After Oscar 2008

Well, I was wrong in 5 categories in last night's Academy Awards telecast. I took a couple of stabs in the dark regarding Best Foreign Film and Documentary Feature and ... lost. Here's some thoughts I scribbled down while watching this interminable mess:

* Hugh Jackman's hosting duties were the equivalent of flat ginger ale; a few bubbles and fizz and then ... blah. His opening song and dance was an embarrassment. A badly thought out production using the bad economic times as an excuse for cardboard High School musical sets. Meanwhile, the fool is prancing about on a stage at the Kodak Theater that is festooned with jewel-like lights and a mirrored stage that must have cost the producers a king's ransom. I could not understand his mangled pronunciation of the lyrics in his heavy Australian accent and the Milk song was a tasteless cringe-worthy moment with Jackman standing on a soapbox screaming into a bull horn, "I WANT MILK!!" Egads. Then he sits in Frank Langella's lap asking for a kiss. Kill me. I'll admit I saw Jackman in his Broadway show The Boy from Oz a few years back and he was quite entertaining. I could see him trying to use all the schtick from that show (ad-libbing, talking to the audience) in this production number. In the context of the musical it was enjoyable, here on TV last night, I wanted to run from the room. He seemed to be trying so so so hard to please.

* The malfunction with the curtain before the first award and the sound of the set crew getting agitated. Fantastic omen of the oncoming mess.

* The strange witch-like coven meeting to introduce each acting nominee by prior nominees. It seemed interesting at first, but grew weird and tiresome. I got a cold sweat when Shirley MacLaine talked about Anne Hathaway. Brrr ... bad vibes. Please go back to the traditional nominee list read ... clips ... and presentation.

* Steve Martin and Tina Fey's screenplay award presentation verbal by play = Great. Their comic timing and succinct mastery of being funny without being "Hollywood". Question: Why can these two people be so good, but participate in the most unfunny movie, namely Baby Mama, this past year?

* I liked the inclusion of the technical awards, art direction, costumes, etc. in one sweep by two presenters. It was classy and quick.

* The salute to musical films that was heralded by Jackman as being evidence that musicals were back? Not after that display, Hugh. It was clunky and harsh on the ears. Watching Hugh awkwardly dip Beyonce in her tights and top hat was laughable. They were so mismatched as a dancing couple. Then we get Zac Efron and his HSM 3 paramour and the couple from Mamma Mia! It was a confusingly choreographed mess with some kind of drum majorettes in top hats and tails standing atop a stairway in ominous shadow. Credit to this danse macabre was given to Baz Luhrman. Baz, you gave me a headache with Moulin Rouge, thanks for the migraine relapse.

* Speaking of noise, the Best Song presentation was another mess of sound and dancing. Two songs from Slumdog Millionaire were presented with a song from WALL-E jammed in like bad luncheon meat between two pieces of Indian Nan Bread. A.R.Rahmen stood here in a Nehru Jacket and just kept blaring out sounds in a very catatonic manner while people gyrated around him in colorful garb. Maybe they should just drop the Best Song category. It gets worse every year.

* Jerry Lewis was terse, polite and very gracious. Big surprise. He looked ill and really old.

* Speaking of old ... Sophia Loren must get a grip on herself. You are not 25 yrs old anymore. With her one hand on her hip and this teased reddish fright wig and big tinted 8 1/2 eyeglasses, she made me gasp. Same goes to Goldie Hawn. You were once young, cute as a button and sexy. You are not on Laugh-In anymore, Goldie. Trying to look 40 years younger is to be Laughed At.

* Worst moment? The IN MEMORIAM piece that is done each year to honor those in entertainment that have passed away. Whoever thought of having Queen Latifah warble "I'll Be Seeing You" like a lounge act, while the faces and names of those who died were shown on a huge screen, is an idiot and actually defiled the moment for the audience. Do they know millions and millions of people are watching this at home on TV? We need to see the presentation, not have the cameraman from Quantum of Solace film zooming and weaving around the giant stage screen. Ridiculous and insulting. Show the faces and names on our TV screens with some somber orchestral music, like you always have done, dim the lights and go to commercial.

