Well, the Oscars have come and gone, and surprise surprise I forgot to write about them. I would have gotten to it sooner had the show not lasted three and a half weeks. So what did I think, you ask, about the glorious spectacle of pretension known as the Academy Awards? Glad you asked. I find the idea of Hollywood giving itself awards fairly ludicrous, seeing as Hollywood is a self-styled film industry, and you don’t see, say, pulp and paper mills giving themselves statuettes when someone writes a nice poem on some paper they made. But nonetheless, I always find myself a little giddy come Oscar time. I keep thinking that maybe for once they’ll pull a fast one on us and give Shaquille O’Neal like a life-time achievement award or something, like that time they thought that giving Mira Sorvino an Oscar would be a good idea. Boy, good ol’ Romy sure showed them. But sadly, they very rarely do stuff like that, and this year’s Oscars were full of the same old staid and predictable choices. You’ve got your obviously political choice, with Hillary Swank winning for the hate-crime movie Boys Don’t Cry, your snub to big-budget filmmaking, with Phantom Menace loosing all its technical awards, and of course the cave-in the popular opinion, with American Beauty winning pretty much everything, including several awards it wasn’t even nominated for. Thankfully, this year they ditched the interpretive dance segment (I still haven’t stopped laughing about the Saving Private Ryan tap-dance), although they didn’t ditch the equally irritating Billy Crystal. Maybe if he’d have shut his yap for five seconds and stopped making fun of how long the show was going to be, it wouldn’t have lasted till April. My opinion? Bring back Letterman as host. Sure, no one laughed, and in fact a few people cried, but what’s comedy without a few jokes about how funny Uma Thuman’s name is. Anyway, here’s what I thought about the nominees for Best Picture, because I’m sure you’re dying to know.
American Beauty
There’s nothing like statutory rape, masturbation, and drug use to guarantee an Oscar. Oh, wait... do I smell an ex-theatre director at the helm? That explains it.
The Green Mile
More clichés than a romance novel, plus a wanna-be tear-jerker ending that’ll only make you cry if you get saddened by sitcoms. I took a two hour nap in the middle and I still got bored.
The Insider
Mmm, the tobacco industry. Fascinating. Wake me up when it’s over and everyone’s stopped talking about it.
The Cider House Rules
I was bored by the title and it got worse from there.
The Sixth Sense
He sees dead people and I smell some serious Hollywood cheese.
So that’s that. What do I think should have won? Once again, I’m thrilled you asked. Here’s what I would have wanted to see win:
Best Picture: Sleepy Hollow
Script, shmipt, it had more blood than an abbatoire and Christina Ricci makes me feel funny.
Best Director: Sam Raimi, For Love of the Game
Yeah, well, so what if the movie sucks and Kevin Costner is the Anti-Christ. Sam did Evil Dead and it’s about time the Academy recognized his fine work in the zombie genre.
Best Actor: Robert DeNiro, for Bats.
I’m surprised the Academy didn’t recognize DeNiro for his performance as the hot-shot lawyer prosecuting a genetic engineering firm for the effects of bats on the Florida orange-growing industry, but he did a fine job.
Best Actress: Stacey Valentine, for Edward Penishands 2
I haven’t seen a performance like that since the Pamela Anderson-Tommy Lee video. Bravo.
So that’s that. Happy Easter, and may all your chocolate eggs be suitably full of guilty, Christ-on-the-cross-y goodness.
Ooh, looks like last week’s opinion piece ticked off a few hippies, and now they’re out for my blood. Is it just me, or do these beatnicks seem mighty violent for pacifist vegans? For the love of Easter, people, it’s not like I burned down a rainforest or something. I just thought I’d counter some of your eco-hippy bluster with some soap-box preaching of my own. And you know what? My babbling on about how useless vegetarians are, and how pretentious you anti-capitalists can be, all of that is worth exactly the same as some of the holier-than-thou sermonizing I hear around here... which is exactly jack squat. You want to impress me with your change the world, save the whales, murder the government preaching? Shut up and do something about it. Give the allowance daddy gives you to a homeless guy. Buy and acre of the rainforest with your Loeb paycheck. Sell you pager and donate to charity. Until then, you’re no better than me, and I’m slightly better looking.
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