Oscars 2013: The Morning After

As you must know by now, the ceremony was deemed sexist, racist and offensive by a lot of people.  For the most part, it was.

I’m loath to join the "can’t take a joke" bandwagon. What offends me the most is that Seth McFarlane’s humor was petty and mean spirited. It was vulgar, lowly TV humor, rather than something fit for the ocassion. He tried to be too Hollywood with snide, unfunny inside jokes. As Captain Kirk said, intending to be ironic, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler should host everything. Ain’t that the emess.

When you watch a ceremony live, you want to like what you are seeing. It takes a while for the smarm to sink in. That was the case with that stupid boob song. The more I think about it, the more inane and inappropriate it seems. That stupid bear talking shit about Jews was immediately appalling and really unfit for an audience of billions (who probably already believe in a Jewish conspiracy anyway). Using a little girl to joke about George Clooney's sex life, sleazy.  

There were some highlights. Mostly provided by women.

I know I have tirelessly campaigned for the excision of musical numbers from the show, but Shirley Bassey belting Goldfinger was one of the greatest highlights of all time.  So was the inimitable Babs singing  The Way We Were and looking younger by the minute. The evening got off to a lovely start with Charlize Theron expertly dancing with Channing Tatum a la Ginger and Fred. These were the only moments with class. The rest was humor devised and intended for that famous demographic so coveted by Hollywood, 15 year-old males. At least the suits got a taste of their own medicine.

For a four hour ceremony, there were too many irrelevant moments. I love William Shatner, but he is beyond irrelevant. The Oscars are not about TV, they are about the movies.  But we are in an age of small screens, so this is what we get. Smallness. 

Chicago? Whatever the fuck? Utterly irrelevant.

The singing cast of Les Miserables was a giant clusterfuck, just like that movie: a supernova of dreck.

The obits were the best part, as usual, but us Latinos are extremely pissed that Lupe Ontiveros, the quintessential Latina maid, was snubbed. We won’t forget.

There were some righteous wins. Anne Hathaway’s was not one of them. But Ang Lee’s was,  so was Tarantino’s, so was Amour, so was Jennifer Lawrence. The best supporting actor category was a tough one, and Waltz was as right to get it as any of his peers. Daniel Day Lewis once again comported himself like the King of Class. He happens to have a sense of humor, plus nobody wears a tux like him.  

If there was justice in the world, Beasts Of The Southern Wild was utterly ignored and so was Zero Dark Thirty. They are simply bad movies. Is Argo a Best Picture? No. That award should have gone to either Django Unchained or Amour, which is at another level of artistry altogether. But well crafted, competent Argo won because it is about Hollywood. They love nothing better than self-congratulation.

Jimmy Fallon would have been a delightful host. Michelle Obama dancing with Fallon to advocate against obesity, ultra cool. The White House getting in bed with Hollywood in such an overt fashion, reeks of starfucking from the Presidency and is totally tasteless, inappropriate and wrong. I’m secretly enjoying whatever fallout is happening in the White House over this ridiculous decision that got her, who has done no wrong so far, associated with a sexist, racist and offensive telecast. 

Dress-wise: Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence and Robin Roberts were stunning. Everybody else looked like a chandelier from Vegas crashed on top of them.

See you next year. 

