MADness—the Blog

There’s not much to say about the show.  The two hosts, Martin and Baldwin, hardly did anything to make the night memorable.  I remember reading stories about Billy Crystal when he was hosting—there’d be four or five months of tireless preparation that went into the show, especially the opening act.  It showed.  It was funny.  Something to remember.  I suppose they don’t do that anymore.

But we’re not tuning in for the show anyway, right?  There are the awards!

The big winner, I was glad to see, was The Hurt Locker, winning Best Picture, Best Director, and six Oscars altogether.  I have lost track of the times I’ve been disappointed at the end of an Oscar show, so it’s gratifying to see the Academy do the right thing.

Tom Hanks, oddly, didn’t read the ten nominees.  Was that intentional, or did he forget?  Or was I nodding?  One other oddity:  the reading of the prize winners was not consistent.  Kate Winslet’s “…and the Oscar goes to…” was a contrast to the reading of other presenters, ”…and the winner is….”  Which is it these days?

The final tally:

6 — The Hurt Locker (Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing)
3 — Avatar (Cinematography, Art Direction, Visual Effects)
2 — Precious (Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay)
2 — Up (Animated Feature, Score)
2 — Crazy Heart (Actor, Song)
1 — The Blind Side (Actress)
1 — Inglourious Basterds (Supporting Actor)
1 — Star Trek (Makeup)
1 — The Young Victoria (Costume Design)
1 — El Secreto de Sus Ojos (Foreign-language Film)
1 — The Cove (Documentary Feature)
1 — Music by Prudence (Documentary Short)
1 — Longarama (Animated Short)
1 — The New Tenants (Live-action Short)

For what it’s worth (not a lot, actually), I was 16 of 24 on my predictions.

On the first day of the year—also the first day of this blog—I said not to expect a list of my Top 10 Movies of 2009.  I’m not one to go back on my word, but in the interest of looking one more time at films from last year—and today is a good day for that—I’ve put together a list of the five films of 2009 that I found to be the most enjoyable.

1. The Hurt Locker
   A movie that is topical, engaging, and leaves you with plenty to think about is the kind of movie that I especially enjoy.  The Hurt Locker had that in spades.  Best movie of the year, and the most enjoyable too.
2. District 9
   The sci-fi genre is hardly among my favorites.  I like movies that are human-scale.  When the fate of the world hangs in the balance, I tend to yawn.  When the ultimate, epic battle of good vs. evil is unleashed on the screen in all its CGI splendor, I tend to look at my watch hoping it’ll all be over soon.  But every so often there’s a sci-fi film that transcends the genre, and this past year District 9 was that film.  Like the great sci-fi classics of the past, it’s not about effects and action.  It’s about human beings living through difficult circumstances.  It’s a smart film with lots to offer for thinking people and enough of an adrenaline rush for the fanboys.  It will be remembered long, long after all the fuss about Avatar has died down.
3. In the Loop
   A satire with a political edge that’s spot on.  It’s the rare English-language film that might have been helped by subtitles, but I just wish that American films could be this kind of funny.
4. Inglourious Basterds
   I went into the theater expecting to be disappointed.  What I’d read about the film was less than glowing, and I was finding Tarantino less interesting with every movie he made.  But the movie had me hooked in the first scene and never let go.  The plot is so far over the line you almost have to admire the audacity.  I’m not sure that I look back fondly on some parts of it, but I sure did enjoy the hell out of it.
5. Up
   The Carl & Ellie sequence is one for the ages, and the rest of the film is quite good too.  I hope not to sound too much like an old fart to say I’m glad they’re still making movies that I can see at the theater with my four-year-old son and have us both enjoy the experience.

The Hurt Locker won six BAFTA Awards last night in London.  The acting honors, no surprise (and with no argument), went to two Brits.  Here is a rundown of the major prizes:

Best Film — The Hurt Locker
Best Director — Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Outstanding British Film — Fish Tank, Kees Kasander, Nick Laws, Andrea Arnold
Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer — Duncan Jones (Director), Moon
Best Leading Actor — Colin Firth, A Single Man
Best Leading Actress — Carey Mulligan, An Education
Best Supporting Actor — Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Best Supporting Actress — Mo’Nique, Precious
Best Original Screenplay — The Hurt Locker, Mark Boal
Best Adapted Screenplay — Up in the Air, Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner
Best Animated Film — Up, Pete Docter
Best Film Not in English Language — A Prophet, Pascal Caucheteux, Marco Cherqui, Alix Raynaud, Jacques Audiard

Avatar won two awards, for production design and visual effects.

Notable line of the night was from Colin Firth:

Firth drew laughs by thanking “the fridge guy” in his acceptance speech, that being the refrigerator repairman who knocked on his door just as he was about to shoot an e-mail to director Tom Ford declining the role of a bereaved gay professor.

“All I know is, don’t ever press ‘send’ until you have had your fridge repaired,” Firth said.

 A recap of awards handed out earlier in the season is here.

Hendrik Hertzberg has this week’s Comment at the New Yorker with an interesting piece on the new voting procedures for Best Picture.

To forestall a victory for some cinematic George Wallace or Ross Perot, the Academy switched to a different system. Members—there are around fifty-eight hundred of them—are being asked to rank their choices from one to ten. In the unlikely event that a picture gets an outright majority of first-choice votes, the counting’s over. If not, the last-place finisher is dropped and its voters’ second choices are distributed among the movies still in the running. If there’s still no majority, the second-to-last-place finisher gets eliminated, and its voters’ second (or third) choices are counted. And so on, until one of the nominees goes over fifty per cent.

What’s it all mean?  It means we need to bring back the Electoral College!  (Oops.  That’s a different sort of voting.)  It means the Academy system now favors a consensus pick for Best Picture and with Avatar a more polarizing film than The Hurt Locker, the Iraq War drama should have at least one edge to counter the many other advantages the sci-fi flick has going for it.  That’s what Hertzberg thinks. 

Me?  I dunno, really, but I’m willing to believe anything that gives the advantage to what I think is the movie of the year.  I don’t get to vote, but because of the mighty clout this website has with thousands of Academy members, I’m throwing my full support behind the Kathryn Bigelow film.  C’mon, folks, vote The Hurt Locker!  Even if you don’t make it your first choice, make it your second.  That ain’t so hard, is it?

I believe it’s a mistake to think The Hurt Locker is apolitical, as A.O. Scott does, because it doesn’t ostensibly take sides on whether we should or shouldn’t be in Iraq.  The film, as I’ve said before, offers a better—and more damning—explanation of the reasons for the war than hours of political debate ever would.

I don’t imagine this will get Streep and Bullock disinvited to any Good Morning America appearances.

In other news, another best pic award for The Hurt Locker.  It’s feeling to me like the film of the year come Oscar time.