Access Atlanta > Movies > Blog > Archives > 2007 > February > 26
Monday, February 26, 2007
Oscars: What a mess
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hollywood — My gal pal, Helen Mirren did the most sensible thing of anybody at the 79th annual Academy Awards. She brought a drink to the backstage print interview room. A vodka Gimlet to be exact.
Who could blame her. As the way-out-front best actress frontrunner for “The Queen,” if she had lost she would have been even more embarrassed than Eddie Murphy.
It was the first time in months that Mirren actually seemed like herself. I had grown tired of her latest performance - appreciative actress for all the various awards attention and jolly-good responsible Brit in the wake of portraying Queen Elizabeth II.
Oh, but to be an expected loser and be allowed to act normal at this ubercelebration. “Little Children” actress nominee Kate Winslet’s most memorable quote on the red carpet was to look back and give a little shout out to Helen McCrory (“The Queen”). Winslet intoned, ahem, “nice (mammaries)!”
After the red carpet, I sat backstage through the whole Oscar show mess - is it Thursday yet? It feels like it - and it feels like Hollywood is bombarding us with its idea of what we want even sometimes when we don’t want it.
I’m thankful that “The Departed” won best picture only because it is the only movie in the top five that had any real semblance of major public acceptance at the box office.
I’m thankful Forest Whitaker (“The Last King of Scotland”) and Jennifer Hudson (“Dreamgirls”) won because they deserved Hollywood’s highest honors.
But I heard dressed-up presenters call out movies as Oscar winners - like “Babel,” “Letters From Iwo Jima” - when they’ve had hardly any moviegoing attention at all.
For sure, I’ve heard the word that everyone’s repeated here over and over again — globalization.
“Cinema is the language of the world,” German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (“The Lives of Others”) spouted on the red carpet during a pre-show foreign-language film photo op.
Everybody talked of Mexican directors and a certain Japanese actress (nominee Rinko Kikuchi of “Babel”) and diversity and a smaller world.
Like former studio exec Sherry Lansing backstage at the ceremony: “We are becoming a global industry and if you become a global industry, then you appeal to everybody.”
That’s wonderful and it really is all good and great. The Mexican directors who were nominated in various categories - Guillermo del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth”), Alfonso Cuaron “Children of Men” and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (“Babel”) — are first-rate. But as my good “Die Hard” friend John McClane might say, “Welcome to the exploitation party, pal.”
Hollywood has a habit of latching onto trends and turning them inside out. Anybody remember 3-D?
A whole bunch of studios are going to want subtitles now, whether it’s integral to the story or not. “Anaconda: The Chase for the Scandinavian Pearl.” Why not?
And why is it that in its unpredictableness, the Oscar show is so easily predictable.
I didn’t put it in my Oscar picks, but I should have known the politically left-leaning academy would vote for Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Here’s what they think: Let’s send a message to the world. Doesn’t matter that the film they chose, no matter how important the message, is more of a science class than documentary as art.
But that’s what these Oscars are. They’re subjective. And the smartest thing the academy does is that they put themselves on the highest pedestal.
They make the event hard to get into. They make just about everybody who comes wear a gown or a tux. They ignore the concept of a time limit (this show went well past midnight). And, except for a token category here and there, they snub their collective noses at the movies everybody goes to see: “Casino Royale,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” and “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.”
It’s enough to make anybody ask Helen Mirren for a sip of her drink.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Alan Smithee
View from behind the scenes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hollywood — The Oscars are about glamour and egos, box office, talent and hoping everyone cares you were there. Here’s my esteemed, if not profoundly perceptive, view from the red carpet and behind the scenes:
Jennifer Hudson wore multiple dresses at the Oscars, the last one being a gold dress in the interview room that shimmered as much as her best supporting actress trophy. Post-Oscars, she said she was heading to the Vanity Fair party and the Governor’s Ball but that she wouldn’t be out too late. At her hotel, she said she planned “to sit down and enjoy it myself.” And like most celebrities, she heard strange questions tossed her way. Like: What advice did she have for Britney Spears? “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said about reports involving Spears’ life, “and it ain’t my business.”
Kissing and telling
Best song winner Melissa Etheridge kissed her life partner and even backstage proclaimed the Oscars as a kind of “gay holiday.”
“It’s really meaningful that with Ellen [DeGeneres] or myself, there’s no token gay. There’s a whole mix of lots of kinds of diversity here.” Asked where she might place her new keepsake, she held her golden boy statuette in the interview room and said, “This is the only naked man that will be in my bedroom.”