Golden Globes 2013 Post Mortem

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler ruled. They were funny and charming and we love them. They were totally awesome and better than any male host in a loooooong time. Seth McFarlane may be toast.
The best gag of the night was the channeling of show biz cluelessness by Kirsten Wiig and Will Ferrell when reading the supporting actress category. That was hysterical.
Jessica Chastain wore the bed sheets of the Beverly Hilton. She almost did a Sally Field there with her speech about how hard she has worked. Spare me. Then she talked about defying convention when what she did in that movie is the most conventional stuff: I'm the relentless hero who will stop at nothing to get Osama Bin Laden. Get over yourself. There was nothing original about your character nor the way you played her.
Which reminds me, very few actors (these ceremonies just go to show the kind of narcissistic nutjobs most of them are) know how to be gracious when giving a speech. Hence, best acceptance speech of the night, Daniel Day Lewis, using metaphors about bringing mice to his wife, being faux humble (but believable) towards his fellow nominees, smartly avoiding politics and generally campaigning to get the Oscar by dint of sheer classiness. What he said about Tony Kushner's words was so eloquent....
Ben Affleck too, sweet, smart, mentioning the troops. He should run for office.
Adele was the best. Natural, funny, sincere and delightful.
Everybody else reeked. I'm talkin' to you, Anne Hathaway, trying to pull off a Meryl Streep, in adoration of your fellow female thespians, but I ain't buying it. Like I do not buy that poor Zooey Deschanel was an inspiration in any way, shape or form to Lena Dunham ever. It was gracious, if totally fake of Dunham to include her. Dunham, who looked like a giant Hershey's kiss, should wear comfy shoes next time. I like that she has not yet hired a personal trainer.
At this moment I must interject that I do not give a rat's ass about any of the TV shows. I know it is gauche, and considered totally unhip for me not to be obsessing about television with the rest of you, and I still don't give a fuck. I'll let you gasp, to paraphrase Christoph Waltz: I don't have cable. I only like 30 Rock.
Now, Anne Hathaway at least gets props for articulation, for rehearsing her little speech, committing it to memory and nailing it, something that Jodie Foster, WHO KNEW MONTHS IN ADVANCE she was going to have to stand there and not be cut off by music, could not muster.
What the hell was that? This is my biggest beef with her "coming out/not coming out in front of y'all" extravaganza. She is an actress. She is used to learning lines. She knew she was getting this trophy. It would have had more impact (in the right way), would have been much more dignified and meaningful, if she had decided not to wing it. I have always thought of Foster as an intelligent actress, but she was inordinately aggressive, full of herself and gynormously obnoxious. Obviously, she is still very conflicted about this topic, which she has every right to be. But she had an opportunity to impart some classy words of wisdom and instead she sounded like someone's batty aunt on coke. With all due respect, it was a little bit like Clint Eastwood talking to the chair. And Mel Gibson's bewildered punim... the face that launched a thousand gifs.
As I have said before, anybody who gives any sort of prize to the catastrophe that is Les Miserables, must be deaf and blind. Someone is drinking some very potent kool-aid with this attempt at alternate reality. This movie is absolutely dreadful. I want to understand why it is being celebrated. It's based on an old, dreary musical, based on an even older novel about a revolution that no one cared about. What is going on?
Argo as best film was an interesting upset. I think Lincoln is still going to sweep the Oscars. Which made me wonder about the mysterious, inscrutable ways of the HFPA. Maybe Lincoln is too "hurray for the USA" for the aliens that run that racket. Maybe they just love George Clooney (producer) too much. Who knows. But that was interesting. And in defense of this show: it is more fun than the Oscars, but less involuntarily hilarious. And it sometimes recognizes the work of people that the Oscars don't. Like Jack Black or Ewan McGregor or Marion Cotillard, or other people who were ignored by the Academy. There are no musical numbers and no songs, thank God, and it feels less bloated and self-important. Plus everyone in it is, at the very least, tipsy.

It's The Makeup, Stupid

Here are some of my thoughts on why it is very possible that Daniel Day Lewis will be nominated for an Oscar for Lincoln, whereas Anthony Hopkins, also delivering a flawless performance in Hitchcock, may not.
Enjoy!

Lincoln

Watching Steven Spielberg's film about Abraham Lincoln's political maneuverings to pass the amendment to abolish slavery, I was struck mostly by the sly and open resonance with our current times that screenwriter Tony Kushner achieves as he portrays this specific episode in Lincoln's life.
The movie opens to scenes of Civil War carnage. Steven Spielberg stages a writhing field of brutal violence where Americans fight against each other not only with firearms and blades but with their bare hands. 600,000 Americans died in this bloody conflict, which was, ultimately, about the moral essence of the country. One cannot help but ponder, whether in our day and age, now that the ideological differences of the two main political parties stand in greater contrast than they ever have (even if their allegiance to corporate interests is basically the same), if we will not reach a stage in which we may go literally to war over the kind of country we are meant to be. I personally am rooting for New York City to secede, and to hell with the red states. There is no small irony in the fact that Abraham Lincoln belongs to the Republican party and that the Democrats are the villains in this story. We should thank providence for TV and the internet, which keep enough of us numbed and misinformed, and mostly disinclined to violently eliminate the other side, even as they help raise the cacophony of mutual incomprehension.
Lincoln is a rich, intelligent history lesson on how change is achieved through politics, how compromises and negotiation are necessary in order to make giant strides. Kushner gives President Lincoln a free pass in trying to buy congressmen off in order to pass his amendment. By any means necessary is nice and even humorous when the end is lofty, but I'm afraid that's not how it works the other way around. This resonance applies to Barack Obama and the way in which he has tried, with various degrees of middling success, to make some changes himself. Obama is no Lincoln. No one is. My sense is that Kushner is instructing him to take a lead from Lincoln's playbook and slyly, whether by moving oratory or skillful maneuvering, enact the reforms that need to get enacted.

