help?
Open links in new window
Feedback?...
Movies I Wanna See! (UPDATED! Recently!)
LINKS AHOY!
SEARCH THE NET
MISC. KNOWLEDGE
G33KY 5+UFF
MISCELLANOUS
UMBC:
Homepage
Want your link here? All you have to do is
ask...
DVD/FILM 
![[Blue Ribbon Campaign- STOP CENSORSHIP!]](http://br.eff.org/brstrip.gif){kind=small}
Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!
Monday, March 24, 2003
Oscar wrap-up.
No need to give y'all a list of winners. Find that here: 2003 OSCAR Winners. Just a few of my thoughts...
I quite enjoyed this year's show. Steve Martin was an amiable, irreverent enough host. What made this one worthwhile for me was the numerous surprises...
Best Director: Roman Polanski! My guess: voters felt sympathetic toward him after some nasty old court papers were publicized, and swayed folks away from Martin Scorsece, who split the rest of the vote with Chicago's Rob Marshall. (Pity about Scorsece, but I have a feeling that his next project, Howard Hughes, Alexander the Great, the New York City Phonebook, whatever it is, will earn him the win. If not, heads could roll, and a conspiracy will be fairly certain.)
But that doesn't explain:
Best Actor, Adrien Brody, an even bigger shock for me, beating out the likes of Nicholson and Day-Lewis (who split their share of the vote too?) Brody's comments were classy and seemed genuinely heartfelt. Bravo, and good luck. Reading his imdb bio, I find that he was in the Disney baseball flick Angels in the Outfield. That's your fact of the day.
And the Pianist's other big honor, Best Adapted Screenplay. Wow, it beat out The Two Towers. Oh wait, the doofuses didn't nominate that. Anyway, this is another instance in which I'd love to compare all of the voting data. It's just so odd for Chicago to win the big one, and lose for director and screenplay. Must've been close.
Best Original Screenplay: Talk to Her. Honestly, despite my praise of this film, it would have been fourth or fifth if I had ranked the nominees in terms of how likely I thought they'd win. Maybe the Academy thought they were voting for MOST Original Screenplay. Anyhow, keep making movies your way, Señor Almodóvar.
Best Song: "Lose Yourself" by Eminem for 8 Mile. This only confirmed my suspicions that the Academy has gotten bored or somehow much younger, or both. It was somewhat deserving, but still a shock. (But if "Gollum's Song" were nominated and had lost, I'd be screaming bloody murder.) Too bad Mr. Mathers couldn't make it; that would have been a hoot and a half.
The biggest non-surprise was blowhard Michael Moore's rediculous screed when he accepted his Best Documentary [sic?] statue. He can have quite a brusque sense of humor, but any sense of dignity seems to be lacking. The resulting audience displeasure, despite the crowd's overwhelming liberal persuasion, was fairly obvious; Academy members don't like their ceremony mucked up with overt political rantings, it would seem. I wonder how a gung-ho pro-war statement would have carried over. I remember contemplating such an occurrence when Twin Towers won the next award, for best documentary short subject.
Thus endeth the recap. Next year, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King will win, period. End of discussion. No matter what- it simply must.
0 Comments:
_________________________________________________________Want more coagulated brilliance? (And who doesn't?) Then go to the archives and read the oldies to your heart's content. Don't like this blog? Click here to move on to another... Come on back now, ya hear?