. I get that with someone like Harrison Ford (who was clearly thrown off having to read what was obviously a script intended for he & Glenn Close, the far more natural stage actor of the two, were going to run through for Best Picture before she dropped out due to Covid), but what about Melissa McCarthy? You make her go out there and sell The Little Mermaid and you couldn't have one of the most gifted comediennes in the movies do at least a little bit of banter with Halle Bailey? Come on now.
The one musical performance I'm not letting slide is Lady Gaga's. If you read this blog a lot, you'll probably be aware I have a complicated fandom with Gaga, but I'd like to remind you that I am generally into her music (or at least enough of it that I would consider myself a fan of her music) even if I don't like her acting. But that performance was ill-advised & poorly-constructed. It's clear that the rumors that she wasn't able to show up were, in fact, the truth and not a publicity stunt, given how horribly that was shot by the cameraman, and how badly that intro was planned. What was with this deeply emotional start (for the end credits song to an action film sequel?), and what was with the choice for a stripped down, Nirvana-esque performance from someone who was in full glamour mode just moments before, to the point where you could tell she'd just had her makeup hurriedly wiped off backstage? I'm not above a stunt, and Gaga does them better than most, but this one did not play well, and only the most ardent (or oblivious) of stans could say this was a win for her. Kudos, though, for at least showing up when Tom Cruise & James Cameron (who both were nominated and made an abject fortune off of moviegoers this past year) wouldn't (I loved Kimmel taking them to task for not being there).
The biggest misses, though, came in two films that won major statues. I try not to get too hung up on who did or didn't win (I can count on one hand how many of the films that won were the nominees that I personally would've chosen), but these movies were actively bad, and won at the expense of a LOT of better movies. The first was The Whale, winning Best Makeup for an unrealistic fat suit (we really are not past this Hollywood?) and for Brendan Fraser's performance in it. Fraser seems like a nice guy, but it has to be said before the season ends-he's not good in this movie, in fact he's bordering on awful, and he's not a competent enough actor otherwise (at least from what he's shown us in films) to get the benefit of the doubt here. Truly-his best work remains light action-adventure or comedy films like The Mummy and George of the Jungle, which isn't great acting so much as charismatic (and certainly nowhere near good enough for an Oscar citation). His work in The Whale was the worst performance nominated this year, in the worst film I saw in 2022. Given he's a straight actor in a body suit playing a gay, obese man who is treated like a leper his whole movie for no other reason than he's fat...this will age like milk, and Fraser's victory deserves to be named alongside George Arliss & Rami Malek's as one of the worst, most offensive wins in the history of Best Actor.
Finally, there's All Quiet on the Western Front, which got four Oscar statues. Unlike The Whale, because it won below-the-line categories, it's probably going to age fine (or at least fade into oblivion). But I have to say, this is a boring, lifeless movie that reads as almost a photo copy of the previous iterations of the story, except they added blood. Particularly given the opportunity to give a final statue to John Williams in Best Score or honor the first female cinematographer in Best Cinematography...it'd be one thing if All Quiet actually was good enough to win any of these statues, but since it wasn't, I'm bummed that Oscar didn't give us better television.
Two things stand out to me as complicated, and they are things that people are talking about on social media that I do have an opinion on, but probably one too nuanced for 280 characters. The first is the sweep. This is weird for younger Oscar viewers, who haven't really experienced a sweep in recent years because honestly the last proper one was in 2008 for Slumdog Millionaire. Everything Everywhere All at Once won more Oscars than any film since they expanded the Best Picture field. I kind of like a sweep-I think it's shorthand for Oscar putting its stamp truly on a year (it means they're really investing in it, for good or bad, as part of their legacy), but I'm also aware that this means that brilliant movies like Tar, The Banshees of Inisherin, and The Fabelmans go home empty-handed. I personally think a sweep on occasion is a good thing-it provides easy talking points to viewers, and it also underscores that there's another option to "spread the wealth." But I'm also bummed movies that I liked better didn't get more love.
The second one is the internet being angry about Jamie Lee Curtis beating Angela Bassett. I feel like what gets lost in this conversation is that Curtis, as we mentioned above, has spent her career largely being ignored by critical bodies despite being a very consistent actor. She is, surface-level, the daughter of Hollywood royalty (her parents are Golden Age icons and Oscar nominees themselves Janet Leigh & Tony Curtis), and yes, she got in the room in a way that Angela Bassett, the daughter of a single mother & social worker from St. Petersburg, Florida, could not. But calling this an easy victory for Curtis is negated by the fact that she's spent most of her career fighting to be treated seriously as a truly talented actor and not just with being a yogurt spokesmodel.
What is easier to be angry about with Bassett, though, is what her loss and career has meant. On the surface, I'm sorry, but I'm not buying either of these are GREAT performances (both of these women have been worse, both have been better, but without Oscar giving his stamp I doubt these movies would've been the headlines in these women's epitaph's). But Bassett losing underscores that, unlike Curtis who spent her career being one of the best performers in genres Oscar ignored (in very good movies), Bassett largely attempted to work in serious dramas & biopics that are Oscar's bread-and-butter. Films like Music of the Heart, Waiting to Exhale, and Akeelah and the Bee are the types of movies that Oscar sometimes pays attention to, but didn't give Bassett the time of day in them (and except for Exhale, aren't remembered in the same way that Curtis's work in something like Halloween or True Lies is). It also shows that Bassett, who coming out of What's Love Got to Do With It, should have had more roles like those bestowed upon women like Holly Hunter, Susan Sarandon, & Jodie Foster who were in major films at that time, did not get a career like that, primarily because of the color of her skin. Bassett joins a long list of Black women like Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, & Cicely Tyson who were clearly talented, but Hollywood wasn't willing to give a once-in-a-generation talent the kind of career she'd have been given as a white actress. Viola Davis is really the first Black actress to get the kind of career that women like Hunter, Sarandon, & Foster ended up with, and at 64, while Bassett could be back to the Dolby, her fans are aware that this could be it for an actress who had the talent to be the next Meryl Streep or Glenn Close...but not a Hollywood that was ready to let her prove it.
2 comments:
Love this article.
Anonymous-thank you!
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