75th Annual Academy Awards

The news media hyped up this year’s Oscars to be “downplayed” by the actors, with virtually no red carpet coverage, no over-the-top outfits, and lots of black. For the most part the Oscars did turn out to be less outrageous than usual but I have to say that I think I liked this year’s show more than when it is ultra-glam.

Steve Martin hosted and he did an excellent job. His jokes were funny throughout the night with my personal favorite directed toward the head of the Academy. Steve mentioned that this year cleavage is in, and then introduced the Academy president onto the stage. He had a number of good ones but my other favorite was when he listed some of the people in the audience who had slept with him and then later branded Jack Nicholson as a homosexual. Jack then licked his eyebrow.

The low point of the night definitely went to Michael Moore, who started out with a great acceptance speech and then blew it. He had a great beginning, where he mentioned how we live in a ficticious world and how documentary is a great art form. He had all of the other nominees up on the stage with him. Then he started ranting about Bush and members in the audience started booing him because Oscar speeches are supposed to be apolitical. Here’s the transcript:

Acceptance Speech

“Whoa. On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan from Canada, I’d like to thank the Academy for this. I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to — they’re here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it’s the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much.”

Michael Moore

I thought I was going to get most of the Oscar picks correct, but as usual the Academy managed to throw me a loop. Here’s a list of what I got right and what I got wrong. See how it compares with your own:

• [wrong] ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE Jack Nicholson ABOUT SCHMIDT
• [right] ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE Chris Cooper ADAPTATION
• [right] ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE Nicole Kidman THE HOURS
• [right] ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE Catherine Zeta-Jones CHICAGO
• [right] ANIMATED FEATURE FILM SPIRITED AWAY Hayao Miyazaki
• [right] ART DIRECTION CHICAGO John Myhre (Art Direction); Gordon Sim (Set Decoration)
• [wrong] CINEMATOGRAPHY CHICAGO Dion Beebe
• [right] COSTUME DESIGN CHICAGO Colleen Atwood
• [wrong] DIRECTING GANGS OF NEW YORK Martin Scorsese
• [right] DOCUMENTARY FEATURE BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE Michael Moore and Michael Donovan
• [right] DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT TWIN TOWERS Bill Guttentag and Robert David Port
• [right] FILM EDITING CHICAGO Martin Walsh
• [wrong] FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM EL CRIMEN DEL PADRE AMARO Mexico Directed by Carlos Carrera
• [right] MAKEUP FRIDA John Jackson and Beatrice De Alba
• [wrong] MUSIC (SCORE) THE HOURS Philip Glass
• [right] MUSIC (SONG) 8 MILE ‘Lose Yourself’ Music by Eminem, Jeff Bass and Luis Resto; Lyric by Eminem
• [right] BEST PICTURE CHICAGO Martin Richards
• [right] SOUND CHICAGO Michael Minkler, Dominick Tavella and David Lee
• [right] SOUND EDITING THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS Ethan Van der Ryn and Michael Hopkins
• [right] VISUAL EFFECTS THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall William Cook and Alex Funke
• [wrong] WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY) THE HOURS Screenplay by David Hare
• [wrong] WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY) MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING Written by Nia Vardalos

The official list of winners is online at oscar.com.

Mike,

I enjoyed your comments about the academy awards and it was cool to read about your picks. I wasn’t able to watch “the pianist” until after the award ceremony, but after watching it I felt it was probably the best picture of the year. Thought I really enjoyed Chicago as well, and that is from someone who doesn’t typically enjoy musicals.