* Otherwise, I liked the speeches by the winners in the acting categories and loved the Japanese animator of a French Animated Short who kept saying "Sank you ... sank you" and then recited a line from a Styx song. Brilliant. And I would have loved Werner Herzog to take home the Best Documentary Award for his brilliant Encounters at the End of the World. If only I could have heard that voice thanking the academy.

2008 Oscar Winner Predictions

Best Picture -
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE



Best Director -
DANNY BOYLE - Slumdog Millionaire



Best Actor -
SEAN PENN - Milk



Best Actress -
KATE WINSLET - The Reader



Best Supporting Actor -
HEATH LEDGER - The Dark Knight



Best Supporting Actress -
PENELOPE CRUZ - Vicky Cristina Barcelona



Best Original Screenplay -
DUSTIN LANCE BLACK - Milk



Best Adapted Screenplay -
SIMON BEAUFOY - Slumdog Millionaire



Best Foreign Language Film -
THE CLASS - France



Best Animated Film -
WALL-E



Best Editing -
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE



Best Cinematography -
ANTHONY DOD MANTLE - Slumdog Millionaire



Best Art Direction -
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON



Best Original Score -
A.R. RAHMAN - Slumdog Millionaire



Best Original Song -
JAI HO - Slumdog Millionaire



Best Costumes -
THE DUCHESS



Best Makeup -
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON



Best Sound Editing -
THE DARK KNIGHT



Best Sound Mixing -
THE DARK KNIGHT



Best Visual Effects -
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON



Best Documentary Feature -
TROUBLE THE WATER



Best Documentary Short Subject -
THE WITNESS - FROM THE BALCONY OF ROOM 306



Best Animated Short Film -
PRESTO



Best Live Action Short -
SPIELZEUGLAND (Toyland)



And I predict that the
Jean Hersholt Award Honoree
JERRY LEWIS
will be extremely rude and/or long winded
when accepting his award.

Oscar Winning Best Actors of the '60s: 1961

Winner: MAXIMILIAN SCHELL - Judgment at Nuremberg

other nominees:

__________

Charles Boyer - Fanny

Paul Newman - The Hustler

Spencer Tracy - Judgment at Nuremberg

Stuart Whitman - The Mark

Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg is one of those big important issue pictures that started to become prevalent in the late 1950s and into the 1960s. It has an all-star cast headed by an aged Spencer Tracy as a judge presiding over the international trial of four German judges that handed down indictments of victims of the Fourth Reich. From reading, I have understood that this was originally a television drama that Kramer transformed into this mammoth 3 hour plus movie. Surprisingly, it has an overture and exit music, but no intermission. It is a static affair filled with histrionics, crying, blustering speechifying and crying for attention supporting roles by Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland. This film, supposedly, began the practice of Academy voters nominating "usual" head-liners in supporting categories. This enraged Hollywood gossip columnists, like Hedda Hopper, who thought it was an insult to allow a "star" to be thought of as a supporting player. Today, of course, it is common place and usually means a sure-fire win in that secondary category for the "star".

The star who, ironically, won the statuette for Best Actor this year was an actor who was not so known by American audiences at the time. Austrian born actor Maximilian Schell plays Hans Rolfe the German lawyer representing four judges who over saw the indictments of victims of the Fourth Reich. Schell had performed this role once before in the 1959 Playhouse 90 television production and was selected by Kramer to reprise his role several years later. Schell does an admirable job and you do pay a lot of attention to him when he is on screen. He poses an impressive figure; bold personality, strident voice and good looking dark features. His role is an odd one to honor in this category only because he plays a man who could be seen as a sort of villain. He is a man who strongly believes in the innocence of the men who allowed many to be sterilized, executed and sent to concentration camps for acts such as fraternizing with Jews and not being able to pass intelligent tests by the German officials. He believes in the duty of men to support the law of a land ... even if that law is unsound. However, Schell's Rolfe is a complex character; an honorable man who does not want his country to be thought of as entirely evil and corrupt; that there is still good there and these men were forced to do their duty whether sound or unsound. The opposing view, voiced by the usual blustering acting of Richard Widmark as the American military Captain in charge of the prosecution, is that evil acts should not be allowed whether they are law or not; evil should be stood up to and challenged. Schell poses a very good defense but ultimately loses, as we know from history and from the confession of guilt by one of his clients, that he admires greatly, played by Burt Lancaster (the winner of the previous year's Best Actor Oscar). He plays a learned renown German judge and professor of law who we find out hated the Fuhrer and all he stood for, yet upheld the edicts this monster and his Nazi officials had enacted into the law of the land.