Spielberg directs the very wordy, literate material with his customary emotional force and splashes of comic relief; some of it a tad broad, if welcome. He frames Kushner's barrage of language with elegance and restraint, and keeps it moving along, slowly but surely. In this he is aided by an enormous performance by Daniel Day Lewis, who at this point is alone in his niche of playing greater than life characters by making them greater than life. To become Abraham Lincoln (he looks uncannily like him), he brings out his entire arsenal of acting wherewithal. The lumbering gait, the schlumpy clothes, a high pitched voice with a hypnotic musical cadence and what I imagine is a perfect Midwestern accent of the times. But as he fusses over the technical aspects, Day Lewis also provides a lively, sexy intelligence and emotional power in the soul of the character. His Lincoln likes to tell stories, has a folksy sense of humor, which he deploys to disarm, quotes easily from Shakespeare, thinks like a lawyer, is a good listener, asks people questions, and is warm and open, yet distant and inscrutable at the same time. Day Lewis is utterly convincing, compelling, and heroic. Thanks to this performance millions of people will develop a huge crush on Abraham Lincoln. He brings to pulsing life what nobody is ever going to bother reading in a wikipedia entry, much less in a history book. If I have one qualm, is that I would have liked to see something less avuncular, more flinty about him, but it is a towering achievement.
The cast is superb. Tommy Lee Jones kills as Thaddeus Stevens, the formidable anti-slavery advocate. He has some great lines to utter and he does it with precision and relish (I predict supporting actor Oscar nom). Sally Field is great as Mary Lincoln. I know people like her. She's a depressive, intelligent, intense woman with not a small chip on her shoulder at having to sit on the sidelines of history. Who is not happy to see James Spader, John Hawkes, Lee Pace, Tim Blake Nelson, Jackie Earle Haley, Jared Harris, Michael Stuhlbarg, and a bunch of other whiskered, wonderful character actors nail their roles? Women too: Gloria Reuben, Julie White, Elizabeth Marvel, S. Epatha Merkerson). It's a character actor dream cast.
Spielberg only veers into the maudlin fitfully. Soldiers reciting the Gettysburg Address to President Lincoln seems a bit ham handed at the beginning, but then the movie thankfully settles into political strategizing. The epic music by John Williams stirs the feelings of righteousness in the audience, but it's a bit too obvious in moments of levity. There is strained, unconvincing business about father and sons. Lincoln's young son is mostly there as a symbolic presence. His older son, played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, insists on going to war, even as he is confronted, in a wonderfully staged scene, with a cartload of severed limbs. In this instance, the political seems far more interesting than the personal.
The movie builds very slowly with rich and copious detail, painting a panorama of the historical moment, but by the time the vote comes to be passed, Spielberg stages it with great verve and tension. It's a cliffhanger.
I think it curious that Kushner and Spielberg refrain from showing Lincoln's assassination (I guess they don't want to give anybody ideas). But there is a scene where they tease the audience with it, which I don't think works. I am not an advocate of violence in movies, and there is no shortage of the violent face of war in this film, but violence is a particularly American predilection, and this demureness, although dignified, takes away from the political historical resonance that Kushner so skillfully embroiders. The murder of president Lincoln doesn't come as a shock, as it should; it comes as an afterthought. However, the characterization of Lincoln is so magnificent that it makes his assassination horribly tragic to contemplate, as close to the bone as when it has happened in more recent times to political figures like Martin Luther King or the Kennedys.

In the end, as we watch Lincoln, we cannot help but think that we just inaugurated a Black president's second term. Abraham Lincoln would be pleased. But this movie smartly avoids self-congratulation. In one scene, after the amendment is passed, Lincoln asks a Black woman if her people are ready for what is to come. He knows racial harmony is nowhere in sight. I did not understand her verbose response, but it is the question which we should ask ourselves again and again. Are we ready for what our rights and freedoms really mean, for keeping them, and defending them from those who hate them?
One cannot help but think after watching the thrilling crescendo of the results of the actual passage of the 13th Amendment, that it wasn't until the 1960s that Americans had to rise again to fight the deeply enduring racism of the South, and that even today we have racist taunts at our president and a society that still oppresses and profits unconscionably from Black, and now brown people, by sending them to jail in appalling numbers. Abraham Lincoln's work is not finished.