My kind of girl:
Helen Mirren strolled into the print interview room flush from a best actress victory for “The Queen” and a couple of sips of alcohol. She was the only victor I saw who toted a drink backstage. A vodka Gimlet, she announced ever so regally to the inquiring press. She was gracious, kind and even rather queenly. But the seasoned actress with the skys-the-limit year (Emmys, Golden Globes and all sorts of awards falling from above) still knows how to halt a rather off-target press question. Asked if she thought her phone might ring with congratulations from the real-life Queen Elizabeth, Mirren chuckled and got right to the point: Im not expecting a call from Her Majesty. Not ever.
My kind of guy:
The night’s mild surprise winner, Alan Arkin for best supporting actor (“Little Miss Sunshine”) helped place the evening in perspective. The 72-year-old actor arrived in the interview room to a gaggle of reporters holding up numbered cards (the manner in which they are chosen by an academy staffer to ask questions). Arkin gazed at the sea of cards and said, “What? Are we auctioning something?” He was asked whether he thought the broad comedy “Norbit” might have created a problem for expected winner Eddie Murphy (“Dreamgirls”). “I don’t believe in furlongs,” he said. “I feel somewhat like a hypocrite. I don’t believe in competition with artists. This is insane.” A portion of his assessment as to why he won: “Everybody thinks I’m going to keel over, and they wanted to give me an award (before I go).”
The 20th time’s the charm?
This is graciousness and victory? The triumphant “Dreamgirls” sound-mixing team made Kevin O’Connell, a nominee for “Apocalypto” in that category, a 19-time loser. That’s right. O’Connell has been nominated a lot more years than that screaming Little Miss Sunshine, little Miss Abigail Breslin, has been alive. And O’Connell has never won. Backstage, the winners had encouraging words for O’Connell, saying he’ll have his due one day. Guess he needs to try an itty-bitty bit harder next time.
She knew him when
Longtime producer and movie mogul Sherry Lansing didn’t know until Sunday night who was going to present her with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award — until she saw her beloved Tom Cruise onstage.
“I didn’t see Tom through all the pre-events, so I was sure it wasn’t him.” She saw him at a party and said he was even cold to her. So what was that secret he whispered to her onstage? Lansing says Cruise said: “This is an honor I really wanted to do and when I saw you at the party, I couldn’t say anything.” She says getting the award from him was an “emotional” moment. “I knew him when he was 19 years old. It brought back a flood of memories, going back to ‘Taps.’ “
At least she didn’t say “Cocktail.”
An animated winner
It’s always about the one you are with: Here’s Aussie name-dropper George Miller, the animated film winner for “Happy Feet,” playing footsie with the well-known.
“I didn’t expect to win” sitting next to John Lasseter (of Pixar’s “Cars”), he said. He also got to be photographed with Cameron Diaz, a moment he described as “really nice. [Only] when I’m standing next to George Clooney do I feel the intensity of the cameras like that.”
(BTW, Atlanta’s Giant Studios did the motion-capturing for “Happy Feet.”)
Red-carpet emissions test
Some stars can work the pre-Oscar red carpet. Some can’t. And some seem to be too stuckup. Here’s a rundown:
Pass: Will Smith. The man knows how to work a crowd. He points to fans in the grandstand. He smiles. He jokes.
Fail: Cameron Diaz. She ambled by the print press like she was at a beauty contest, waving and smiling — but refusing to stop and speak. We know Justin Timberlake is coping just fine.
Pass: John Travolta. Like always, he held a wide smile and looked happy to be talking, talking and talking.
Fail: Sally Kirkland. Who? Well, she’s a long-ago Oscar nominee, but now she just goes all weirdo to get attention. She shouted and twirled like a tornado in her yellow-orange-red-blue throw-up gown.
Pass: Jackie Earle Haley. How could anyone not celebrate with the first-time supporting actor nominee. He was ecstatic. “I feel awesome, weird. Nervous and happy.” Mind you, this was just an hour or so before he lost.
The First Shall Be Last
I wanted to note the first celebrity on the red carpet — and no, I’m not referring to entertainment “journalists” Mark McGrath, Pat O’Brien, Melissa Rivers or Mary Hart, who all hung out for a time to be noticed. Doug Jones (“Pan’s Labyrinth”), who plays two of the film’s charming and alarming creatures, was first in line to be interviewed. Hours later, he could still be seen in line talking to reporters, long after bigger stars had passed by.
My Favorite Red-Carpet Moment
Shouting, “Peter, you da man!” to faraway Peter O’Toole. My reward: a smile and a wink.
Permalink | | Categories: Alan Smithee