Why did Schell win the prize? Good question. I found him adequate; he even has a spotlighted full-blown yelling to the rafters speech in the courtroom toward the conclusion ... pure Oscar bait. The film, though, dealt mostly with Spencer Tracy's role as presiding judge and his relationship with a German widow played by Marlene Dietrich. We spend almost the entire film with Tracy and his observations of German post-War life. Tracy was, indeed, nominated for Best Actor, but lost to Schell. And, most of all, I was impressed by Lancaster as the accused German judge. He is a fantastically fascinating character. He is stoic and appears evil and mysterious. As the film progresses you see his true nature and his moral dilemma. And the two powerhouse actors, Lancaster and Tracy, hold court in the final scene. Schell seems more of a supporting player to me and, perhaps, 1961 was a year that, through events or preoccupation with other matters of historical value, it was time for the Academy voters to hand the gold to a foreign actor.

Oscar Winning Best Actors of the '60s: 1960

Winner: BURT LANCASTER - Elmer Gantry

other nominees:

----------------

Trevor Howard - Sons and Lovers

Jack Lemmon - The Apartment

Laurence Olivier - The Entertainer

Spencer Tracy - Inherit the Wind

I've decided to watch, in succession, the Academy Award winning Lead Actors in the decade of the 1960s. Luckily, each of the 10 films I must view are available on dvd and I own them or can access them through the wonders of NetFlix. Starting with Elmer Gantry directed by Richard Brooks and based on the novel by the brilliant Sinclair Lewis, it is evident that the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have always loved those big brassy performances that declare an actor is on the screen in all his glory. Burt Lancaster portrays Elmer Gantry a traveling salesman who, though thrown out of the seminary as a younger man, ironically finds himself in the role of an Evangelist Tent Preacher. Gantry's morals are in question from the outset as we witness his duplicity, his drinking, his lying and his obvious lascivious manner toward the fairer sex. He becomes attracted to a famous evangelist Sister Sharon Falconer, played by Jean Simmons, whom he becomes entangled with in business and eventual romance. Gantry's cynicism and hucksterism is matched by Sister Sharon true beliefs and aim to serve God and help the masses. Her blind faith is in direct contrast to Gantry's earthy snake oil salesman approach. Lancaster is perfect in the role and he is at his most charming and toothy grinned best. His Gantry is all show; over the top thespian acting, bible thumping and going to the extent of using a monkey in his preaching to waylay the criticism of Darwin believing reporters. I can't think of another role of Mr. Lancaster's wherein he nears the perfection of what people think of when they hear his name or when I would see impersonators ape him on television. It is in the style of the few swashbucklers he was in early in his career. I like this performance, but find it hard to believe the public would find truth in this man's preaching. It is so phony, so oily, so grandstanding ... yet people looking for answers and faith and verbal balms to their earthly problems wold believe in most anything, especially anything that they believe God is telling them through a man in a seersucker suit and a silver tongue spitting out authority and fear; reduced to quivering souls ready to open their wallets for salvation.

I, personally, relish Mr. Lancaster's other style of acting. His quiet eccentric character studies in Sweet Smell of Success, From Here to Eternity, Atlantic City and Local Hero. He was a great actor and one I appreciated more so in his later years. As to the film by Mr. Brooks, I found it mediocre and found it very hard to forget the novel it is based on that I had read years ago. Sinclair Lewis' scathing portrayal of Gantry is hard to forget. Mr. Brooks, who won an Academy Award for his screenplay, portrays Gantry in this light, but he softens him and wants the audience to sympathize and actually turns him into a hero, of sorts by the conclusion. I try always to separate a film from its source material. Even if I could put the novel's text aside, I still would find this turnaround of this character a bit uncomfortable and the issues of believing and God as a business are different in the film and harder to stomach. This may be a cost of the time in which the film was released; certain parts of the novel may have been hard to pass by the censors. If this was the case, and not just poor story telling on Mr. Brooks' part, then more is the pity.